GameDude

@antic604 said:
Now I'm aware this is a Deluge forum, but I'm having faith in you being objective

I'm considering buying a bit of hardware so I could do some music without using my laptop & Bitwig Studio. I'm a hobbyist, with a normal 8-10h / day office job + 2h commute, 3 kids, wife, etc. so I don't have a lot of time for music-making. With laptop, I tend to spend too much time tweaking stuff endlessly and adding unimportant detail, instead of really progressing and finishing it. So I need to impose some limitations and I though a stand-alone hardware would be a good choice.

I've basically narrowed down the choice to either Deluge or Akai Force.

In favour of the Akai I count its feature-set: really great 64 pads with velocity & aftertouch + 8 knobs for tweaking parameters so you can actually play stuff expressively, big touch-screen with lots of information, compatibility with Ableton (that I also own), professionally sounding sound-library and host of on-board instrument & effect plugins. The cons? Size & weight definitely, necessity to be plugged in, the fact that it's mostly considered a sample-based machine and I'm planning to focus on synthesis & MIDI. It's basically a cut-down computer with a sampler, synth and sequencer on it in a (heavy) box.

In favour of the Deluge I count: very compact size, battery operation, more frequent & bigger firmware updates, lack of screen [surprisingly] and the fact that it seems open in terms of architecture, e.g. how you load samples, bounce tracks, etc. On the other hand the synthesis options do not sound convincing (despite on paper being strong - subtractive & FM, soon wavetable, 2x filters, LFOs, and so on...) and I'm afraid it's easy to get lost in bigger projects. I'm also afraid for its CPU performance if I wanted to focus on MIDI & synthesis.

Deluge definitely seems more fun & way cooler, whereas Force looks like a "serious" machine for professional producer, which I'm not. On the other hand I nevertheless try to adhere to certain standard with my music (I'm a hobbyist, but not a newbie) & I'm not convinced Deluge is the right choice sonically - most presentations & tutorials make it sound weak & plasticky, like early VSTs or old keyboards and the well-sounding demos are usually using full stems and/or many samples, which is something I'm completely not interested in (except for drums & maybe sound FX).

So I'm really stumped. My heart is leaning towards Deluge, but my mind is whispering Force

Any thoughts?

BTW, here's example of my music - I'm not expecting to pull off the same level of complexity on either Deluge or Force, but something in the ballpark would be very nice:

I have both, and if I could only have one it would be Deluge- no question.

I can make relevant music with Deluge in a few hours- all my own production using my own samples if I want and shape a song- while sitting on the couch watching the Simpsons lol.

It's really fun to use, and very capable of making serious, professional music- it just depends who is making that music.

The Force has been designed for a project studio that uses the Ableton DAW, and the sad news for me is- I don't even use Ableton.

Deluge is for anyone with any musical production style who doesn't want to even be near a computer.

Deluge is the proverbial 'desert island' groovebox imo.

Yes, I love the fuckin' thing lol.

Man...I'm seriously blown away here. This is hands down the most fun all-in-one sketchpad groovebox I've ever had the privilege to own. I always worry about file (.wav sample) management/limitations when buying a new device and deluge didn't let me down. I was able to load all of my custom samples with zero problems. It's scary how fuckin dope this thing is...deep as fuck and I love it! Synthstrom Audible set the bar with this baby. Can't thank you guys enough for developing this. Cheers, blunts and beers to the team!

Thanks for the info. I bought a universal adapter anyway just in case I might need it someday.

@reza said:
nope, it shouldn't change anything with previous projects.

Niiiice:) Thanks for the reply man!