Bass Station 2 or Pulse 2 to complement Analog Four?

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Uncle E wrote: Waldorf should do a version of the Rocket with wavetable oscillators.
+1 :hyper:
I'm not a musician, but I've designed sounds that others use to make music. http://soundcloud.com/obsidiananvil

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I'd like to hear about any quality issues ppl have had with their pulse 2 or bs2.

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Ingonator wrote: Recently a red Q+ keyboard (that with the additional real analog filters) was sold for less than 3000 €.
A few months ago one went for 1100 € in Finland. :dog: :dog:
“Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were antimaterialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’ ”

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I only got my Bass Station 2 around 10 hour now and it sounds totally awesome with a huge amount of features to play with.
While i have not done extensive comparisons yet the overall character and also the important parts like e.g. filter, enveloeps, Drive etc. seem to be quite different from my Pulse 2. Especially the Acid filter and the Overdrive (or better Overdrives as there is a differenr one before and after the filter...) are totally different from the Pulse 2. I admit the Pulse 2 also misses the dedicated step sequencer from the BS II which would be nice to have (while teh Arp in teh Pulse 2 is quite nice too).

Of course you will be able to do similar soudns on both but it also seems to be quite easy to make them sound differently.

While so far i never had big problems programming patches with the matrix editor in the Pulse 2 (and i also got an editor software for it...) i admit that the "knobby" interface n the Bass Station II is very nice to use.

Instead of a menu with advanded settings you got a combination of a "Function" button, the 25 keys and the value display + buttons (Up/Down) that works quite nicely too (incuding sending Sysex dumps for single patches or all 128 patches). What's a bit confusing at the beginning is that you also have to add the Osc Sync from the advanced options and not from the Osc section.
Assigning parameters to Modwheel or aftertouch is quite simple too while there are only a few options (e.g. Vibrato, Cutoff, Filter Mod, Osc 2 Pitch) but those make sense.

BTW the BS II has dedicated Sine waveforms for both main Oscs and the Sub Osc which is not usual with both hardware and software synths and really nice to have. Sadly this seems to be missing in the Pulse 2.

At the moment i am happy that i got both the Pulse 2 and Bass Station II and also nice to see that they are different enough (at least IMO) to keep playing with both.

The BS II also works/sounds nicely together with the Novation Ultranova which does not really seem to be a VA emulation of the BS II in any way.
Last edited by Ingonator on Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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Watching the Sonic State review of the Bass Station 2 atm. What i always notice on analog synth is that the raw square wave has so much more beef on analog synth, compared to most soft synths. Except Monark maybe, the square wave in that is very beefy. Not sure why that is. The other waveforms usually don't suffer from lack of beef compared.

Sounds great btw, nice synth.

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chk071 wrote:Watching the Sonic State review of the Bass Station 2 atm. What i always notice on analog synth is that the raw square wave has so much more beef on analog synth, compared to most soft synths. Except Monark maybe, the square wave in that is very beefy. Not sure why that is. The other waveforms usually don't suffer from lack of beef compared.

Sounds great btw, nice synth.
My guess is that either there is more high frequency content coming through, or there is a little bit of subtle PWM that hasn't been controlled for.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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One possible issue (if it matters for you...) with the Bass Station II which i actually did alraedy know before buying it:
The filter keytracking is not adjustable (yet...) and instead seems to be fixed to 100% for the Classic filter and 50% for the Acid filter.
In the Pulse 2 the filter key tracing is adjustable between -200% (= a value of -64 in the synth while -32 is -100%) and +200% (a value of +64 in the synth while +32 is 100%).


For some people another issue could be that there is no cross modulation of Osc 1 + 2 while Osc Sync is possible and the mixer offers adding a ring modulatied signal of the Oscs 1 and 2. There is also a knob called "Osc Filter Mod" which seems to do Filter FM using Osc 1.
The Pulse 2 seems to offer Osc Sync and routing Osc 3 to the filter (for filter FM) or Osc 2 Level (for doing Ring modulation). Besides that there is a unique XOR Osc mode.

