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Entries in analog (11)

Friday
Oct092009

audioMIDI.com Interviews Tom Oberheim

DateFriday, October 9, 2009 at 9:58AM

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing analog synth legend Tom Oberheim. He gave us some great history about the old and brand new "re-issue" SEM analog synthesizer. This is part one of the vid, look out for part two soon!

The first batch of "patch panel" editions has shipped (and sold out); more are on the way soon (MIDI version should be coming in about a month).

Check out the new SEM synths HERE.

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Tuesday
Sep292009

Tom Oberheim SEM- Interview Video On The Way!

DateTuesday, September 29, 2009 at 4:06PM

Tom was at audioMIDI.com HQ yesterday with the first shipment of SEM modules (sold out- more in a couple weeks). I got to sit down and talk with Tom about the history of the SEM as well as the new re-issue. Just need to edit the video and we'll have it up within a couple days.

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Tuesday
Aug182009

To the guy who complained about my last Oberheim SEM update...

DateTuesday, August 18, 2009 at 4:33PM

Sorry I don't have another pic, but I promise, this is THE one I have in my possession.

I played with a prototype over the weekend, and overall, it's great. Sounds really nice, and works as it should. I don't have another SEM to compare it to, but I'm sure everyone will be pleased (we may organize some kind of audio shootout between new and old later on so satisfy the golden-earred crowd). Compared to my synthesizers.com modular system, it doesn't have as much earth-moving low end, but to be fair, the modular is likely the most low-endy synth I've ever played- the SEM sounds fantastic to my ears, and easily outdoes any plug-in in size and three-dimensionality of tone, to put it in lofty terms. And the filter "notch" knob lets you coninuously change the filter response from lowpass to highpass- this gives a lot of flexibility, and sounds amazing when manually swept. Woot woot, sayeth I.

I popped a few cables in the patch panel and plugged in my Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man pedal and made some pretty awesome cyclical drones with the built-in LFO as well as external LFO, sync, one oscillator modulating the other, etc. Lovely!

The patch panel made it easy to make use of modules in my modular (mainly the LFO's), so that was fun. These should be shipping in a couple weeks- if you're an analog connoisseur, you will not be disappointed.

I'll have some audio links soon and more to say about it... in the meantime, you can read the specs and preorder Oberheim SEM's here (be sure to check out the specs for the patch panel version- I spent some time making that table detaing all the I/O!).

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Friday
Aug142009

Oberheim SEM update.

DateFriday, August 14, 2009 at 10:07AM

I have a prototype of the patch panel version in my clutches. Muhahahahahahaha. Report forthcoming.

Authormitchell | Comment1 Comment |
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Tuesday
Jun302009

the analog silliness continues unabated... 

DateTuesday, June 30, 2009 at 1:55PM

This is the latest addition to my ever-growing fleet of old analog synths: a 1983-vintage Roland JX-3P analog polysynth. I snagged this guy with the hard-to-find PG200 knob programmer dealie for just $350, and besides one wanky key, everything works peachy. As JX-3P's didn't originally come with the programmer, out of the box, sound editing was done by selecting a parameter number and moving a single slider, DX7-style. Y-to-the-uck. But Roland would sell you the PG200 controller, which offered knob control of all sound parameters. Being the proud owner of both, I was surprised to learn the programmer is affixed to the top of the synth via magetic strips. High-tech!

People tend to honk on about how DCO's sound inferior to VCO's (that's digitally-controlled oscillators vs. voltage-controlled oscillators), because digitally control makes the tuning too precise, and I guess they're sort of right- I own an even older Roland Jupiter-4, and it's tuning certainly stretches the boundaries of warm. But it's not bad- the JX is still plenty "warm" sounding

The JP-4 is a raunchier sounding synth, and the sound parameters tend to have a more extreme range. But the JX-3P has two more voices of polyphony, and more importantly is a dual-oscillator synth, so that adds a lot. And it retains the famous Roland chorus, which frequently turns decent sounds into killer sounds. The only really annoying WTF-were-they-thinking aspect for me is the omission of pulse width and pulse-width modulation- the oscillators just have a non-modulatable square or thin pulse wave. Grrr... the JX-3P would SO cool if it had 'em. OTOH, for the price, it's probably the best bargain going in old polysynth world.

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Tuesday
Jun022009

Volta update 37, Jason Lives...

DateTuesday, June 2, 2009 at 4:43PM

Ok, so at last report I had attempted to use Volta with my RME HDSP9652/Sonorus audio system, with the whole shebam hosted by Logic Pro. As a quick recap, Volta has an oscillator calibration feature that automatically scales its response to your audio hardware and synth oscillators in order to play in tune. This is done by routing a Volta control source to oscillator CV in, and routing a sine wave output of the same oscillator into an audio interface input. You hit Volta's calibration tab, tell it which audio input the sine wave is coming from, hit the calibrate button and Volta sprinkles the oscillator tuning juju. Buuuuuutttt....

