MATRIXSYNTH

Akai AX60 Professional Polyphonic Synthesizer w/ Original Box

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Modded Roland EF-303 Groove Effects Processor / Synthesizer SN ZN70621

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via this auction

"Interesting vintage effects processor which was released by Roland back with their early MC-x0x series boxes. For various effects you can use a 16 step series of linear potentiometers to specify modulation sequence. I used it mainly for Filter and the Low Fi effect. Also has a very basic drum machine and bass synth. Receives and sends midi sync. Enjoy!

One thing to note in the pics - the play/continue and reset buttons were relocated to tactile physical momentary switches on this unit. Works fine, maybe even somewhat improved actually from the original switch type. Anyway, just something to keep in mind in case you are looking for a completely ‘stock’ unit."

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'73 Rare PAIA SyntheSpin MKII TREMOLO Rotary LESLIE PEDAL

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via this auction

Check out the old school brown appliance plug.

"Components appear to be original and date to '73, everything works well with no issues...no noise problems, but does have some wear. No volume/exp pedal at the moment, so unable to test the remote center/speed jacks, but the bypass jack is working. Missing a piece of the left side panel but otherwise complete, original and working. Kinda rare for these early 70's home builds."

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HKA Design Roland TR-626 ROM expansion

Published on Jan 1, 2019 dothkoi

"refer to the following pages
http://harryaxten.altervista.org/tr62..."

Be sure to check out HKA Design's other DIY projects. HKA Design is run by Harry Axten whose work has been featured here on MATRIXSYNTH.

"My TR-505 ROM Expansion has proven itself to be a popular kit, but I was regularly asked if it would work with the TR-505’s big brother, the Roland TR-626. The answer was no, as even though the two machines look and sound quite similar, the electronics inside are incompatible. Eventually, somebody very generously offered to send me a TR-626 to keep if I could produce an expansion kit for it. Naturally I accepted.

Sample ROM address map / encoding

The TR-626, although it has more sounds than the TR-505, fundamentally works in exactly the same way. Samples are played back at 25.0 kHz, and once again some are stored in sequential order, while others are interleaved in pairs. Cymbals are stored in 8K blocks, with a byte being read from each block in cyclical order.

The TR-626 even uses a standard JEDEC-type ROM pinout for its sound ROM; unlike the 505’s which had a horrible custom pinout, requiring a complicated adapter board. The kit I designed for the TR-626 does still use a board, but this time it’s to allow for two ROM chips to be switched. The only real catch with the TR-626 sound ROM is that address lines 6 & 8 are swapped (in the data). It’s easy enough to swap them back using an EPROM pin swapper utility.

For the new sounds, I reused all of the classic sounds from my TR-505 version, although there’s also some TR-707 sounds in there as well, thanks to the TR-626’s larger ROM size. The new sounds are spread across two banks, with LM-1 and LinnDrum sounds in one, and DMX and TR-707 sounds in the other. There's also a socket to install the TR-626's original sound ROM, so you can keep using those sounds as well.

The TR-626 has several strange quirks. One is the way polyphony is assigned across the 8 drum voices. Despite the fact that some sounds share the same key, they don’t necessarily share the same voice. For this reason, some of the key assignments for my new sounds may seem a bit odd, but the reasoning is so that you can play certain sounds together - i.e. the LM-1 hi-hats and snare drum. A full list of the sounds can be found in the manual (see below). As the TR-626 lacks an individual output for claps, I duplicated these sounds into the china cymbal and cup memory locations, so they can come out of the crash / ride cymbal outputs."

See HKA Design for additional details.

Rik Marston "33" Ambient New Age Synthesizer Music CD Teaser Chill Out Zen Yoga

Published on Jan 1, 2019 SynthgodXXX

"Rik Marston "33" Ambient New Age Synthesizer Music CD Teaser
**Watch in HD!!** **Turn it UP!!**

Rik Marston - "33"
Official CD release March 3rd, 2019
Available for download or order the full CD!
13 Full Tracks

It will be available on iTunes, Amazon Prime, etc.

Recommended if You Like:

Brian Eno
Kitaro
Vangelis
Jean Michel Jarre
Robert Rich
Thom Brennan
Scott August
Dean Evenson

Music Genres / Elements:
Electronic: Ambient, Synthesizer, Drones, Space Music
Moods: Dreamy, Ethereal, Ethnic, Futuristic, OM
New Age: Ambient, Meditation, Healing, Sleep

Thank you for watching! Please subscribe!
More Ambient Chill Zen Music & Synthesizer demos coming soon!!
Rik Marston

(C)2019 Ambient Chill Zen Records / Rik Marston"

Happy New Year From MATRIXSYNTH!

Happy New Year everyone!

First I want to thank everyone who takes the time out of their busy schedules to come visit the site. I want to give an extra thanks to everyone who supports this site, including the sponsors you see above and on the right. Without them this site would not be possible.

