Bad Gear - Novation X-Station - All in one Home Studio??? 

3L3C7RO DYSTOPIA 💙

The more I watch this show, the more I think bad gear doesn't actually exist, some instruments just take more work to make them shine

I want a dancing Florian robot for Christmas!

My X-Station has been my gig controller for more than 15 years. Apart from a couple of dodgy faders it still works perfectly. One of my best ever purchases

One man’s bad gear is another man’s treasure.

You've outdone yourself, Florian. This is your official masterpiece. The robot dance alone is award - worthy. FWIW, a 61 key X Station is my defacto DAW controller. It has controller templates for more than a dozen of my HW synths and a bunch of my standard VSTs. I love the thing and even use the very capable synthesizer in my tracks on a regular basis. The X Station is great, but this video blows even it away!

90s - rompers, cheap samplers 00s - daw, vst(I) 10s - controllers, analogue revival 20s - Behringer

You forgot to mention that the X also has a friggin built-in battery charger! If you put in re-chargables, this thing will charge them for you. Amazingly versatile is this one.

“Emphasize the flaws”. As an industrial/noise musician I can relate to that.

Switzerland v Spain, or new Bad Gear? FOOTBALL CAN WAIT!

I've been working so much and without any routine that these videos are the only proof time is passing by

It's so impressive how you can consistently deliver such well produced, insightful and entertaining content every week!

X station's arp is the most possibly versatile one I ever heard of! You got 30+ arp patterns×few directions×all time signatures in a tempo! + you got the "octave skip" trick on latch mode...that's like hundreds of arp options on same notes and tempo... crazy.

SHHHH! The novation x station (25) is my semi access virus knock-off somewhat secret weapon that barely ever sounds just right but manages to fit into mixes somehow everytime once in a blue moon.

The dance routine at around 7:40 is superb! Bravo!

If you're considering buying an X-station and having shipped, know that the keybed is very vulnerable to damage. The plastic posts molded into the case to which the keybed is anchored are easily cracked by rough handling. And you'll often see one or more keys that have popped up above the rest, which unfortunately is not a simple matter of replacing the key itself, but is usually damage to a little plastic stop-mechanism that gets broken off when the keys bounce up and down during transport. The X-station originally shipped with a piece of foam beneath the front edge of the keys, but likely people toss that out after they open the unit. Along with having it wrapped in massive amounts of bubble wrap, make sure the shipper inserts bits of styrofoam or such beneath the entire length of the keyboard, or you almost certainly will have one or more un-repairable keys when it arrives. I speak from experience!

At the time it was released, the x-station was everything i needed and im still using it regularly today.

“The filter is the weakest point.” Proceeds to make a deep acid bass.

X-station is a great synthesizer. I work daily with this machine and I used it in almost all my songs. Good sounds, nice tweak-knobs and after 12 years everything is still working fine.

Dancing Robot AudioPilz is the spinoff series I didn't realize I needed.

So glad I found this channel. Outstanding work on this video, @AudioPilz!

X STATION was my first hardware synth. Still have it, still use it, still love it. Actually, its quite deep and you can do a lot with that. It has quite unique LFO shapes besides classic ones. From sound perspective modern VSTs sound better, that's for sure. But this one is not really bad gear tbh 😅 I still have video with patches for it on this YT acc.

You posted this 30 mins ago and it already has 60 comments. You are gonna crush the algorithm.

Great video Florian. You really have a great talent and manage to bring out the best out of any instrument. Wow. Well done!

You've made it sound so distinctive with its digital goofiness. Veeery Nice! I also like it, from the context of the show, that it ticks ALL my most hated feature list: PC interfaces that refuse to work on a newer OS; Dry battery cells that always leak and destroy the device; Rubbery buttons that don't return and eventually lose the contact; Plastic housing that crack or become yellow over time. Wow.

Oh wow, didn't know about Nick Batt's band DNA :) Thanks for another great episode.

I’ve had my X Station for 15 years and still love it. even as a stand-alone synth it is just plain fun.

Awesome video! That thing sounds surprisingly good, actually, and I like the amount of settings that are tweakable on the unit itself! Also, those dancing Pilzes made me laugh at the end :D

In case your stellar production and witty cutscenes don't have enough attention, here's my virtual hats up to you. Keep it going!

Not the zoroder meme! Aaaah, a true master of his art.

I love my X-Station. A Few things: the driver works perfectly on all versions of Windows including 10, there is a large library of patches for the synth online from community and even Jamiroquai that are far superior to the stock patches, the X-Station 25 is perfect for mobile use and has saved my ass a few times as a backup sound interface. My only gripe is not being able to use midi-mapped control while also using the synth function at the same time. And maybe I was lucky, but I found mine used for $125 and it came with a nice gig bag for transport. If anything, this video highlighted the weak drums from the Arturia ;)

That Ethereal Snake reference was well placed :)

Every time you review a piece of Bad Gear, I add something else to my wish list of odd toys. Thanks Griff!