FWIW the Minimoog (and emulations like e.g. Monark and others) offered using Osc 3 (or a mix with the Noise source) for doing cross modulation (aka FM) and/or filter FM or as a LFO when the Osc 3 octave is switched to "LO".
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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A little clarification here. I already own both the Pulse 2 and bass station 2. Have had the P2 for a little over a year and the bs2 about half a year. When I originally started this thread, I was planning to buy an A4 which I also now own.

As Uncle E mentioned for the original Pulse and as I feel is also true for the P2, there appears to be a bigger contrast in the sound from the A4 when compared with bs2, atleast in the limited time I've spent with it. Having said that, they obviously don't sound the same, and there are other factors like the hands on aspect, playability etc. The BS2 also has some nice pluses like the sine waves, extra filter types, usb power. I'm already aware of the fixed filter tracking on the bs2. On the whole, its not easy choosing between the two. I also already tried selling the BS2 but haven't managed, so the decision may ultimately just be about which one sells.

When I asked about issues, I was asking specifically about issues related to build quality and hardware problems/failure etc. The other points mentioned in some of the responses can be useful to anyone considering either synth, so they are appreciated, but just thought I'd clarify since some of them are off topic.

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maschinelf wrote: When I asked about issues, I was asking specifically about issues related to build quality and hardware problems/failure etc. The other points mentioned in some of the responses can be useful to anyone considering either synth, so they are appreciated, but just thought I'd clarify since some of them are off topic.
I had te Pulse 2 since before it was realeased (as i was a tester of it) but at the end of the tset teh tset unit was replaced with one of teh fisrt from the factory. So far i did not have technical issues with it while certain existing issues were also solved with OS updates.

I got the Bass Station II today and could not comment on reliability but at a first look while not built "like a tank" it does not look like thing like e.g. the knobs would break easily (at least those seem to work nicely) while of course all kinds of things could happen over some months or years.

Also got a Novation UltraNova since around 9-10 months (used on a regular basis) and also no technical issues there yet.

The keybeds at Novation (including UltraNova and Bass Station II) seem to be from Fatar and they indeed seem to be quite nice and they do not feel "cheap" when played.
BTW the keybeds of the Blofeld keyboard and the Native Instrumenst Komplete Kontrol S controllers are from Fatar too (got a Komplete Kontrol S61 here while my Blofeld is the desktop version...).
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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edited, moved to another thread
Last edited by Ingonator on Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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maschinelf wrote:
When I asked about issues, I was asking specifically about issues related to build quality and hardware problems/failure etc. The other points mentioned in some of the responses can be useful to anyone considering either synth, so they are appreciated, but just thought I'd clarify since some of them are off topic.

The first one I received had a faulty screen (broken lines in the LCD). The second one had one crunchy encoder and wouldn't boot up sometimes when I powered up (just a blank screen and no audio).

Suffice to say I didn't ask for a third one to be delivered.

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That's unfortunate :( .. How far apart was the delivery from the first to the second unit? Could be that they belonged to the same (faulty) batch.

The person who bought my Blofeld also reported a similar issue with the screen. It's apparent that with the Blofeld technical issues were fairly common and widely reported. Seems to be a bit less with the Pulse 2 as there are far fewer such cases to be found online. I really do love the sound of the pulse 2, and would happily keep both the bs2 and pulse 2 were it not for budget considerations. Anyway, the decision is finally just going to be about which one sells, and since I haven't had any luck with the bs2 I have to give the pulse a shot.
Last edited by maschinelf on Sun Jul 24, 2016 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Only a couple of weeks apart, but the retailer told me they had a much higher percentage of Pulse 2's back than they would normally expect.

To be honest even if I had a working one I wouldn't trust it to last much past the warranty.

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Yea well I hope that isn't the case even if I end up selling mine. From what I've seen online, problems don't seem as widespread as they were with the Blofeld and there are several ppl around that have been using them for years without issues. It would be interesting to know the percentages, and you did mention your retailer saying it was quite high.

I saw your Pulse 2 thread on GS, and the volume knob problem you mentioned seems to be the most common issue. IIRC, I also noticed something like that happening the first time I hooked it up to my key step. I don't remember what I did, but something did stop that behaviour and it hasn't happened again, so atleast in my case it would appear that it happened because of some midi message being sent. Will look again and try to find out exactly what it was.

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