At the time of my last entry, I couldn't get Volta to see audio input for love or money in Logic- no audio input, no matter what. To cut a long story short, turns out there was a bug in Volta, and god bless MOTU and their CV-controlled little hearts, Volta v1.0.3 appeared yesterday and fixed the glitch. At the time it occurred, I figured the source of my input routing troubles was my audio interface, so I borrowed a MOTU UltraLite from audioMIDI.com. This required some unfun driver installation and cable re-routing. I also learned that Volta doesn't like when you plug a standard TS 1/4" cable into one of its TRS 1/4" outputs- apparently this dead shorts the voltage output. The manual actually warns that this could potentially damage the interface, but I didn't read that 'til later.... they recommend making custom cables and "floating" the ring connector (that's a fancy way of saying "disconnecting"). I got around it by using a TRS snake into my patch bay and then using standard TS 1/4" to the modular synth CV ins- not sure why this made a difference but I'm tired today and my brain is probably not properly dissecting the inner mechanics of a dbx 1/4" patch bay. Disco. Now the oscillator calibration input seemed to work (I could see and hear signal), but I kept getting a "calibration failed" message. I went home frustrated, came back the next day, changed NOTHING, and after a couple more failed attempts, calibration magically started working, and has consistently worked ever since. Soon thereafter, MOTU returned my phone call plea for help, and advised that v1.0.3 was up and should solve any input issues, so for fun, I hooked my RME setup back up and wouldn't you know, it worked flawlessly. Thus, I retract my earlier statement that Volta only plays nice with MOTU audio hardware. And it does do lots of neat stuff... it makes any MIDI>CV converter I've come across captial O-bsolete. You can read about all this joy in the July issue of Keyboard Magazine- I wrote the Volta review, so at this point, I may hold the record for "most verbage relating to Volta".

Authormitchell | Comment2 Comments |
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Friday
May292009

Volta update...

DateFriday, May 29, 2009 at 4:49PM
Hooked up the entire deal last nite with eight channels of my RME9652/Sonorus audio system fed into a patch bay directly beneath my dot.com modular. It's a little tricky to initially set up in Logic (because of the necessity of using aux outs in the mixer), but MOTU includes a little tutorial video that helps a whole bunch. All the gates, triggers and LFO's work swimmingly, but pitched oscillator stuff is a different story... Unfortunately, I can't get the oscillator pitch calibration function to work. The Volta plug-in refuses to see any incoming audio, which is vital for the calibration to work. And regardless of how in-tune the synth's oscillators are, Volta simply won't play anywhere near in tune unless you perform the calibration process. Boo hoo. I talked to MOTU tech support this morning, and they acknowledged that there are some known issues regrading audio routing when using non-MOTU audio intefaces, specifically related to the calibration function. They also say they're trying to address them (to their credit, there's already been two minor upgrades- Volta is at v2.0.1). As far as I can tell from friends and forums, it's looking more and more as if Volta is a MOTU audio interface-only  kind of beast. This weekend I'm taking a MOTU Ultralite home with me, so I'm crossing my fingers.
Authormitchell | Comment3 Comments |
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Tuesday
May192009

Prophet '08, now with pots,no card necessary.  

DateTuesday, May 19, 2009 at 11:23AM
I have to admit I've been a little dubious about Dave Smith Instruments' Prophet '08 synth- I own a rev 3.2 Prophet-5, so I'm a bit of a purist snob. One of the major things that bugged me about the Prophet '08 were the endless rotary knobs (the original Prophet has standard pots). Call me an old curmudgeon, but there's something about having a definitive start and end point when tweaking filters, mod, etc. Of course the advantage of endless rotaries is that they don't have to "jump" to a point when editing sounds- the idea is that you won't lose the setting of a particular parameter. But in my world, if you can't figure out where ONE knob setting was to get back to the original preset, then you probably shouldn't be dabbling in this wacky synth programming stuff in the first place. Prophet '08 Pot Edition ships 5/20/09. At 4:20. Check it out HERE.
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Thursday
May142009