Great vid, laughed out loud a lot at the references. You could well be the Werner Herzog of synth reviews. (surely that x-station isn't the only synth leaning on a wall at your place?)

I love my X Station. I bought it new in 2004 and it's been a workhorse ever since. It has some jumpy encoders now but it's still a great synth and controller. I stack it with my JP-8080 and it's awesome.

Hell yes! Glad you decided to pull the trigger on reviewing the x-station. It’s different enough from the XIO and surprised me when I got to set one up last year ;) excellent demo tracks too

at first I was sad to see one of my favorite recent synths on this list, but you did a good job covering it and the jams were great as usual I like pretty much anything Novation, but after buying the MicroKorg when it was new I saw the X-Station 25 and fell in love with the idea immediately - nice 3 osc VA synth, FX, audio input and interface, nice control set, and other cool things like templates - I even got the great backpack for it which fits a laptop so you have a truly mobile studio - eventually I got a second 25 and eventually a 49 (and the xiosynth) and as I dug though the rich history of compatible patches from K-Station and A-Station I had a really cool super patch set, as well as soem of my own tweaks - some of the sounds (pads, ambient FX, techno stuff) are incredible (I will have to do a video about them one day, way overdue) I dig the XY pad, like on my Korg padKONTROL very expressive and with one hand you can manipulate the stick and the pad - lots of control possibilities while the right hand goes nuts on keys - the semiweighted keys feel nice with a nice easy aftertouch, probably a Fatar keybed the stick allows you to undo the return spring switch on the modulation axis (Y axis) for some cool controls that persist, a lot of people miss that feature but in general I always preferred sticks to separate wheels, and the Roland stick often sucked a bit until the later versions with more of a mod range (JP8000, V-Synth, etc) the included overlay (cutout) templates were cool for making custom templates (and had some canned useful ones) and swapping out the overlays - the one you had probably lost the templates long ago - but the only thing missing was a vocoder and a simple sequencer like an SH-101 having the battery option was really great - not so common these days and you need to use powerbanks on most things - less elegant but could possible last longer on a charge the screen was a weak point since it dimmed early in life on some models - the Novation Remote units which are nice controllers only often had dim screens when sold used but they opened up some great control surface for software synth jockeys the Nova engine stuff in general is great and I got a MiniNova and the Circuit stuff as well anyway, thanks again :-)

XStation 25 was my first synth, despite its flaws it was a great synth to learn and have fun. The keybed is fantastic! I still use it and absolutely love it!

Your videos are the best on RU-vid thanks for making these

"8 WOICE WIRTUAL ANALOG": these things & your humour are the cherry on top ;) . BTW: nice E-MU rack @ 8:09 ! The 90s were colourful but a great time. Double thumbs up for this episode (& at least one generally :) .

There's a field near where I work that looks exactly like the Windows XP default background wallpaper.

Boss: ok, the JP8000 is no longer being made, now's our chance, but make it cheaper. engineers: Cheaper how? Boss: Yes

Watching Your head attached to a dancing robot was the highlight of the video! 😂🤣😂

I don't know what exactly, but those cyber-symphonic dancing robots DID something to my brain ⚡🧠⚡

The X-Station bad gear? NO WAY!!!! When I first read about it I sounded to good to be true (as you correctly comment in the video) but it fully held up to the expectations! I was playing it live for many years when I started to use a laptop as the only sound source. The X-Station was light weight, had already a sound card with MIDI and could be powered from the laptop. Up to this day, you cannot buy ANY controller keyboard with integrated audio! WHY? Nowadays, I enjoy the weirder areas of the sound engine a lot! Try the E-Piano sound with the distortion! Ah, you should have mentioned that you can have 6(!) effects at once!

I’m speechless. But mom always said if I couldn’t say anything nice …. Go for the throat. 😹

Another excellent demo. I have a KS 4. Keep up the good work.

The production value of your videos is insane

Very nice video again! :) I must say, i just love the Novation Sound. I had an UltraNova, on which the encoders sadly died from frequent use. I still have a KS-Rack and a Peak. Does the X-Station have the same distortion effect as the KS range? This distortion is still keeping me from selling my KS-Rack and the Peak to get a Summit, cause it has a really unique sound to it. The Summit might be a worth entry for "Rad Gear" someday. Novation took the best of their analog and digital tech and put together a breathtaking synth! It still has this special Novation character but in 8k resolution instead of the KS' 720p. :D

It has the design aesthetics Magix Music Maker circa the Y2K years. It teleports me back into the matrix.

