MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013: Moon Modular at the Noisebug Booth

Uploaded on Jan 30, 2013 matrixsynth·250 videos

Gert of Moon Modular gives us a demo of their modular system focusing on the 506 Filter Modifier at the Noisebug NAMM Booth.  The brassy lead sound you hear in the background is coming from another booth, but oddly fits.  Moon follows the 5U  synthesizers.com/ Moog modular format.

via Moon Modular: "The M 506 MODIFIER MODULE is a combination of a voltage controlled amplifier connected in series. The vcf is a ladder type lowpass filter featuring switchable slopes (12/18/24 dB/oct) and voltage controllable regeneration. In addition to the manual frequency and resonance dials there are three attenuated control voltage inputs for filter cutoff frequency (bipolar), resonance and amplifier gain. The via bypass switch routes a fixed control voltage to the amplifier to keep it 'open' and ease control while working on a filter patch."

See the Moon Modular website for additional details on the modules pictured below.

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MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013: Pittsburgh Modular at the Noisebug Booth

Uploaded on Jan 29, 2013 matrixsynth·249 videos

My first stop at NAMM was the Noisebug booth starting with Pittsburgh Modular. As I previously posted I was intrigued by their new offerings which presented eurorack modular systems as self contained stand alone synthesizers rather than individual modules.  In my opinion, this format helps break one of the psychological barriers behind getting into modulars.  Rather than starting with an empty case and contemplating what modules to fill it with, you can essentially by a desktop synth, get your hands wet to see if you are comfortable with modulars and then expand from there.  Richard goes into this perspective, why he decided to create these systems and what each is geared for.  Unfortunately they were not patched up for an audio demo at the time.  You'll find details on each in my previous post and of course the Pittsburgh Modular website.  At the booth, pictured below, are the various configurations of the Cell 48, the Cell 90, the Pittsburgh Modular Foundation, and the Foundation with Expander.  Click each for the super size shot.

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MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013 Posts

Now that the NAMM storm is subsiding, my coverage will be going up over the next few days.  I have a ton of uploading to do.  Note this is just an informational post to let you know how I cover NAMM; no product insights or reflections, they will come with the individual posts, so you can skip this one if you want.  That said, my posts will have MATRIXSYNTH NAMM 2013: in the title so you can differentiate them from the others.  Each post will focus on a specific manufacturer and/or booth, one post per manufacturer/booth.  At the end of all the posts I'll upload all of the images to Flickr to create one massive NAMM gallery there.  The images will be higher quality on Flickr as Blogger appears to limit the size of uploaded pics, but don't worry, the Blogger pics are still plenty big.  Posts will go up in the order each booth was visited. Note the order is not preferential in any way, nor are any videos.  The order is just what I visited while walking around with appointments in mind and I held back from taking any standard presentation videos to save time as I knew they would be covered by others and featured on the site.

To give you a little background on how I cover NAMM, as you know by now, I pretty much post everything that comes in.  This is good for content creators who want to promote their sites, it is good for you in that you get to see more rather than just my coverage,  and it's good for me because it saves me time and allows me to focus on other things while at NAMM, which in turn is good for you because it allows me to cover things that might have been missed otherwise.  I do have a few things I haven't seen elsewhere yet.  Not new gear, just different perspectives, demos and tons of pics.

Feel free to post my pics, video and coverage elsewhere, just mention where it's from like I do for others in every post I put up.  Other site owners are welcome to post my pics, videos and any quotes.

Side note: NAMM broke the record number of posts for a single day on the site this last Saturday with a whopping 115 posts i a single day.  I hope the coverage wasn't too overwhelming, but honestly, that pretty much sums up the NAMM experience.  The repeat presentations should also give you a little insight that most visitors at NAMM miss - the role of the presenter giving the same presentation over and over again.  Visitors typically only have time to see them once, and for them it's always the first and only time.  Not so for presenters.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the posts!

Exclusive Moog Minitaur Review - All the Bass & More for Less

This is a MATRIXSYNTH review...

