"Spectral Audio ProTone Analog Synthesizer. It is monophonic and features two analog oscillators, a beefy resonant filter, flexible LFO, MIDI and CV/Gate control, and a simple intuitive hands-on layout with every control parameter accessible from the front panel knobs and switches.
This is a very hard to find synth from mid 90', under 500 exist in the whole world !"
"The sound is absolutely beautiful. This synth is deceptively deep and can produce a massive palette of sounds from lush to clangorous. Pads, basses, and FX."
"When I first saw the Formanta UDM, also know as Rokton, I was intrigued - a Simmons-like drum synthesizer with cheesy preset rhythms? Add to that the typical Soviet "they make tanks here too" look and I knew I had to explore it. I was surprised by how bleepy and klonky it sounded once I turned of the preset drums. It has the energy of early Warp and Rephlex records, with a dusty and dry tone that yet goes low. The integrated rhythms became suddenly amazing, as I programmed the sounds to be different. I never heard a tango like that from a preset.
Sadly, I could not learn much about the history of this machine. There are just a few pages on it out there, so I hope this video can be start for more information. For me, I set the goal to visit all the Soviet production sites, once the world is traversable again, and find out more. Drop any info you have below, I am very curious to learn more and apologize for any factual errors I might have made."
"Phable is a german-based singer, vocalist, musician and DJ with deep roots in House, Techno, Deep House, Dub and Tech House. In the last years he released on labels such as Armada, Ostfunk, Light My Fire, Wonne Musik, Pure, Audio Safari and recently on Plastic City."
"The LinnDrum was the second machine from Linn Electronics. It's basically an upgraded version of the original with added crash and ride cymbals to the kit. The LinnDrum uses samples of acoustic drum sounds. At the time, they sounded great and much more realistic and they were a fresh alternative to the analog drum sounds of the '80's drum machines. The LinnDrum also had a handy upgrade option, a well designed layout and interface, and live drum trigger inputs.
The LinnDrum had beefed up the sampled sounds from 28 to a 35kHz sample rate. It features 15 sounds including bass, snare, rimshot, hihat, crash, ride, three toms, cabasa, tambourine, high and low congas, cowbell, and clap. Up to 12 sounds are available simultaneously. Individual controls are available to tune, pan, and mix each drum sound via dedicated knobs and sliders. An Accent is available for the kick, snare and hats. The handy upgrade options involve inserting new chips containing new sets of sampled drum sounds created by many session drummers of the time.
The sequencer had some innovative features (for the time) such as swing, quantizing and memory storage! Two-bar patterns can be recorded in real or step time, with or without quantizing. There are 56 user patterns for storing your drum patterns. There are also 42 preset drum patterns. Patterns can be arranged into Songs for which there are 49 memory locations. Old songs and patterns can be off-loaded to cassette tape for storage. Designed for the studio, there are 15 individual outputs for each sound around the back as well as external sync and trigger but no MIDI (unless modified by a 3rd party)."
Pics of the inside below. A search for Roland MC-4 on the top right of the site will bring up additional posts including demos.
"This is an advanced 4 channel V/Oct CV / Gate Sequencer with an extra CV2 for i.e. VCF or VCA control and an MPX gate control for i.e. drum triggers, external modular gear aso. All switches work fine and key 1 and 2 are triggering double sometimes, but that's easily addressed with the back button or more usage.
It can be programmed by the keypad or an external CV / Gate keyboard.
There's also a modern way of programming it with the MC4 Hack program for Mac & PC."
"A look at the [SDS] Reflex LiveLoop and comparison with the Make Noise Morphagene. Is it a legitimate alternative? In this video I walkthrough some of the features of both modules and examine their strengths and limitations.