As many of you know, running MATRIXSYNTH is a labor of love. The site has been running for over 13 years and hopefully will continue on for many years to come. Every single post goes up by hand, seven days a week, including holidays and "vacations." Some of you may not know this, but MATRIXSYNTH is a one man shop by me, matrix. I have not missed a single day of posting since back on August 6 of 2005 when I first launched this format of the site. I say "this format of the site" because I actually registered matrixsynth.com back in October of 1997. You can still see the old site here. On the left were links to sites I visited back in the day. It's actually a pretty neat snapshot of what was around on the web back then before the days of YouTube and social media. I launched this version of the site back on July 20 of 2005. As of this post there have been 175,117 posts on the site. We had 13,302 posts in 2018. Every single one went up by hand. I am extremely humbled and grateful of those who choose to support the site. Thank you so much!!!

Now, for some numbers. I haven't shared them in a while as they started to feel a little redundant year after year, but I figured why not? The image above is a map of visitors to the site in 2018. We had 540,712 users visit for a total of 3,418,064 pageviews. We finally have a visitor from North Korea this year! The numbers are from Google Analytics and should filter out bots. BTW if you look at this all time map, the only country to not have visited MATRIXSYNTH to date is the Central African Republic. It's pretty amazing to think someone from every single other country in the world has visited the site.

The following are the top 10 countries to visit by traffic:

1 United States 4,564(35.30%)
2 United Kingdom 1,070(8.28%)
3 Germany 866(6.70%)
4 France 653(5.05%)
5 Canada 544(4.21%)
6 Italy 512(3.96%)
7 Japan 464(3.59%)
8 Netherlands 357(2.76%)
9 Poland 331(2.56%)
10 Norway 314

(Update: I originally had the list by language which duplicated DE and FR. The list has been updated for country only).

A couple of years ago I started tracking new gear for the year with "new gear" labels. For 2018 we had the following:

695 new items never featured before on the site. This includes 49 posts on older gear never featured before.
111 new makers
92 new synths
63 new soft synths
67 new sound/noise machines
36 new synth effects
266 new modules
42 new mobile apps
11 new drum machines
111 new DIY projects
26 new controllers
40 new tools
7 new cases

And finally we had 52 posts to get the exclusive label for the year. These are the rarest of the rare featured on the site.

Note there is some overlap and the primary focus of MATRIXSYNTH is hardware synthesis. Rather than go into a top 10 list (which I never was into because all gear has its use imo), click through any of the links above to see what came in by category.

On the mega synth front, we saw the release of the Sequential Prophet X and XL (DSI changed names to Sequential as well), the Moog One and Grandmother, Yamaha MODX, Korg Prologue, and the Waldorf Quantum finally made it to release. You can also recap what was featured at NAMM 2018, SUPERBOOTH18, Knobcon, and SoundMit and other events.

This year we lost the following in the synth world. Note this does not include discontinued gear, although with Erthenvar being featured as a company, I may include gear in the the future.

Erthenvar Closes Shop
RIP John Leimseider
RIP Shirleigh Moog
The Candlelight Vigil: A Synth Cover in Memory of Jóhann Jóhannsson (From Prisoners)
David Van Koevering Has Passed Away

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And that's it for 2018. Happy New Year and onto 2019! Thank you to everyone that enjoys, contributes, and supports the site! I started MATRIXSYNTH to track everything synth. It's rewarding to know people out there still enjoy the site. MATRIXSYNTH is my gift to you.

Ensoniq VFXsd

Published on Jan 1, 2019 Joakim Floke

"Noodeling around on my VFXsd. A great synth for pads, sure. But it can do other stuff to. Digital to the core but with trix up it's sleeve to make it more organic. Here I'm only using it's own efx and I'm also giving a tour of the wavetables or Transwaves as Ensoniq prefer to call it. All Patches I've created my self."

Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900 - Make Noise 0-Coast #11: Drive Me Random

Published on Dec 31, 2018 Electric Music Box

Pittsburgh Modular Synthesizers Microvolt 3900 - Bass
Make Noise 0-Coast - Random Lead
Roland Cloud TR909 - Drums
iConnectivity iConnectAUDIO4+ - Audio Interface
Ableton Live 10 - Daw

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More Monark sounds: bass, leads and synth tweaking 🎛

Published on Jan 1, 2019 Synth & Sundry

"Trying out some Native Instruments Monark bass and lead presets while adjusting filter, feedback and contour parameters to finetune the sound. The Reaktor plugin is running within Ableton Live 9 Suite and I use the MIDI LFO Max for Live plugin to add some more movement to the sound. I really like the meaty sound of this plugin."

Yamaha DX7 Custom Patch Tutorial 20 | MF WURLITZER

Published on Jan 1, 2019 madFame

"This custom patch series is the quickest and easiest way to learn how to program your DX7 FM synthesizer.

madFame's DX7 Custom Patches are compatible with most FM synths including DEXED, Arturia DX7 V, Volca FM etc.

To support the channel further check out my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/madfame
All $2 or more Patrons can download my Custom Patch SYSEX files

Some of the music used in my videos is available on the Magic & Steel bandcamp page:
https://magicandsteel.bandcamp.com

Thanks for watching!"