A brand new Moog Minitaur will set you back $599, a Slim Phatty, $795, an RME Voyager, $2695. So how does the Minitaur sound compared to its siblings? Pretty darn incredible.

For this review I had access to both a Minimoog Voyager and a vintage Minimoog Model D for comparison, and the Minitaur more than held its own. Actually it was capable of sounding identical to the Voyager with roughly equivalent settings. The Model D, whether due to age or physical design, has a brighter, fizzier, more unstable characteristic to it compared to both. It's kind of like the original Minimoog has a wild beast inside it while the Voyager and Minitaur have managed to keep that beast under control. I used to think of an analogy where the Model D sounds like it has a Tasmanian Devil inside it, while the Voyager has Darth Vader. Well, the Minitaur adds a massive fat bull. All three are extremely powerful sounding synths. The bass the Minitaur produces is as full as it gets and the filter gets wide open. It was a bit shocking when I first heard it. The Minitaur might be slimmed down in price, but sonically it has all the fat you will ever need.

As the Voyager sounded closest to the Minitaur, I primarily focused on it for comparison. For the most part I could get the Minitaur to sound identical, but there were subtle differences. An interesting thing I noticed was that the filter on the Minitaur seemed to open more than the Voyager, but then I realized that on the Voyager the filter opens up more if you apply the envelope to it. Once I adjusted the envelope on the Voyager, they sounded nearly identical. The saw waves were identical and the pulse waves varied a little, but I believe this was likely due to additional pulse width settings on the Voyager that the Minitaur does not have. I found myself spending more time attempting to get the Voyager to sound like the Minitaur vs. the other way around. This was clearly due to the extra parameters on the Voyager, and it reminded me that sometimes less can be more. With pulse waves, the Minitaur sounded a little more rounded, smooth and fuller. In many cases where I couldn't sonically hear a difference, I could feel it. A funny side note is I have an overhead lamp in the studio I did my testing in. The lamp has a metal hood over a small glass dome for the bulb enclosure that rattles with significant bass. It rarely happens but I noticed it happening quite a bit with the Minitaur. I decided to take the Minitaur, Voyager and Model D to town with a rattle test. The Minitaur won. It consistently produced the most intense lamp rattle. :) This is not too surprising considering Moog's reputation for bass, and that the Minitaur is based on the Moog Taurus 3 bass pedals, which in turn was based on the original Taurus I released back in 1975 (note the Taurus II unlike the I & 3 was based on the Moog Rogue - this is significant, and I'll comment on this in the summary). It's worth noting that although there are other dedicated bass synthesizers out there, there are essentially two types - TB-303 emulators and thundering bass pedals. The Minitaur of course is based on the latter, and few synths sound as full. The Novation BassStation keyboard which is also analog, for example, was geared more towards TB-303 emulation and does not really compare to the Minitaur.

Before we get into specs and finally the summary, there are a few things you need to know off the bat regarding the Minitaur:

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MATRIXSYNTH Banned in School

via Erik Ruotsalainen on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

"so apparently my school is trying to prevent GAS or something"

:)

MATRIXSYNTH Turns 7!!!

Today marks the seven year anniversary of MATRIXSYNTH! The original matrixsynth.com actually launched way back in October of 1997 as MATRIX SYNTH. I never took it down, BTW. Click here to see it in all it's old school glory. If you thought there was too much green on this site, just check that baby out. BTW, check out the manufacturers list under MFG. I stopped updating it about the time I started this site in 2005. You can see what modular manufactures, and of course others were around back then. It's an interesting look back in time... Kind of why I started this version of the site actually. I'll get to that further below.

