Having grown up with and used the vast majority of DAWs (Logic, Ableton, Bitwig, FL Studio, Reaper, Studio One, etc) - Garageband probably has the gentlest learning curve of any of them.

And it doesn't hurt that when need more power/features you can upgrade to its big brother Logic Pro X which offers a very similar interface.

Simple in what way? It's a difficult question to answer because in my mind pretty much any software synth on Linux is just plug and play, but I'm guessing there's a technical gap that I'm overlooking due to familiarity.

What complications do you run into outside of garage band, or you imagine you would run into?

A sampler with a filter envelope is a type of subtractive synth.

Alchemy in GarageBand has many presets with adjustable filter envelopes (sometimes multiple) and volume envelopes, so it can work as a subtractive synth stand-in. However since it's based on Alchemy Player you don't seem to get the full patch creation power of Alchemy in Logic Pro.

GarageBand's "synth" (named) presets that I've tried appear to be subtractive, and sound great, but seem to limit user controls to filter cutoff and a single envelope for both volume and filter (possibly with configurable envelope amount). Some presets have slightly different controls though (for example an FM amount.)

Fortunately there are lots of great AUs, including free ones, for traditional virtual analog subtractive synthesis (and FM, and everything else.)

> My Blofeld has taken far more abuse than any laptop or tablet will handle and still going strong 15 years later; three laptops and two tablets later.

On the other hand, my Blofeld had wonky unresponsive knobs after just a couple of months, not that they were very good at the first place, who thought having knobs with no tactile feeling of grip was good idea?!

Personally the biggest win for actual hardware is that it's just more fun to play and use. I've tried various music apps for mobile/tablets and while it's fun for some minutes, that's pretty much it. But then I feel the same with DAWs, it's just not as fun as playing with an hardware drum machine + synth + sampler all hooked together.

Agreed. My comment doesn't apply to the 0.005% of synth owners who actually perform live :P

Do you believe more people per capita now make their their livings as performing musicians?

> How will that hobby fare against gen-AI prompt composing

The beauty of a hobby is that you do it for yourself, not for others.

So even in a (terrible) world where 100% of commercial music was AI-composed, someone's hobby of writing music by hand would likely remain unaffected.

> physical synths all but disappeared

Disappeared from where? In terms of units moved I'm guessing there's an order of magnitude more sold today than in the 90's or 80's.

I assume you're not very interested in the subject if you think synthesizers aren't real instruments

> How will that hobby fare against gen-AI prompt composing?

Pretty well, I believe. The joy of playing is largely the act itself, becoming one with your instrument and stepping into a world outside of time. Composition is an adjacent pastime.

Not only are companies like Behringer completely redefining the cost of entry to the hardware synth market, while continuously launching affordable replicas of some of the most desireable and rare synths of all time, but traditional software-first companies like Arturia are now pivoting to release hardware hosting platforms for their V-Collection to bridge the soft/hard synth gap

https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/astrolab/as...

This is without even referencing the huge cross-pollination and massive influx of development in the Modular Synthesis scene spurred on by things like vcv rack and its EuroRack ports.

In short, it has never been a better time in history to be a hardware synth enthusiast, and it's mainly down to soft-synths popularising the unique sonic qualities of historic hardware synths.

As a BARP 2600 owner (standard, not grey or blue) I couldn't recommend it more. If nothing else its max €400 for one of the most incredibly routable FX modules of all time with a very serviceable digital spring-reverb and Ring Modulator in the mix. Pair with a Strymon Night Sky or Big Sky and you've an enviable ambient/soundscape setup.

In the case of ODDYSEi, I am not sure whether the included 6-controls sequencer [i think that’s called P-lock] and/or the desunion on 8 « channels » [not sure of the wording] also exist somehow as hardware devices for the real ARP Oddysey

Definitely agree too. Budget is definitely not the same.

And something like VCVRack is heaven to learn, experiment and understand what one can do with synthesis, step by step.

Totally agree, and it's an intermediary step, but it's still not the same.

I mean, it's terrific to have an affordable replica, especially for discovery, I'm not debating the price-point advantage (for both acquisition and maintenance), but this is not an on-par replacement.

In an analog (less so in digital, but still somehow) synth, the controls are the instrument itself: they are in a specific place, react in a specific way, and physically part of the device that outputs the sound, and they stay there: you cannot move one without the other. The instrument has its own character. It's still more abstract than a classical instrument like the violin or the piano where the physical action alone is done and felt in real time, of course. It's significantly more incarnated than software + generic (in a good way) controllers.

The good side of this is that after having software replicas or original synthetisers, there's room to build new exciting embodiments/physical instruments.