-=[THE SYNTH ZONE]=-

this past NAMM was freaking bonkers. So many awesome toys.

Meanwhile I finally started to understand by TX-802 the other night. That's a monster of a digital synth.

i've bearly turned mine on, i'm kind of scared of it

barely*

I ended up buying Midi Quest Pro just to make it easier. Kinda dumb since the software cost me more than 100$ more than the synth did! But I figured it'd help me make it easier to use and can be useful for other synths as well in the long run.

I was really confused at first...I had taken the output of just one or two of the voices and was playing and was like why does this sound shitty and only playing every 3rd or 4th note I hit? I thought it was broken. Then I realized what I was doing wrong and listened to the output of I and II panned left and right and it just opened up into this massive sounding FM beast.

Awesome, Dan.

Gonna look into MidiQuest as well.

i've been meaning to get midi quest for the longest time, considering how many rack synths i have it's kinda stupid i don't have it already. i think part of it was that it was notorious for being unreliable before the latest version

oh i have no confidence that Midi Quest will work smoothly. It's not the most osx looking thing and the UX is eh but it's the only thing left. I once owned MOTU Unisyn back in system 9 days.

one think you may be interested in capitaine, is the more expensive pro version has two features the other doesnt. Works as a plug-in, which can be need, I guess automating sysex stuff w/ ease, but in reference to something I think you used to talk about, it has the ability to take any of it's library of synths and export TouchOSC templates. I think that's cool?

New synth day:

https://igcdn-photos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t51.2885-15/10838580_656329977829971_628990351_n.jpg

slick

mucked around on various things that were new to me at 'synth sunday' event, here's my HOT TAKES

- korg odyssey: played with one of the whiteface ones for five minutes (big line for this). oscillators sound good. the three filters all sound noticeably different; the moogalike one that got them in trouble noticeably loses the bottom end when you turn the resonance up, the other two are better I reckon. ring mod when playing duophonically sounds amazing. sliders had a lil bit of play from side to side, felt good when actually sliding tho. the PPC mod buttons are very lol, what were they thinking here first time around - not pleasant to use. keyboard is fine, not minikeys no matter what the forum dorks (who are all concert-grade pianists I'm sure) say.

- korg kronos: I sat in front of this for a bit, scrolled through the menus and backed away in fear. some musical director type bro demoed it a bit later, the piano sounded pretty dead-on.

- volca keys: this was quite entertaining for the size, especially poly ring mode. cruuuuunchy digi-delay.

- DSI prophet 12: was in a dark corner of the room, couldn't see enough to get a dece sound out of it! (had similar problem with other volcas and and an elektron analog 4.) no prophet 6 in attendance sadly.

- DSI mopho x4: didn't really grab me after a quick tweak.

- minibrute SE: luuuuuurve my microbrute so thought I'd get along quite well with this, but it wasn't doing it for me - couldn't put a finger on why, maybe I'm too used to the extra restrictions. does look pretty sweet tho with the silver case and wood ends.

- moog voyager: sassy electric blue backlight model. people seem to hate on these a bit as overpriced/hyped/whatever but I was feelin' it, having all the mod bus options on the front panel really opens you up to thinking about what you can do with it. most solid build quality of anything I tried. had to take a phone call right at the moment that I was getting on top of it, would've loved another five minutes. (well, hours)

- moog theremini: fun. obviously it quantises a bit, so not as forbidding as the old-school wood case one I played with in sydney years ago. looks like a spaceship.

- buchla music easel: OK I didn't actually get a go on this, it did look pretty bangin' tho.

Who took the reigns at Roland? After 20+ years of making shitty ROMpler versions of their classic analogs, they debuted a new analog synth at NAMM. Two months later, at MusikMesse, they've gone full Eurorack. Must've gotten tired of Korg eating their lunch.

Reins, I meant reins.

kakehashi (the founder) retired in 2013, and there was a management buyout last year.

I guess it always takes time to get things done in a bigger company, too - roland is nearly 3,000 employees, korg is closer to 300.

can I just

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nMmzO_Rpbg

just think, if we all chipped in our life savings...

unrelated: synthex reissue crowdfunding campaign - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/elka-synthex-synthesisers-by-generalmusic

I made a MIDI-enabled Juno-106 emulation that runs in the web browser: 106.js

Chrome/Desktop only for now.

