Winter NAMM has been done for a couple of weeks now and everyone has sort of settled on their discussions at what impressed them at the show. Hardware seems to have made a nice appearance again, especially in the analog form. While discussing our highlights and disappointments at the show over at Serious-sounds.net an interesting question came up to me asking about my gear setup. Now for those not in the know I use grooveboxes for my entire setup. That setup with the built in sequencers has always just sort of clicked with me. Problem is no one is really making these magical little boxes anymore.
My current setup consists of a Korg EA-1, Korg EMX-1, a Yamaha AN200 and the mother of all grooveboxes the EMU XL-7 Command Station. The history of grooveboxes is a short, but rather remarkable one. Perhaps starting originally in the Akai MPC 60 there are some notable boxes that appeared during most of the 1990s. The Roland MC series with the MC-303 and MC-505 were groundbreaking for their time. Then the Korg Electribes came along that brought a new affordable and groundbreaking accessibility to music production. Yamaha had a brief attempt at it themselves with the Loopfactory boxes, but really the EMU Command Stations (which were sort of a failure) ultimately were the best of the series. Unfortunately not a lot has come out since that time except for some pricy gear from Elektron, Radikal Technologies, Acidlab and perhaps Jomox. If you look at any of these companies they are all based in Europe.
If my current stuff ends up dying I suppose it leaves me relegated mostly to investing in some of this pricy gear. That certainly would not be a bad thing since these are wonderful pieces of kit with a great build quality. It does mean though that I have basically relegated myself to a largely boutique level of the production world. What setup to I actually end up getting though?
The Elektron equipment I think is by far the nicest and most mature. I have never really heard of issues with their software or gear. The Radikal Technologies Spectralis would probably also end up on that list of gear, but I have heard there were some OS issues in past versions. Only problem with all of this though is it would all have a price tag of about $7,000.