Love how creative the jam videos are getting

Just got back my old X61 from my brothers who kept it clearly under a bud. Such a joy cleaning it off and turning it back on to hear sounds I forgot. It's actually a great 5 octave synth considering the trackpad and modwheel that can be unlocked from the spring. I played this baby for years as my main controller for church and I would still recommend it as a midi controller (with space for a separate midi controller on top of it like a NanoKontroller). When the computer crashes, it at least has some nice plucks and useable pads for a solid backup sound source (and battery powered means you won't go down if someone kicks the power -which I have had happen). If you see it cheap on the used market- just grab it for the 3 osc VA synth - likely will be worth so much more in 20 years.

Eggs Station sounds fine. I have it's sibling the Ultra Nova, which inherited many of the futures of the Eggs Station...but there's MORE. Now I want some Eggs.

Robot dance was epic. 🙌🏼

Great video! Amazing robot dancing skills, man!!!

It's Friday 10pm, I came home from work, and now my dinner-side-activity starts again with bad gear 😍

You should release a BAD GEAR album on bandcamp featuring all this awesome jams ! ... Dancing Florian robot is FIRE bro !! keep it up !

I sincerly hope that brands will keep making shitty gear so that your channel will never end! Love from Paris France

Happy Friday! That robot dance had me crackin' up!

highly entertaining and insightful content 😊

2014 last driver update... wow that's quite a support cycle. I am inclined to commend them for that. Mhm normally it's possible to install older drivers on WIndows with some contortion, as long as the drivers are from Vista era or newer, though 7 or 8 era drivers are usually much less crashy, because... well, Vista was a hard time for hardware companies who are famously bad at software, when they had to change everything to account for all the new system infrastructure. Luckily, not much fundamentally changed since and to this day, so the drivers had time to solidify by the Windows 7 era. But still, there are oddball exceptions. Even when the driver is technically compatible, it may be necessary to set the installer into compatibility mode to pretend to it like it's an older version of Windows, or catch the files mid-flight as they're being unpacked into a temporary directory and force install them later. Though i guess you had this problem specifically with Novation before, and were already unable to resolve it, if memory serves... By the way, they say the driver is from 2014 on the website, and i was wondering whether 2014 is the date they changed the website or something, the driver could be much older, but i peeked into the installer, and the opposite appears to be the case, the driver installer was packaged in 2016... interesting. Maybe worth getting in touch with them, it's a possibility that they packaged up the wrong driver altogether and nobody told them! Maybe an even older driver out of all things would help, except they don't offer those. I wonder if it would really make it "better gear" though... i mean it's just an audio endpoint driver, and if nobody has asked for a solution, maybe it was never so vital. Would be kinda odd not to have a working interface laying in some corner of the bedroom somewhere. Sometimes, the lengths to which Microsoft goes to support old abandoned oddball hardware surprise me. My graphics pen tablet that i got back in 2004 and which was last updated in the Windows 7 era, was no longer compatible with very recent Windows software just a few months ago, because it supports the classic Wacom WinTab API in the driver, but not the new Windows Ink API. So while i could use it on Windows 10, i had to use older software or GIMP to get the tablet functionality. Well the driver hasn't changed, but Microsoft changed something, maybe implemented an emulation layer of some sort, and now Ink API works! And of course 25 years of some degree of software compatibility and counting is not to be scoffed at either. OS X with abandoned hardware is just extremely rough though. The synth engine sounds... simple enough fundamentally, and with distinct aliasing, just with a lot of controls broken out. I wonder if a single Motorola 56000 will be found inside doing the duty. Absolutely love the TerminatorPilz animation :D Guess it's fitting that it continues to be portrayed by an Austrian. Word on the street is, Terminator is quite a musician, can be seen playing instruments in Mortal Kombat 11. Huh it occurs i have been watching for a bit over a year at this point... how time flies!

Wow, just spent all morning searching for a midi controller with aftertouch and you post this...Synchronicity, lol. Maybe the motorized faders on the Behringer Motor 61 would be an interesting thing to review.

I plugged mine to do first recording test..ended up with a beautiful new track! Nice machine!!!!

Cool episode, always amusing and also insightful & informative. Would love to see an episode on the Yamaha RY9 - 'Big Jam' or an RY8

I mean - dang - it even looks like a generic controller.

I had a brief moment with the X-Station, with high hopes of using the synth and interface simultaneously, as an on-stage mediator between Ableton Live and my hardware. Sadly, it was not to be. :( I've considered trying the Alesis Fusion for the same purpose, but ended up going back to hardware-only live shows instead. Great video!

It’s my only VA synth now and I’m keeping it! Thanks for the jam!

babe wake up, new bad gear episode!

