MATRIXSYNTH: Friday, March 31, 2006


Friday, March 31, 2006

Waldorf is Back!

Title link takes you there. The message is in German, babblefished below into English. The English site just states coming soon... And... Stefan Stenzel is back!!! Too cool.



"Is it that? What is to at the rumors around the German Synthesizer legend...? Now, here some unspektakulaere facts are to provide for little light. Yes, it does which in the Waldorfer Laendchen... the rights became by that whale village SL, represented by Joachim Flor and Kurt Wangard, acquired. The new whale village Music GmbH is in the establishment phase and Stefan Stenzel and franc cutter as well as Michael of Garnier and Wilfried Eckl will enter. Who is that now again? Joachim Flor is the head and Macher the new whale village Music GmbH Joachim was already in the establishment phase the whale villages Electronics on board and contributed considerably to their success. Kurt (Lu) Wangard, accompanied the whale village Electronics as Office manager by all heights and depths and is completely wild to see lighting up the old battle ship in the gloss of the modern times. Stefan Stenzel, Mastermind and former director/conductor of the research and development department, as well as the franc cutter, one of the initial members the whale villages Electronics, responsibly for hardware and production management, engaged themselves also during the dark days for the whale village municipality. Now the two guarantors for continuity and innovation work again with commitment and high pressure on new projects for the rope-fresh whale village Music. For fresh wind provide Michael of Garnier and Wilfried Eckl, which throw their bundled know-how for selling and marketing into the scale pan. In the next weeks still further partners will on board come and the team will complete, which was written ambitious goals on the flag. Curiously? Well so! "

HCGPF on Analog Industries

And it's a synth one. : ) Title link takes you there. Yowsa.

Old Veterans Home

Now that the Little Phatty is out...



Brian Comnes sent this in, both the link to the shot on Analog Industries and the joke. Thought it was pretty funny. Thanks Brian. : ) The strangest thing is I didn't put this shot up back when Chris first posted it on Jan 30 of this year. I meant to get back to the shot, but never did. Funny how that works...

Moog Phatty on Audio Fanzine

Title link takes you to videos and audio. It's in French. Enter ass for the username and assburg for the password. No I didn't come up with that. Courtesy of ex action figure on this VSE post.

JB's Giant Modular - New Flickr Shot

flickr by antfactor.



Update via the comments:

"In case you didn't know, that's a Polyfusion.
There's some photos on my site somewhere of the same system."

Update via anonymouse in the comments:

"actually, it's MOSTLY Polyfusion - but don't be fooled - LOTS of other modules, synths, and some custom designed/built goodies."

USB DSP Drive Based Synths?

Update via David in the comments:

"TI just introduced a $20 microcontroller development kit in a usb drive that's probably up to the task. Check out the TI site for more info:"

http://www.ti.com/ez430
"It’s easy to rev up your application in minutes with the new eZ430-F2013, the world’s smallest complete development tool for only $20! The tool provides all hardware and software needed to evaluate the MSP430 MCU or complete an entire F20xx project. The F20xx combines 16 MIPS performance, less than 1 microamp standby current, with your choice of analog converters - from a comparator, fast 10-bit ADC to 16-bit sigma-delta with integrated PGA - all in a package as tiny as 4x4 mm. Designing with the world’s lowest power MCU just got even easier."


That's a mouth full, say it 10 times really fast. : ) So, what you are looking at is a 512M USB drive. No DSP. This post is about what it might be like if we had DSP based USB drives. So... I copied over VSThost, a free VST Host app and a few soft synth dlls on my USB drive, and now I can take my soft synths on the road. This is kind of cool, but only kind of.

What would be really cool is if this were a DSP based drive so I could just plug it into a midi controller and play; with no PC, monitor or other. What would be even cooler is if my midi device automatically mapped it's controls according to the synth I was using. What would be even better? If soft synth developers and hardware manufacturers turned all of this into a standard.

Think of that. No OS dependencies that could mean the demise of most softsynths. For example, the Waldorf PPG Wave 2.v will not install on Windows XP. And... hardware based soft synths - you'd finally be able to run your soft synths like actual hardware synths. Another interesting thing is you'd have a wide variety of hardware controllers to chose from. Feel like a small portable device for the road or the couch, no problem, just plug in your USB device and go. MPC style controller, X0X, full weighted keys, knobs, sliders, you name it. You can't do that with hardware VAs.