Last year I skipped the site stats and kept the anniversary post relatively short. I used to post stats for the site and a general blurb on what makes the site tick, but it began to feel redundant so I skipped it last year. Well, I kind of missed it, and I know some of you enjoy the stats thing, so I'm bringing it back. And CatSynth did it for their six year anniversary post yesterday, so there you have it. Actually I was planning on including stats before I read that post, but I do like CatSynth. The site has grown quite a bit and we have a ton of new readers who don't really know the background of MATRIXSYNTH so I thought I would share some of that as well. I've also had a few people ask me to do personal interviews. I always turn them down as I do my best to keep myself out of the site so I don't ruin it for anyone. It's kind of like the whole Wizard of Oz thing. Enjoy the Oz in MATRIXYSNTH, and don't let the wizard ruin it for you is my only advice. That said, I decided this year to reveal a little more about my synth history than I normally do. Don't worry though after this post that's it. This site is about the gear only. I see it as my job to bring it to you unbiased and get the heck out of the way. Seriously though, I really do my best to present what is out there free of bias for you to consume and form your own opinion. I do this for three reasons; one, out of respect for the person that created the content, two, so I don't accidentally prevent you from getting your own experience out of the post, and three, because of how much goes up on a daily basis - it saves you and me time.

But, in the anniversary and New Years posts I do tend to make up for my lack of words big time, so bear with me or just skip to what you like.

Before I begin with the stats I do want to give a big thanks to everyone that visits, supports and contributes to the site. THANK YOU!!! It really is a tremendous amount of work, so all the kind words and support make a huge difference. Every single post you see here is hand posted. There is no automation. The site takes roughly four to eight hours on average a day (closer to eight) and sometimes up to ten hours. This is every single day, including weekends. Out of the seven years running the site I have only missed one day (by accident - more on that below), and the only day I take off is Christmas day when I put up only one post, which surprisingly can be torture in not posting. The posts you see here are a combination of stuff I find out there on my own and stuff people send in, which is quite a bit. The site started as a hobby and has fortunately grown into a small business with the help of sponsors. Note sponsors are always on the right. In the history of the site there has never been a paid post on the main site, and if there ever is, I will be sure to call it out in the post. That said, THANK YOU SPONSORS! It's one thing if the work only consumed my time, but it in turn consumes my family's time, so every little bit helps. THANK YOU! You make the site possible!


First the stats!

We still haven't reached world domination. Everything you see with a shade of green is a visit to the site. Check out Africa! The few in white mean no visit came in. The top map is for the seven year history of the site and the bottom is for this last year. Click on each for the full size shots. As you can see they are pretty much the same. Still no hits from North Korea.

On the other hand we had 122 visits from Syria within the last year along with traffic from other war torn countries. Incredible! Please keep safe out there! You are in our hearts, thoughts and prayers.

The top 10 visits by country:

1. United States 982,943
2. United Kingdom 258,070
3. Germany 183,138
4. France 168,649
5. Canada 142,553
6. Italy 109,605
7. Japan 84,202
8. Sweden 76,948
9. Australia 73,881
10. Netherlands 72,680

And the overall stats:

Source: Google Analytics for the year (July 20, 2011 - July 20, 2012):

6,364,538 pageviews
2,838,084 visits
972,065 unique visitors.

Source: Site Meter for the life of the site:

32,734,610 pageviews (18,557 average per day)
15,658,114 visits (7,822 average per day)

Google Analytics (started April 5, 2006):
30,795,628 pageviews
14,313,210 visits
4,258,879 unique visitors.

Note unique visitors can be a bit misleading as I believe it's based on the individual browser and cookies vs. IP Address or individual, so for people checking in on multiple devices and even multiple browsers on the same machine, each one counts as a unique visitor. The numbers are likely lower.

Unfortunately I do not see a top posts for the last year in Blogger so we will have to go with the top posts for all time:

New Schmidt Analog Synth Debuts at the Musikmesse
Apr 5, 2011, 22 comments 13,412 Pageviews

RIP Mr. Tsutomu Katoh - Founder of KORG
Mar 15, 2011, 6 comments 12,542 Pageviews

New Tom Oberheim SON OF 4 VOICE
Jan 25, 2011, 10 comments 7,811 Pageviews

M-Audio Venom Review and Interview with Product Manager Taiho Yamada
Mar 23, 2011, 6 comments 7,186 Pageviews

New KORG Monotribe In the Flesh
Apr 4, 2011, 26 comments 7,149 Pageviews

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MATRIXSYNTH Shout Out in John Tejada Interview

This one spotted by Loscha in Australia's Sunday Morning Post. If anyone has a sharper scan, let me know.