That's awesome, St3ve! I'd like to try it over MIDI, but need a new interface.

If it was accurate, the Chorus would make a clicking noise and one or more of the voice chips would be crackling.

seriously though, fun stuff.

wow!

The chorus on my 106 is loud af, sounds like the ocean when it's engaged.

Thanks for checking it out! I'll add "failing voice chips" to the list of future features. ;)

I want to take a break from working on it because I've been super immersed in this thing for a few weeks, but I also kind of want to dive back in and implement MIDI learn -- WebMIDI is quite young still, and I haven't come across any other websynths that do that yet.

broken roland chorus is a known issue. Both my 106 and Alpha Juno have the problem, it's pretty much unusable at this point, especially on the Alpha Juno.

The crackling voice chip is a whole other epidemic with an interesting history, with years of people swapping out chips then putting in cloned chips before the discovery that the crackling was because the roland plastic coating was melting and causing it to short and the realization that you didn't need to replace the chip, just remove it, melt off the rubber insulation with acetone, and put the chip back in and it's 100% good.

never knew about the chorus problem before... mine works ok (though with a lot of hiss).
had the chip fix a couple years ago.

here's a juno question: in unison mode, does everybody experience sort of a weird in-and-out of sync effect with the oscillators? kind of a rapidly changing timbre, note to note?

On my 106, yes. It's nearly unusable except for with percussive sounds. On my Alpha Juno 1 it's fine.

It might be a calibration issue. I need to get the 106 serviced anyway.

There's no oscillator spread in the Juno's unison mode, so it doesn't sound very good. There are some aftermarket mods that address this, like this one for 6/60 which has been going around today and looks really neat: http://tubbutec.de/juno-66/

oh that polysex mod looks nice... I'd love the detuning function!

I updated my synth so you can share patches. For example: Smooth Pad

But apparently I can't format a link. Once more:

Smooth Pad

Also Chrome 43, which includes WebMIDI, is the new stable version, very exciting times

In a similar vein to the Juno-66, has anyone tried one of these for their 106?

http://kiwitechnics.com/kiwi-106.htm ?

No but I dream of it. And getting the appropriate overlay:

http://www.synthgraphics.com/kiwi-106.html

Indeed, especially the Jupiter version.

You should jump on it - it's a bit of a slap in the face for here as they don't accept Australian or New Zealand dollars...

106 owners: did you replace your 80017As with clones or acetone-bath the existing chips?

I replaced the first crackly one with a clone, back before anyone knew about the acetone bath.

Then when further ones started to go, I sent the entire motherboard to Synth Spa on eBay to do the acetone on all the voice chips and it's been perfect since.

Now the chorus is extra noisy though. I'll get that fixed eventually but actually don't use it that much.

synth spa here... worked like a charm, but now I need to replace the battery since I can't store patch memory anymore!

I've read bad things about synth spa's turnaround times, but his work has a good reputation.

That said, I might try to find a local tech. I've got an Akai AX-60 in worse shape that was super-cheap. If they can get that fully working, I'll trust 'em with the Juno.

New 106.js update that I'm pretty excited about.

You can now map every control to any MIDI CC message, so you can play and tweak with your hardware controller. It supports 7-bit or 14-bit CCs for those smooth filter sweeps. Your mappings will be remembered per-input, so you can have multiple mappings for multiple devices, and your last-used device is loaded by default when you bring up the page. As far as I know, this is the first web synth with a MIDI learn feature.

So I went to my boss' house yesterday for my party. He collects Fairlights, and Fairlight discs, and check out one of the discs that he's acquired:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/382/18319804365_98198f2c9f_b.jpg

!!!

no way!!

that's beautiful

whoa

"collects Fairlights"

What is he, a hedge fund manager?

holy smokes

nbd, I collect Synclaviers and RCA Mark IIs.

fucking hell

that is fucking rad

Founder of D@nger (which sold to MS)...

Just ordered the JP-08 (http://20khz.gizmodo.com/mini-versions-of-classic-roland-synths-let-you-recaptur-1734254763). I got to play a real Jupiter-8 a few sessions ago, and LOVED it, so hopefully I won't regret this purchase.