The following came in on the AH list from Tony Allgood of Oakley Sound Systems. I thought it was an interesting perspective.
"> Anyone had a chance of trying out the new THOR synth in Reason...
Yes. I've been a Reason user for quite some time now, and I signed up for 4.0 as soon as it came out. I don't tend to use Reason these days much though, but I thought that Thor would be useful. Indeed, my first thoughts were that it was very good. However, the more I played with it the things I found on it that I didn't like.
The filter's overdrive is no where near right. There's a harshness about it that sounds simply like Reason's own distortion unit. It has two modes for some reason - something about the overdrive being applied at different points in the filter. Anyway, it doesn't sound right.
The other thing is that the filter is not 'always on', I guess to conserve CPU. This means that at low frequencies and high resonance you can hear it 'warming up' at the start of every note. On a real synth, the VCF is always connected and always ready to accept its input. In Thor it must start at the same initialised state for every note. This means that every attack sounds wrong - its takes a while for resonance to start. Other VSTi do this much better.
The 'Moog' filter mode is the best one, but really its nowhere near as good as the donation ware ASynth.
The oscillators alias quite badly. The FM one is really easy to hear this, but the analog one does it too. Running Reason at 88.2kHz helps.
Expect aliasing at levels of around -55dB, which is pretty bad these days.
You can't detune them very easily. They're just too accurate in pitch.
ie. play an octave and they phase lock. Yuck.
The modulation matrix is good, but its a shame there's only two knobs on the front panel.
The wavetable oscillator is excellent. Limited waveforms though, but the PPG clones are wonderful.
CPU is quite high in comparison to the other Reason synths.
The note allocation, legato and glide modes are good. The EGs are not bad at all. Perfectly linear attack, but exponential decay and release.
Almost identical to the Moog Voyager I might add.
Reason's new sequencer takes more than a little getting used to.
In summary: Good, but there are better sounding VSTi out there. I prefer the Pro-53 and ASynth, coupled with the freeware GSuite effects. Routing is good, but its beaten by things like Vaz Modular and Absynth. CPU is fair, but it needs to run at higher sample rates to make it sound good.
But, after all that, if anyone wants to buy Reason 4.0. I'm selling my copy for 150GBP including shipping to UK/EU.
Tony
www.oakleysound.com"
Saturday, November 24, 2007
drbloexcerpt - Waldorf Blofeld Demo
A super short but good one via Stefan Trippler: drbloexcerpt.mp3
The TR 909 meets the TB 303
YouTube via eljuanlux.
"This is a demo using a NanoVerb Multieffects Processor combined with the TR 909 and the TB 303, i hope u enjoy !"
The making of x0xb0x
YouTube via emerography. via Nusonica.
"A stop motion animation of the construction of a x0xb0x - the DIY clone of the classic Roland TB-303 Bass Line synthesizer/sequencer, which started the whole acid movement.
The open source x0xb0x is available in kit form from Ladyada
and the movie was made by /mr
Transistorize the world. Order a kit today. Happy soldering! :-)"
Roland V-Synth XT
images via this auction"Named the “Synthesizer of the Year” at the 2004 MIPA Awards,
Roland’s groundbreaking V-Synth now has a travel-friendly offspring.
The XT is a portable new V-Synth with some spectacular tricks up its sleeves —
and with enough synthesis and audio-processing power to make heads spin.
It’s fully stocked with a potent array of synthesis types, including the V-Synth’s famous Elastic Audio Synthesis engine,
plus analog-synth modeling, vocal modeling, and classic D-50 emulation.
Add to that a rich lineup of COSM® effects, external audio processing, a touch-sensitive color display,
eight universal edit knobs, and you have an instrument that redefines rack/tabletop technology.
Product page"
EMS Synthi AKS
Update: The original auction link for this post was a redirect on Ebay that took you to a phishing site. If clicked through and logged into that site, change your Ebay password immediately as they most likely have your account and password! This is the first time i have seen this on Ebay, and I've been to quite a few auctions links. Thanks goes to retrosynth for immediately catching this one. I will keep an eye out for these scams moving forward.
more images
"The Synthi AKS has three oscillators, a patchbay grid, a small touchpad keyboard , a 256 step on-board monophonic digital sequencer and a 30-note touchplate keyboard(activated by the 50 Hz-hum in our fingers), and housed in a plastic briefcase for portability. There's a Noise Generator, 2 Input Amplifiers, 1 Ring Modulator, 1 Voltage Controlled Low Pass Filter (VCF), 1 Trapezoid Envelope Generator, Joy-Stick Controller, Voltage Controlled Spring Reverb unit and 2 Stereo Output Amplifiers."
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
© 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
