I went to Musicstore.de in Köln to get it (i'm not in a stable situation yet so can't have it shipped without risking to make it complicated). I finally decided it was way worth its price tag. I'm thinking about Alchemy Crystal to complete it, as well as NI analogue emulations for more basic synth sounds... What do you think ? I might even use only Omnisphere in my project anyway, it sounds so good.
I was amazed by the store. It's huge, like, huge. The audio prod part is the tiniest (except DJ part) but I could test a few awesome things, like the SSL Nucleus (although I didn't ask for a demo with the DAW etc) which looked like really worth its high price tag. The Avid controller (I forgot the name, I think ther's "artist" in it) looked the second best to me, although it's modular. (you have the main unit, with only 4 faders, then you can buy the extension for 8 faders, and the one for the better jogweel and more controls). The steinberg new interfaces looked okay to me. Compared to all that, the MCU looked like a big toy.
I loved the Nord keyboards. Real good analogue sounds. If you take them for what they are (you won't get a realistic flute sound out of this kind of synth) they sound really amazing.
The Korg M3 impressed me, the feel of its keys is so realistic that just playing one note non stop at different velocities was a pleasure. Wasn't impressed by all its sounds though.
Oh and they had a big modular real analogue synth, with dozens of cables to route the signal path through them. Didn't wanna test it, seemed like a big hassle to have the vendor discover I don't care about buying it and don't even know how to play the piano, but I really wanted to.
That's all for my almost useless Musicstore review.
Oh and of course, hundreds of guitars, but not too original. You get fenders, squiers, gibsons, corts, ltd, esp, PRS, same old, but at least you get what you expect ! It's just a bit too bad that such a large shop doesn't showcase more original brands, but business is business I suppose. Good thing is that you can spend a full afternoon them, in your booth, trying as many guitars as you want on a specific amp. If I were in the area when i wanted my next guitar, I would come here just because of that.
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