via this auction
"Very fun little box. Two joysticks and a bunch of knobs and toggle switches control two Speakjet synth engines. Records your joystick movements and plays them back while you tweak. Slap a nice analog delay on this thing and your grinning like a monkey.
Here's more details from the very excellent Shawn Cleary at Analogue Haven: [note the following is of course the product description from Flame]: 'The FLAME MIDI TALKING SYNTH is a small-sized MIDI-controlled sound module based on the analogue Speakjet chip, produced by the U.S. company Magnevation LLC. Originally designed for basic artificially generated speech output in American English tongue it was then refined and further developed as an 8-bit sound module with speech-like sounds and synthetic robot voices as well as beeps, alarms, noise and retro-style sci-fi sounds. Due to the structure of the Speakjet (with its complex sound synthesizer, preset sounds and serial interface) it offers an impressive range of possibilities. It contains 72 speech elements (allophones), 43 sound effects, and 12 DTM touch tones. The idea was to create sounds, patterns and sequences in the 8-bit style of the 80s or other retro sounds for making music instead of just simulating speech. Most allophones can be tuned and used tonally. The FLAME MIDI TALKING SYNTH contains two Speakjet chips to produce a richer and more complex tonal variety as well as generating a pseudo stereo effect.
Since the Speakjet has not originally been laid out for the purpose of making music it is actually not fully controllable via MIDI input, i.e.: once sounds are triggered they cannot be directly stopped by Note Off messages from a MIDI keyboard or a sequencer. Thus a MIDI-controlled audio tremolo has been implemented in the FLAME MIDI TALKING SYNTH virtually allowing MIDI control and enabling an easier integration into a MIDI setup. The FLAME MIDI TALKING SYNTH lets you play back preset words in its EXPANDER mode via an external MIDI keyboard or a sequencer. In addition you can use the FLAME MIDI TALKING SYNTH as a stand-alone MIDI controller since all controls and joysticks send MIDI control/change data to the MIDI-OUT connector.'"
Sold For: US $475.00
>Here's more details from the very excellent
ReplyDelete>Shawn Cleary at Analogue Haven
I'd like to point out that it appears that Analogue Haven's details are an uncredited copy-and-paste from Flame's website, as are other product descriptions they have on their site. In fact, the "original" text from Analogue Haven includes some odd characters which are artifacts resulting from trying to copy the HTML trademark symbol, found in the Flame description, which they didn't manage to clean up (although someone has fixed the version posted here).
That's normal. It's a dealer. They should be putting up what manufacturers tell them. As for the "Here's more details from the..." in the post, I try to capture what people put up as a look into the past. This site will be about what people were doing 20, 30, 50 years from now, we are just not there yet. It will make more sense in time.
ReplyDeleteThanks Seth, I didn't realize that. That's my auction, and I've revised it to credit Flame for the text.
ReplyDeleteI updated the post.
ReplyDeleteI certainly want to be legal and ethical, so if my auction violates those goals, hip me to it.
ReplyDeleteOh, and uhh, buy my synth. :-)
Well, I would buy your Flame except that I already have one! Which I of course bought from Analogue Haven as they're the only people in the US that sells them. Here's a track with my Flame in it:
ReplyDeletehttp://music.boxoftextures.com/track/sequence-1
I would love to buy this version of the flame if anyone is still selling one!
ReplyDelete