more shocking revelationsabout Volta

DateThursday, May 14, 2009 at 11:58AM
Got this sucka up and running last nite. Complaint number one- it uses an iLok. The good(ish) news is that MOTU kindly includes a pre-loaded iLok, so if you're already using an iLok, all you have to do is pop the dongle into an unused USB port (surely you have plenty of unused USB ports...). The bad news is that if you're already using an iLok, now you have two of 'em. There's a procedure to consolidate the license to your existing iLok, but gee, I'd much rather spend that time voltage-controlling analog synths instead of messing with copy-protection junk that will get cracked anyway. Three cheers for ineffective, draconian copyright protection! Moving on to happier news, setting up Logic to spit out control voltages was pretty easy- MOTU includes very helpful screen capture tutorial videos for DP, Live and Logic. As MOTU suggests, I busted out a voltmeter and was happy to discover that my RME HDSP9652+ancient Sonorus D/A converter boxes happily outputted DC voltages. I didn't want to rewire my entire audio system, so for the time being, I only set up one CV output, but I patched this to my Korg Delta's filter CV  input and within seconds I had a Volta LFO spitting Logic sync'd filter madness. Yay! Since I have an M-Audio Firewire 410 that's sitting around doing nothing, I'm going to try and set up Apple core audio to use my RME audio setup along with eight channels from the Firewire 410. If this all goes as planned, the 410 will provide eight channels of dedicated 1/4" CV for my modular monster on a patch bay directly beneath the modular... good times! Stay tuned for more updates as I get the eight channels goin' and make a big synthy mess.
Authormitchell | Comment8 Comments |
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Thursday
Apr302009

MOTU Volta. Nothing to do with Mars. 

DateThursday, April 30, 2009 at 9:55AM
Being the hard-nosed vintage analog synth curmudgeon I am, there isn't much in the software realm that really blows me out of my seat. But if you own CV/gate vintage (or modern) synths, MOTU Volta looks to be a must-have. Volta functions like a standard AU plug-in, but instead of making any actual sound, the signals it outputs through an audio interface are control voltages and gates that are plugged into analog synthesizers. In its most basic form, this offers "extra" LFO's, envelopes, triggers and clocks; up to 24 of them dependent upon the physical number of available audio interface outputs.The only catch is that your audio interface must have be able to pass DC voltages (the audio equivalent of playing back a 0Hz signal)- some interfaces can and some can't. This is a bit of a dangling question mark presently, but which ones do and don't will surely become public knowledge pretty rapidly. Here's some other neat things: -all the LFO's and clocks are easily syncable to host. This may not sound like a big deal to those accustomed to virtual instruments, but getting analog synths to sync properly to MIDI has always been a pain, so this is great. - Volta lets you use your host sequencer's automation facilities to draw CV automation. - "Calibration" mode for oscillator and filter tuning. Take the synth's output and Volta analyze pitch and compensates for automated tuning and scaling- very handy for older synths with questionable tuning. My understanding is that calibration mode works on filters too allowing accurate scaling of resonating filters for use as sine wave oscillators. Shipping next week! 5/1/09: Update... in-stock at ye audioMIDI.com
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Friday
Nov142008

Oscillate wildly

DateFriday, November 14, 2008 at 4:25PM
post by Mitchell Sigman (certified analog snob) Next to fast german cars, analog synths make me happier than just about anything I can think of. Which is swell, because our good friends at Moog are doing a neat special 'til the end of the year. They're throwing in a CP-251 Control Processor with the  purchase of any Minimoog Voyager, Voyager "Old School" or Little Phatty. Now, I know that "CP-251 Control Processor" isn't exactly the sexiest handle ever bestowed on a piece of gear, but if you have a Moog synth, this is slick piece of kit to have. (incredulous Steve Martin voice...) "Hey Mitch, why do I need THAT thing???" Well, it adds some pretty cool functionality to your Moog. Actually, it works with any analog synth that has control voltage I/O. Here's what it does, specifically: • four input mixer for mixing audio or control voltages • lag processor- slows down changes in voltage. Usually used for glide effects, like in Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Lucky Man", every awful Styx song and the 303 bass in every acid techno song ever. • LFO- (aka low-frequency oscillator) modulates things creating vibrato or trills, filter wah-wah, tremelo, etc. dependent upon waveform and routing. Most analogs have one built in, but more LFO's= more better. And this one is voltage controllable so you can speed it up and slow it down with any control voltage (including one from the swift new Moog MP-201 Multi Pedal). • four-way multiple- I think I had one of those at a party in '98, but it's a bit hazy. Actually it's basically a four-way Y jack, but very useful when making wacky analog patches. • noise source- for wind, ocean and, uh, percussion. I've become quite adept at creating handclap smashes this way on my modular synth. Lookout! • sample and hold- kind of like a random LFO. Not to keep on this Emerson, Lake and Palmer trip, but ya ever heard the beginning of "Karn Evil #9"? Or "Witch Hunt" by Rush. That.

(I can't believe how many nerdy prog-rock references I'm  bustin' out today. Next thing you know I'll be talking about Dream Theatre. Ever been to concert with no chicks? Yeah, I've never been to a Dream Theatre show either.)

Getting back to the Moog special offer, all you have to do is buy the synth, mail in this downloadable PDF form, and the nice Moog people send you a CP-251. Easy. Look out for an audioMIDI video (audiomideo?) soon!
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