"Found in 'YOUR GUIDE TO CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT': THE REVIEW – page 2"

MATRIXSYNTH and CDM get a knod. If you are not familiar with John Tejada's work, check out this wikipedia article on him.

Moog Tattoo & a MATRIXSYNTH T-Shirt

via Fabricio on Facebook

"My Matrixsynth T-shirt arrived today!!!! Thanks, Matrixsynth Jones!!!!!!! Now I'm part of the Matrixsynth army 'round the world!!!"

Salute!

astronautapinguim.blogspot.com

A MATRIXSYNTH HALLOWEEN

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope it's a good one!

Pictured: My ARP Odyssey Lumina and some MATRIXSYNTH pumpkins!

Click the pic for the crisp, full-size shot. Mouse over the image up top, and use the controls for the slideshow.

Update: I had to step out for a bit and didn't get to initially post the following. I thought I add it for those that might be interested. Phil Cirocco of C.M.S. does fantastic work. If you have an ARP that could use some work, you owe it to yourself to consider him having a look over. My ARP Odyssey had some stiff sliders so I sent it in for the Lumina upgrade and decided that if it's going to be away for a bit I might as well go all out. It came back in unimaginable shape. It was beyond what I expected. It literally seemed like I bought it from ARP today and just took it out of the box. It wasn't just a repair, it was a complete rejuvenation of the synth. I highly, highly recommend Phil's work. It's worth noting, Phil did the Hammond Novachord Restoration as well [previously posted here].

"I Dream Of Wires" & MATRIXSYNTH - Modular Pic of the Week Contest

"'I Dream Of Wires: The Modular Synthesizer Documentary' is an upcoming film documenting the history and revival of modular synthesizers. You can read about the project, and view the in-progress trailer, over at the film's IndieGoGo fund raising page, here. From the IDOW Facebook page: 'If you haven't had time to check out our campaign - please do! It's essentially a DVD / soundtrack / T-Shirt / etc pre-order, and your early contributions really help us to move forward and solidify our plans.'

For the next 30 weeks, IDOW and MATRIXSYNTH will be co-presenting a modular synthesizer photo of the week contest. The photos will be judged by Robert Fantinatto (IDOW director), Jason Amm (IDOW producer, Ghostly International recording artist Solvent), and MATRIXSYNTH. Every Sunday night, from Oct 30 to May 20, the latest photo of the week winner will be posted here on MATRIXSYNTH. At the end of the 30 weeks, the Top5 photos will be selected.

What do the 'photo of the week' winners get?:
- Complimentary 'I Dream of Wires' DVD (upon film's release).
- Not only will your photo be posted to MATRIXSYNTH, you will also get an accompanying 50 words + 1 website link, to describe & promote your musical/photographic work.
- The photo + accompanying text/URL will also be included on the 'I Dream Of Wires' DVD release, as part of a bonus-feature photo gallery.
- Top5 winners: One of these photos will be selected as an official IDOW T-shirt design, and all 5 will be printed as a postcard set. T-Shirts and postcard sets are available as part of IDOW's IndieGoGo fund raising packages. Top5 winners will also receive a complimentary T-Shirt + postcard set.

Rules and considerations:
- Maximum 3 submissions per person. 1 photo submission per email. Please note that all submissions will remain in the pool of photos, for consideration throughout the contest.
- All digital files must be 5 megabytes or smaller, must be in JPEG or JPG format, and must be at least 1,600 pixels wide (if a horizontal image) or 1,600 pixels tall (if a vertical image).
- Modular synthesizer hardware only. Semi-modular synth hardware is also acceptable as long as there is evidence of some cross-patching.
- Photos will be judged on artistic/aesthetic merit - not on how large/rare the modular is or who it belong(s)/(ed) to.

People are invited to submit photos, via email to modular@idreamofwires.org. You must include the following information in the body of your email submission:
(1) Your name / photo credit.
(2) Please copy and paste the following text: 'I confirm that I am the photographer or the holder of the copyrights of this property. I am allowing 'I Dream of Wires: The Modular Synthesizer Documentary' and MATRIXSYNTH use of this property.'
(3) Title of the photo (optional).
(4) Brief bio and description of your musical &/or photographic work. 50-words maximum (optional).
(5) URL (optional)."

Interview with Mutable Instrument's Olivier Gillet

The following interview is by Juan Vílchez Gómez for Hispasonic. Juan sent it my way via The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge. You can find a Spanish version on Hispasonic here. The following interview is posted here in English with permission from Juan. MATRIXSYNTH gets a mention! Thank you to Juan and Hispasonic!

"Hispasonic: This time we are talking with Olivier Gillet, the man behind Mutable Instruments and creator of the famous synth Shruthi-1. He reveals exciting information about his next projects and throws light upon synth design.

JuanVilchez is the interviewer.

Hispasonic: Well... Taking into account that the key questions about the Shruthi-1 have been already answered in the forums, or in the comprehensive documentation of your webpage, I propose that you could speak us about the future of Mutable Instruments... as it seems that some exciting new machines are in the making right now.

Mutable: The exciting new projects:

Next project (september/october): the MIDIpal, a small, inexpensive, MIDI processing
unit, running algorithmic transformation on the MIDI notes (arpeggiation, harmonization, delays) along with more traditional filter/splitter/monitoring things. Something you'll want to stick between anything with a keyboard and anything with an audio out in your studio :) This is the first project that will be industrially manufactured - though the first batch will be available as a SMT kit.

A revision of the Shruthi-1 hardware for the next batches of kits - in particular I've spent quite some time cutting the part count on the filter board.

A new Shruthi-1 filter board (MS-20 clone).

A variant of the Shruthi-1 digital board that will replace all the digital oscillators by 12-
bits sample playback from a SD card (and will probably do sampling too). This will add a new dimension to the "Shruthi-system" = 3 "controller boards" (Shruthi, Sidekick, Sampler) x 7 "filter boards".

Something that will replace, in the long run, the Shruthi-1 - and in which I'm trying to address most of the shortcomings and design decisions of the Shruthi-1. This is a more ambitious, risky, project as I'm trying to squeeze in a lot of very new features, and design it in such a way that some parts of the project can be interchanged, with both a SMT version for industrial manufacturing and still a through- hole variant for DIYers. While avoiding reinventing too much and keeping it close to the Shruthi sound. Ready in 6 months? 1 year? I don't know.

Least sexy but most important thing: establishing an actual company -- at the moment what I do is registered as a "side-business" and while it is very simple paperwork-wise, it adds many constraints to what I can and cannot do, and exposes me to many risks in case of bankruptcy.

Hispasonic: I think that it could be interesting not only promoting Mutable Instruments but you as well, as I find that you're a really talented guy and that you've the most valuable opinions and tastes. Just saying... I perceive that you're a shy person (am I wrong?), but maybe it could be interesting to know more about "the creator".

Olivier: I wouldn't see the point of promoting myself - I don't sell myself, I sell synths, and they can "speak" or rather "sound" for themselves!
Many interesting synthesizer businesses are small, quite often run by one single person, who has to wear both an engineering and marketing hat. Personally, I try to keep my engineering hat as much as possible because this is what I am good at, and because I quite like the values that goes with engineering. Chips datasheets don't cheat, at least not on the first page... I see too much people overhyping stuff in my daily job to want to do anything like that when I am working on my synth projects.