I reckon your finger karate on that Novation keyboard will make a fine snare sample :-)

It might actually be useful as a controller for a Jupiter-8 emulation. And I would need that since Behringer clone seems to arrive never.

sehr cool, wie immer. deine tanzeinlagen: großartig..!

Still use mine as my main PC midi controller, had quite a few different ones, but keep coming back to it. It’s versatile and it’s also class compliant and works with an iPad for midi and as sound card as long as you externally power it. The pots are the weak point, they need replacing every now and then, but last time I rang up Novation a few years ago they sent me some replacements for free within a couple of days. I don’t use the synth much these days, I have quite a few much better hardware synths, but occasionally it’s fun to mess around with and the effects are good. Not being able to use synth and controller at the same time & flimsy pots are the only letdown I can think of, once you accept that it’s great. You’d be hard pressed to find a controller with this many features that supports custom sysex assignments, and occasionally that’s really useful. It also supports zones.

Emphasise the flaws is a kind of great way to put it, every instrument has character but if you are wanting it to sound like somethng else you will never find it characterful, only flawed. This thng kinda seems likt the anti-Skulpt - well laid out, easy to use but the filter and mod sound tiny. You managed to find some good sounds as (almost) always but..... i still wish it sounded like somethign else XD.

I have an emu-Morpheus, it’s a pain in the ass without the software. can you get your hands on one? Would love to see it here 😆

Great editing ...as usual 😊

you always make every bad gear sound amazing

It seems that "back in the day" the emphasis was on putting in everything with every possible configuration. Nowadays we live in the cut corners era, or "user experience aka users just want this bit" era, which really annoys me...

Honestly, old 90s gear interests me more than 80s gear because it's so odd and unfocused. it's also WAY cheaper, the 90s synth nostalgia has not hit as hard yet so i can get my mc 505 for 50 bucks!

love these videos ... thank you

That 2nd jam was my all time favorite on the show! 😅

Just want to point out that the Novation KS (multitimbral X-Station) is my personal favourite VA synth. I also own a Virus TI, Nord Lead 2X, AN1x, microKorg and have owned a JP8000 and System 8 in the past. If I had to sell everything and only keep one it would be the KS4.

I wouldn't have thought to see Novation on here :D

Another killer video that you just knocked out of the park.

Hi Pilz! Happy Friday! That's one lethal-looking chunk of plastic! I hope your Oxygen-8 didn't get too jealous. NRPNs! Woohoo! 🥂 Here's to flimsy firepower!

I had the KStation and it was sooo thin on bass BUT!!!! The arp is musical, great for leads, Poly, for scacatto sounds. But bass? Thin

Great review! The semiweighted fatar keyboard with aftertouch is its best feature, still better than some Modern keyboards including their own Bass Station 2. Cheers

I remember when a friend lent me his X-Station for a day. Although I found oUt a little thin sounding I loved stacking pads over pads with it and the handS on controls. Always loved to have one.

that second jam is pure gold!!! cheers from México c:

When is the circuit getting bullied

But can it run DOOM?

8:06 I've been staring at this picture for hours and I love it. Just missing the JP8000.

The robot dance sequence will give nightmares to generations to come. Serve them right.

Another Friday, another brilliant video. I'll keep saying it, the level of both creativity and professionalism on display here is staggering. Also, is it just me, or does the last jam borrow a bit from the space disco era? The sort of tunes you'd find on the Cosmic Machine compilation? Anyway, thanks for being the highlight of my day.

Excellent dance video at the end.

It's utterly criminal that this channel doesn't have more subs but it's probably seen as a niche subject. Thankfully, a lot of people do like the subject and the memes probably go over some heads, but not me, I go back 5-10 seconds to get the memes. Another great vid and great genre too.

Loved it 😁👍 Also, Quasimidi Rave-O-Lution 309 would be a worthy contender ✌

My X-Station is my go-to-maschine, that is useful for manything! Like an audio "swiss army knife"! My pick as a controller keyboard in the home studio. My pick also for spontaneus jam sessions out. I like it´s sound. Plus, its my fastest and smoothest keybed for synthsolos, plus great aftertouch functionality. And i can add a piano expander and blend it to the sounds of virtual analog. But more than this: - It is light, very portable. It also can be run by accumulators, which can be charged inside! - There´s even a lever, that lets you choose for the modulation control to return springloaded, or not. - It comes in three sizes: The middle and the biggest one of this design leave a practical, nice space on the right side. Great for written songlists. Or even for effect pedals. Or small rhythm boxes. Or a Yamaha Reface, etc.

Nothing beats a day long motorcycle ride and a bad gear night. Cheers!

You've certainly got the moves.

The Bad Gear's Dancing Robot video clip was one of the best of the whole series!