In the absence of real music skills and any ability to play a real music instrument whatsoever (like it is the case with me) the only sound I can produce is the sound of my gear. An this is a critical difference between real musicians and electronic projects like Inphal – the latter do not have their own sounds, they sound like whatever synth boxes they have at the moment. And very often the character of the sound is dictated more by fashion than anything else. This is (fortunately, I hope) not the case with Inphal – I do not care about fashion because I do not have to sell the results my labors. So, I allow my equipment to age gracefully and stick with the gear that proved itself useful.

But, again, there is no such thing as too much gear.

The computer is the heart of it all, but compared to all other hardware it’s nothing look at: gray box is a gray box, not really an eye candy. I assembled it myself from the components. Not a big deal, really.

The TerraTec’s Phase 28 is just a sound card – a device that makes computer to produce sound. The card has a multitude of connections and generally it’s a good value. Unfortunately, the drivers are buggy and the tech support is very, very slow – must be German unionized workforce or something.

This is just a rack-mounted power strip Sampson PS-9. Does not do anything sound-wise despite claims to the contrary by the manufacturer, but adds a lot of convenience – if nothing goes right it’s easy to stop it all, just one button.

This is a very, very convenient "splitter" for MIDI messages – called MIDI interface/patcher in music lingo. Usually one can daisy chain all of the availalbe MIDI gear and configure each box to respond only to its assigned channels (major hassle, believe me – I suffered for full 6 years!). The Edirol UM-880 allows each MIDI device to have all 16 channels for itself. It sounds deceptively simple, but in reality there are good reasons for these beasts to exist.

My secondary MIDI controller is an Axiom 25, whose main advantage is its size – actually, the lack thereof. It fits on my desk and can be easily removed when not needed. It has knobs, buttons, pads – all programmable and very convenient, especially for playing soft synths.

My main keyboard and MIDI controller is a legendary A-90EX thing – the cheapest keyboard with the key action indistinguishable from a real piano (for a non-professional, of course). It also has a small built-in synth that produces great keyboard sounds: pianos, organs, harpsichords, etc.

The Samson Servo-260 amplifier amplifies whatever comes out of the mixer, so I can hear what I’m doing.

My "workhorse" is Roland XV-3080 – a sample playback synthesizer that contains most of the basic orchestral and electronic sounds. It’s simple and versatile, has a lot of built-in sound effects. Everything that comes from it sounds somewhat more real than from anything else in my set-up.

Poly Evolver Rack from the esteemed synth designer Dave Smith. Great hybrid box with true analog and digital circuits. It sounds great and weird, but I wish it either had more knobs and buttons on the front panel or more convenient MIDI implementation.

The Waldorf Q rack is an analog modeling synth – the long time dream of mine. It has plenty of knobs and buttons to mess with the sounds it produces. This box, probably, has the greatest "play value" of anything I own.

This is just a simplest mixer one could get for the studio work – Samson PL-1204 (mixers for a live performance are another category). My set-up has several sources of sound that are described in more details below:

• A-90EX keyboard
• Roland XV-3080 synth
• Waldorf Q synth
• Poly Evolver
• Computer’s sound card

They all have to be plugged somewhere for me to be able to hear them and this is what the mixer does: it combines all the sounds all the other boxes make. I also use it to produce recording of all hardware synths (software’s output is already on the computer).