via Twisted-Electrons
"We are proud to present MEGAfm, a result of several years of development.
MEGAfm uses and abuses the vintage YM2612 FM chip originally found in the Megadrive/Genesis games console.
MEGAfm ships early March
BEAUTIFUL DIRT
Unlike most FM synthesizers that are very clean and digital, the YM2612 has very characterful tone allowing a broad sound palette ranging from beautiful plucked strings to growly distorted bass lines.
TACTILE OPERATORS
Hardware FM synthesizers are infamous for their reduced controls and complexity to program, with tiny LCD screens and only a couple of buttons to operate a load of menus…
With its 32 operators faders, 14 knobs and 15 buttons MEGAfm offers unprecedented hands-on FM control!
Update: I thought it worth noting that this project is being done with Tom Oberheim's blessing. From the Kickstarter campaign:
"Tom Oberheim of tomoberheim.com and Oberheim Electronics is aware of our plans to market an OB-X-centric synth. We asked permission and he did not have any reservations with our plans and said good luck! We have also offered a royalty per unit but there was no interest. However, even though the VS-1 is by nature a boutique offering and won't break any sales records, we will indeed be paying a royalty in deference to the original design."
"The VS-1 combines vintage analog sound with modern features, designed for those that find modern synths over-perfected. Based on the discrete analog design of the iconic Oberheim™ OB-X, the VS-1 utilizes many of the same design trade-offs, including a signal path comprised of discrete transistors, op-amps, & 3080 OTA's utilizing through-hole components. Combined with modern digital control, a clean & simple interface, and packed into a 3U rack... this is the essence of the VS-1.
It’s all about the tone. Based on the classic OB-X, each voice consists of two analog VCO's and a 12dB OTA Filter (LP/BP/HP) and VCA.
VCO's Two discrete VCO's per voice with saw and pulse waves. Pulse width can be adjusted from 0% to 100%. VCO1 can be modulated by VCO2 (crossmod) and VCO2 can by hard-synced to the frequency of VCO1. VCO's can also be modulated by two analog LFO's, two digital LFO's per-voice, and a DADSR 5-stage envelope generator.
Noise Analog white & pink noise.
Portamento Analog polyphonic portamento gives a natural clustering effect between voices as the analog components are never perfectly matched. Although this requires many additional components it has been included - another example of small imperfections that impart character. In addition, digital portamento with both fixed rate and fixed time modes is also included.
12dB OTA Filter The classic resonant 12dB multimode filter is the desert island filter, simply awesome in a polyphonic synth. The classic OB-X had a fixed lowpass mode, the OB-R has lowpass, bandpass & highpass modes.
Panning VCA's Each voice retains the classic 3080 OTA VCA but also includes a stereo panning VCA that can be modulated by several sources. The spread control make it easy to pan voices across the stereo field.
Envelope Generators Each voice has a dedicated analog ADSR for the filter and VCA. In addition there is a global five-stage DADSR with (20) modulation destinations.
Analog LFO's Two global analog LFO's with triangle, square and S&H waveforms can be sent to VCO1 frequency and pulse width, VCO2 frequency and pulse width, and filter cutoff.
Digital LFO’s Two LFO’s per voice with triangle, sawtooth, reverse sawtooth, square, and random waves with (20) destinations. LFO’s also have dedicated attack-decay envelopes and can be free-running or synced to the arpeggiator, sequencer, or MIDI clock for tempo-synced effects.
"In this episode I delve deeper into the Yamaha DX1 and show you all of its features. Check out the plug-in version of the DX1 from UVI here: https://www.uvi.net/vintage-vault-3"
"Messing about on the Korg DS8. What a great synth! They tried to simplify the FM synthesis idea introduced a few years before this synth came out made famous by Yamaha. Actually Korg licensed the technology from them and kind of said "nice try, but this is what people really want - a synth you can actually program without reading the manual". In this vid, its going through the Korg A1 FX unit (with remote)
"The Ekdahl Polygamist is one of only 53 made (now discontinued) by Knas which is mainly designed with experimental / drone / noise / improv in mind but can really take you wherever you wana go. The basic architecture is classic VCO/VCF/VCA design but all of the building blocks have been designed to allow for much more interesting / chaotic sounds then you get from your bread-and-butter synth.
Highlights includes VCO1 which features a "Tilt" output which is a triangle wave that can be *tilted* from sawtooth, to triangle, to ramp. VCO2, the "Pitch multiplying oscillator" consists of a fundamental and three "sub harmonics" that mimics additative/FM synthesis for very complex waveform and chaos generation. The ADSR is loopable and can be used as an oscillator, it can also be paused in its transition. The three LFOs all go to audio range and two of them go down to about 4 minutes for one waveform period. It also features a duophonic, pressure sensitive ribbon controller which sends MIDI data. It has two independent MIDI/USB-to-CV converters which can be ganged in duophonic mode. And there is of course, much, much more.
In good working condition and well looked after, this also comes with a custom yellow flightcase, original manual, adapter and some patch cables."
"Korg Poly-Ensemble S string synthesizer, produced between 1976-1979. This is a divide down/Paraphonic synth, meaning that every key can be played at the same time, however they all share the same FX/filtering. The Poly-S has a number of voices, from Organ, Brass, Strings, Choirs, with a built-in Phaser FX unit. It's an incredibly unique, and lush sounding synthesizer. This particular unit seems to be in working condition, it does have some scratch in the volume pot/knob, and the large buttons that select the voices have a bit of scratch to them. A few of the buttons for the voices get temperamental on occasion, but have never stopped working completely..."