Hispasonic: In Hispasonic we are really proud of our community of synth enthusiasts. Here is a little "window" that is going to be seen by a lot of people. Taking a look into your resumé, we know that we can confidently trust you in regard to software and electronic musical instruments. So... what do you want to say to them?

Olivier: If there had something I had to say to the synth public is that they should try to keep a critical eye and ear when looking at synths - there are so many misconceptions (that I used to have too, until recently!) about synths. Things like:
- "UIs with LCD displays / pages [as opposed to 'one knob per function'] suck" Most people having used the Shruthi-1 agree that the interface is very easy to understand. The ESQ-1 looks horrible with only one data entry slider but it's surprisingly very fast to program. While some knob-laden VAs are horrible to use because everything not directly in the front panel might be hidden behind half a dozen of keypresses.
- "8-bits => chiptune sounds!"
Just because something uses 8-bit resolution somewhere in the signal chain doesn't make it sound like a Nintendo. It's not all black and white: The Fairlight had 8-bit converters ; the Dark Energy uses a sound chip that found its way in some 80s arcade machines. And plenty of other weird combinations inbetween.
- "Vintage synths got their good sound from the vintage VCF chips"
I was fooled by this too, and this is why I invested time in getting some of those chips and building filters with them. My conclusion is that those chips were very convenient because they concentrated many useful functions in a small area (and thus made reliable, smaller polysynths possible), but there's nothing magical in them - gain cells and linear/exponential voltage->current converters in one small package. I won't bother with those things from the past in new designs, because the magic is outside of the chip.
- "Stuff designed by amateurs will always be one step behind commercial products"
I hang around a few DIY online communities (for example the SDIY mailing list) and I am amazed by the expertise and knowledge of the people here. And then it struck me that to the most talented electrical engineers it would be a weird career move to actually work full-time on synths, because there are many other fun things to do with their skills. Somehow I think the most difficult thing for a trained EE to go into making synths would not be the challenge of the work, but the challenge of only applying a very small fraction of their knowledge of the field.

Hispasonic: There is a growing community of people that decide to take direct control and create their own synths from the electronic parts (DIY). Any advice for them?

Olivier: A last thing, and this takes the form of a question: "what makes a good synth/DIY project?". To me, three things:

Understanding the difference between a "project" and a "product"
It took 2 to 3 months to design something like the Shruthi from A to Z.
At this stage you'll have something awesome that you can put in a box, use yourself, post a video to Matrixsynth and be very proud of. But then it will take maybe 5 or 6 months to turn it into a "product", to sort unsexy things like documentation, sound banks, testing on a variety of setups, parts sourcing and validation, more field testing, feature requests from beta testers, etc.
I had changing opinions about whether oscillators, filters, modulations, etc. were the most important element to define the "sound of the synth". In the end, my view on that is that what makes a synth good is the presence, or not, of a "vision" or "plot" about how it should sound like, and then the effort made to ensure that every module contributes to this vision and goes in the right direction.
This is why I believe "design by committees" efforts like the Tyrell from Amazona are a bad idea - "just making the majority happy" is not the sort of vision to build something upon. At least not in arts.
When the designer of a synth has never taken the time to actually listen to its creation, it shows!

Hispasonic: Thank you very much Olivier for some of your time - we know that you are really busy these days - and for really getting involved in the topics treated. We do know that you are not very enthusiastic about being interviewed or talking about your products, as you completely trust on their sound as their best marketing campaign. We can’t wait to hear and play with your last creations. They will give us plenty to talk about, for sure."

Useful links:
Mutable Instruments
Shruthi-1 on Youtube
Shruthi-1 audio demos on Soundcloud
Contact the interviewer:
me@juanvilchez.com http://www.juanvilchez.com

Site Update: Shifting Things on the Right

Just an FYI. I moved the More Stuff section down below the Dealers section. It has grown quite a bit over time and ended up moving everything else down. I moved the Manufactures and Dealers sections up. I want to support those that support the site. I do use the More Stuff section quite often myself so it will stay.

cheers,
matrix

MATRIXSYNTH-P

Update: it looks like there is enough interest for MATRIXSYNTH-P to launch. If anyone is interested in a post, send email to matrixsynthp@gmail.com. Note anyone is welcome to post including dealers and manufacturers. Remember, P is extra and does not change anything on M, B, or C. They will continue on as usual.

Original post:
Quick question: Is anyone interested in a paid listing site? Currently M is about synth spotting, B is auction overflow, and C is music from readers of the site. P would be a paid listings site for private items for sale, upcoming gigs, or for promoting/posting whatever you want for that matter. It would be very similar in format to M, B and C with some key differences. Aside from being a paid listings site, the right would be dedicated to premium listings, and there would be a header section on top to filter by category. You can see an empty template here: MATRIXSYNTH-P. How much would a post cost? $3 per post and $5 for a premium post which would also get placement on the right of the site and go up on MATRIXSYNTH Twitter and Facebook. All posts will go up in a section on the top right of M, B, and C. This could change to premium posts only depending on how much goes up. Why charge for it? I'm busy enough on M, B and C. P would be extra and I think people could find it useful in selling items, putting up want ads, and promoting gigs and other things. And of course it helps support the time it takes to run all sites. Note, M, B and C would remain the same and posts on P could make it to M, B or C if they meet the criteria. Also posts previously featured on M could be re-posted on P if paid for. If you think you might be interested in using the new site's services please vote.




To post on P you would submit the following for review to matrixsynthp@gmail.com:

1. Title: Title you want for your post.
2. Body: Text you want in the body of the post.
3. Media: images or links to video and/or audio (you will need to host them yourself on SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo or other). Images can be hosted on P and videos and audio can be embedded using any of the services mentioned.
4. email contact info if necessary (for items for sale). The email alias (not the full address) can be used as a label for the post. This will allow sellers to build a reputation and allow buyers to filter posts by sellers to review feedback left in comments.

Note listings would be similar to Criagslist in that they are 100% between the buyer and seller. MATRIXSYNTH assumes no responsibility and cannot vouch for either the buyer or seller. The site will be a simple paid listings site. However, you will be able to review and leave comments in posts and you will be able to filter by seller alias labels. Of course any bad seller can just create a new alias and email address, but this would be the same on other sites.

Although you can submit anything for a post, there will be a bar including no hate, discrimination, illegal file sharing and the like. The bar will be pretty open to start though, as it would be interesting to see what sort of things come in. The best way to find out if it meets the bar is to send it in. If you have something you want to go up now, by all means, do send it in. It just takes one post to get it started and you could be the first.

Site Updates - Unifying Site Formats

Just a heads up, I will be unifying site formats - mainly the nav bar on top and the section on the right to get a little more uniformity. I will also be cleaning up the top navigation links to include sites only. A new site might be coming. The other links will move to the right. I'll update this post with changes when done.

Also the Google powered Site Search seems to be doing better, so that box will move up as well.

Update: OK, sites updated. M is pretty much the same with the exception of FEATURED | UPDATES | COMMENTS | SYNTH BABES | AUCTIONS moved over to the right under the search box. B and C now match M so all three sites are in sync.

Also, I forgot that when I moved over from matrixsynth.blogspot.com to m.matrixsynth.com, I lost my Facebook likes for the site. The Like button is on the bottom right under the Follower's section.

MATRIXSYNTH Search and Links

If you link to the site, please update the link to point to m.matrixsynth.com. This should help search engines discover the site. The same applies to B and C.

This is a reminder that the site has moved from matrixsynth.blogspot.com to m.matrixsynth.com per this post. As the Google search box on the top right was pointing to the new domain and not returning results I moved it down for now. Note you can still search on Google directly - just add site:matrixsynth.blogspot.com to your search term and results should come up.

New MATRIXSYNTH.COM Domain Coming - Possible Site Outage

Just a heads up. I'm switching over to matrixsynth.com domains for the site. M will be m.matrixsynth.com, B will be b.matrixsynth.com, C will be c.matrixsynth.com and some of my non synth sites will move over if you track them, WATCHMATRIX for example. Note you shouldn't need to do anything on your end. Blogger will redirect you including all old links you might have. However, there might be a short downtime. Don't panic, the site will be back up soon. I just tested one and there was about a five minute downtime. MATRIXSYNTH will switch over last.

Done at 2:32 PM. Zero downtime.

Update: it looks like the Google Search box on the top right stopped working. I'm guessing the site will need to be re-crawled with the new domain name. We'll see how it goes.

ether^ra 1-9-4-8-O-W

YouTube Uploaded by potterpaint2000 on Jul 28, 2011

"a Buchla 200e/Serge Creature improv. Thanks to Matrixsynth for their support! http://etherra.blogspot.com/"

That was pretty cool. You are welcome, and thanks for the thanks!

This Second Sleep - Coelacanthus

Uploaded by arthurpainter on Jul 28, 2011

"http://thissecondsleep.blogspot.com/
Yes, my brother ether^ra and I are attempting to take over Matrixsynth and then, the world. Many thanks for your generous support, and for making Matrixsynth the best synth site on the planet (soon to be ours!)."

:)

MATRIXSYNTH Turns Six

MATRIXSYNTH turned six today! 62482 posts later and the site is still kicking.

I started this site back in July 2005 to simply track everything I came across in the world of synths. Back then everything was scattered in various forums, email lists and websites. Blogs were relatively new and Flickr and YouTube were just starting. It's hard to believe but in 2005 I was lucky to break more than five posts a day (the average was 6.69). Today I have a hard time keeping it under fifty posts a day (the record was a whopping 100 posts in a single day on March 28 of this year). It's amazing when you think about it. Not my posting endurance! ;) But rather the fact there is so much to post - that more and more people are sharing what they are doing. The synth community has grown. We have grown. And in my opinion that is pretty cool.

Every now and then I think about what I should be doing on the site. Should I limit what goes up to more press release and news type items. Should I limit how much I put up. Should I voice my opinion more often. I then I remind myself what the site started as and what it is meant to be. What makes this site tick is the insight into the everyday use of synths. It's not only about the makers and product announcements, and when it is about them it is often from the perspective of the makers as users. Think of the boutique modular makers and the videos they share with us. Think of the one person iPad developers and what they share. Yes press releases are covered, and now and then I have shared my opinion, but in general the site has always been about simply presenting what's out there as unbiased as possible and letting you take what you want from it. Everyone is different and everyone will appreciate or not appreciate posts differently. Sometimes the site feels like a conveyor belt sushi line. I put the posts out and you pick what you want.

Before this gets too long, I'll wrap this up by simply saying THANK YOU!

This site is about us, the users of synths. It's a log of synth history and what we were doing with our synths over time. When you look back at print magazines before the age of the internet, you'll typically find interviews with big name artists, press releases and gear reviews, but what we don't unfortunately have is a daily log of what everyone was doing with the gear, and we had very little media (videos, pics, and audio). Now we have that and you all make that possible. I can't wait to look back ten, twenty, thirty years from now and see what people were doing. If we only had that in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. BTW, whenever you have time, take a random peak back at some of the archives on the right. It's a fun look back.

THANK YOU!!! Time to post!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July folks! Almost time for fireworks.

Nothing like blogging in the beach. :)





Gotta love drinking wine out of hotel glasses.

Have fun. Keep it safe.

Mobile Template for MATRIXSYNTH, MATRIXSYNTH-B, and MATRIXSYNTH-C

I enabled blogger's mobile template for the site. If you view the site on your mobile device, it will come up by default. Note it is standard black font on white background which should be easier to read on smaller devices, but at the bottom of the page there is a link to go to the web format if you prefer instead. Feel free to comment on whether you like the new interface or not. I can disable it at any time. I'll enable it for MATRIXSYNTH-B and MATRIXSYNTH-C as well.