Sonicstate.com Airs Top 20 Synths Show On Valentines Day

Just in time to snuggle up and watch with your loved one!

"Sonic State will soon be streaming a new IPTV video show called The Top 20 Greatest Synths. The show is based around interviews with synth users and collectors like Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), Roger O’Donnell (The Cure), Ade Utley (Portishead) and Howard Jones (Howard Jones) and features footage, photos and facts about the greatest electronic instruments ever made.

”We’ve based the chart on the votes that have been coming in plus a bit of poetic license to include some outsiders, underdogs and a few surprises!”

Sonic founder Nick Batt and former BBC producer Simon Power have been pleased with the response to previews of the show already available to watch at Sonic.

“It’s basically an excuse to rant about all-things-synth in a show that’s shamelessly nostalgic about electronic music and keyboards with knobs on.”

The Jupiter 8, Korg M1, Yamaha CS80, JV10-80, SH101 and Odyssey all get featured on the chart as well as some youngsters like the Access Virus, Dave Smith’s Evolver, the Alesis Andromeda and the Korg Oasys.

“We know not everyone will be happy with the positioning on the chart, but there’s enough in the show’s to keep everyone smiling.”

The Top 20 Synths will be presented as eight 10 minute videocasts posted once a fortnight on Sonic and YouTube and at various other outlets. Then the programme will be posted in its entirety at the end of the run.

“There may be a DVD version available and we also have some TV interest. But that’s for the future!”

With their recent excellent Winter NAMM (the largest musical instrument trade show) video coverage and weekly Sonic TALK podcasts, it certainly looks like Sonic are staying ahead of the game.

“Sonic are working on a lot of new ideas for audio and visual downloads. 2007 is gonna be great!”

And what’s number one on the Greatest Synths chart?

“I can’t possibly comment, but you can still vote for your Top 3 by visiting the site, so there’s still time to change the outcome!”

The Top 20 Greatest Synths goes live at sonicstate.com on February 14th.

Link

About Sonicstate.com
Begun in 1994, the founding members came together from a wide range of disciplines.
Nick Batt from pop/dance act DNA (Suzanne Vegas Toms Diner amongst their works), Neal Slateford also from DNA, Andy McCreeth a touring musician with art rockers Blue Aeroplanes and pro-audio dealer, Dave Brown - astrophysicist majoring in nanotechnology and Eric Winbolt – a rep for EMI records.
In the ten years since then Sonicstate.com has become the primary resource for electronic music. With an up-to-date news service, essential video streaming from all the major tradeshows and now features thousands of pages on musical equipment from last century to this."

BTW, SonicState was one of the first synth sites I went to back in in 1995/96. It remained at the top of my old site's synth list starting in October of 97 until today.

Waldorf Edition Demo

Title link takes you to One more demo via Boele Gerkes of SCD.

"This demosong uses only the plugins from the Waldorf Edition, i.e. PPG 2.v. Attack and D-Pole Filter all programmed by Wolfram Franke plus reverb and delay from Logic. The first part of the song focusses a little bit more on the Attack, the second part more on the PPG 2.v. Although my heart still lays with hardware synths, I have to say these plugins are sounding bloody good!"

Previous post with Attack samples. BTW, I swapped images for this post.

Noel Koutlis

Keystation 88es, Steinberg Grand Piano VSTi and KORG MicroKontrol.

Noel's MySpace page

Microzune - Alesis Micron Software Editor

Title link takes you there.

via sequencer.de

dziadownia pierdzielnik melina kanciapa

flickr by polaranta of syntezatory.prv.pl.

Guess the synths.

Waldorf Pulse Samples

Title link takes you there. Be sure to click on Pulse Sounds when you get there. Via Stefan Trippler.

Doepfer A-100

Title link takes you to shots pulled via this auction.

Details:
A-190 MCVS Midi to CV/Sync interface
A 161 Clock Sequencer
A 160 Clock divider
A 150 Dual Voltage Controlled Switch
A-110 VCO Standard Voltage Controlled Oscillator
A-111 VC02 High End Voltage Controlled Oscillator
A-138 Mixer exponential
A-120 VCF1 Low Pass Filter
A-141 VCAADSR Volatge Controlled Envelope Generator
A-140 ADSR Envelope generator
A-180 multiples
A170 SL Dual Slew Limiter
A-145 LFO
A 148 Dual Sample and Hold
A-117 DNG Dig.Noise / 808 Source
A 114 Ring Modulator
A-125 VCP Voltage Controlled Phaser
A-147 VCLFO Voltage Controlled LFO
A-126 VCFS Voltage Controlled Frequency Shifter (Bode pitch shifter)
A-121 VCF2 Multimode Filter
A 132 Dual VCA
A-131 VCA Exp. VCA

Klaus Schulze - For Barry Graves (1977)

YouTube via marflothloloply. Sent my way via Ben.

Note I believe I posted this video previously but the link in that post was dead. I updated that post with this new upload of the video. The image was from the middle of this video, so I'm pretty sure it was the same.

Sequential Circuits Nameplates Via Synthwood

You might remember Synthwood from previous posts. They specialize in custom wood cases for the Pro One and wood panels for various synths. They take custom orders and they now make nameplates for the Sequential Circuits Pro One, Prophet 5, and Sequential Circuits line of analog synths. You can find more images of the nameplates here. Title link takes you to Synthwood.

"We used a satin brushed stainless plate that is just a bit thicker than the originals. The result is it won't curly up or crimp as easily. I found this out by plopping down one a PRO-ONE and noticing it was slightly crooked, I was able to pull it off and re-set it without the folding. One other thing that is really noticeable is that the original PRO-ONE/SEQUENTIAL circuits (at least the rev1) isn't brushed, but a plain bright aluminum. I find the satin brushed aluminum to be closer to what the Prophet-5 has and much better looking.

We've also made our own little badge which we are shipping with our Pro-One, Prophet 5 and Mini-Moog cases. We don't install the badge, but we do write the completed date and a 3 digit serial number (do you think we could break 999?). Oh! And we *ARE* shipping all our wood Pro-One and Prophet-5 cases with the new nameplates.

We're asking $18 shipped for each nameplate (Add $3 if you're outside of the USA). They're currently listed on ebay, but we actually have a revamp, customer gallery and shopping cart in testing for our website that should show up next month."

You can find Synthwood on Ebay.

Waldorf Attack Demos

Two demos via the Waldorf list: 1, 2. I've heard the Wave 2.V sounds closer to the real thing than other soft synths sound to their real thing. I have no idea why I've waited for so long, but the Waldorf is definitely next on my list. You can pick it up for $79 in the US at Nova Musik. You can find more info on the Waldorf Edition on the Waldorf Edition Product Page.