Down memory lane: Music Hardware I almost had as a kid

It's Christmas time and all the gift buying'n'giving (and some other random conversations with like-minded people) reminded me of a bunch of hardware I almost got as a kid but... due to unfortunate (financial) circumstances, it was never meant to happen :P

Let me begin then, not with the "I wished I could access them" but the main "I almost got them" as a kid:


Because that was the most affordable (4 voice) polyphonic MIDI enabled synth (I thought) I could get my hands on!

Also, besides polyphonic, it was multitimbral! =D ...which, in my mind, would kinda solve the issue of only having 1 synth ;)

...and... that never happened :]


2) Amstrad Studio 100 (1985)

I clearly remember passing by a local shop and seeing a mixer-like panel and instantly stopping to investigate it further. It was a 6 Channel mixer with a built in simple BBD echo and a 4 track tape recorder plus a stereo/2 track tape player.

It was "perfect" for what I thought to be my (small) dream bedroom studio setup up! :D

...never happened :P


3) Atari 520ST (1985)

It was a 16bit "real" computer with MIDI ports included! What else could a kid (interested in computer programming and trying to also buy a MIDI enabled Synth) wish for!? :D

...and you guessed it: that didn't happened also :]


4) Amiga A500 (1987)

What could be better than a MIDI only enabled computer? A sampling enabled computer :D

...this was the one I got the closest to have :/



Long story short...

 I ended up being able to finally get something! An i486DX2 with a SoundBlaster 16 (which I felt had more future than a Gravis Ultrasound).
Got my hands on the smallest tracker I could download from my local BBS, the Composer 669 by Renaissance soon upgraded to Scream Tracker by Future Crew after trying FastTracker 2 and eventually settling with the MIDI capable Impulse Tracker by Jeffrey "Pulse" Lim.

 ...few Intel generations later, Reason was here to stay :)

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