Thanks goes to Doktor Future's and Jimmy's comments in this post on the Terratec Area 61.

WENDY CARLOS INTERVIEW / May,1979 PLAYBOY MAGAZINE

Two shots pulled from this auction.



If only the scans were bigger...

I am made from the wires of my synthesizer

Tons of updates on Bleepsandbloops including shots, samples and thoughts. Title link takes you there.


The Q107 Filter

Synesthesia and the Mandala

"Essentially, the mandala detects where and how hard you hit it and translates that information into sound and sound controllers for your playing pleasure and exploration. " The mandala comes with it's own brain drum containing sounds and it can be used as a MIDI controller for other gear as well. Via meeglosh in the comments of this post.

thank you, stereolab - New Flickr Shot

flickr by tromasbronot.

About the Little Phatty

In case you missed it, the following touches on how the new Moog Little Phatty was born. Note that Axel Hartmann, designer of the user interface for many Waldorf products, the Andromeda A6 and of course the designer of the Hartmann Neuron, was involved. It's fascinating to realize that the physical design of the Little Phatty has ties to Waldorf, the A6, and the Hartmann Neuron.

"Mike talks about the conception of the Little Phatty.

I cannot think of a better transitional topic from my previous memo “Moog without Bob” to “Little Phatty”; Bob’s last project. He was very excited about the possibilities of this keyboard from our earliest discussions. I believe he felt that the technology and the team that we had (have) in place would finally enable him to bring a synth to thousands of musicians who were previously in no financial position to enjoy a Moog synth. I am very proud to say that is exactly what we are about to accomplish with the release of the Little Phatty.
As a starter, let me give you a bit of history about the development of the project. I am not exactly sure when the concept first entered Bob’s mind but I do have notes on it from early 2004 when we had a product planning meeting and Turnkey requested us to give this some consideration but I am sure he had thought about of it long before that. Then during the Summer of 2004 Steve and Bob really began the serious work of technical conception which resulted in Steve writing the initial technical spec in August, 2004. From there my memory gets a little fuzzy because 2005 was such a difficult year. What I do remember is that we sent off our first ideas to Axel Hartmann around October of 2004 and we met with him at the NAMM Show in 2005. (Axel Hartmann and his Design Box industrial design associates have been a long time collaborators of the company.) At NAMM and then subsequently at last year’s Messe, the first concepts of this keyboard began to take shape.

From there, Cyril Lance came on board. While he did not have the time he wanted with Bob, Cyril is an extremely talented engineer in his own right. This will be evident to those who discover the Little Phatty. The project team that worked on this design has come from the far corners of the world – Asheville, North Carolina where Moog is headquartered; Germany where Design Box is located; software from our consultants in California; and importantly our Chinese partners. Yes, our Chinese partners. No, we are not making this keyboard in China. It still will be made right along side the Voyager in Asheville but without the component level support from our Chinese partner we could never reached the low price point of this product.

So what about the name, Little Phatty? Taking a cue from Bob’s choice of the name “moogerfooger” for our line of effects modules, we adopted the moniker “Little Phatty” for our new synth because of its irreverent; tongue-in-cheek nature. At first it was just funny, but it grew on us as the personality of the synth developed. The Little Phatty name is a description of what we wanted this synth to be: smaller, less imposing, a chip off the old block as far as the sound character, and a price point people have a chance of reaching. It is a true Moog synth. It sounds really fat and ballsy. In this way we feel the name echoes the “minimoog”. Bob liked the name Little Phatty. He had a great sense of humor about these things. I know if he were still here we would be enjoying some great laughs, and I think he would really love the way the LP sounds. It definitely contains the sound that he created.

So that’s it. We hope you will buy one, enjoy it, and drop us a note about your experiences with this or any other Moog product.

As always, we appreciate every single one of you.

Warm Regards,


Mike Adams"

Korg Keyboard - New Flickr Shot

flickr by Ke Wynn.

Analog Dust - New Flickr Shot

flickr by violator3.



Me & a Yamaha CS10
PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE HOME


Patch n Tweak
Switched On Make Synthesizer Evolution Vintage Synthesizers Creating Sound Fundlementals of Synthesizer Programming Kraftwerk

© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH