Wow, just in time for xmas. I lucked out and won a bid on a mini brute. So affordable I could not pass it up. I used to own a modular, which I built around the Livewire’s(RIP) Frequensteiner (Steiner Parker Filter clone). I had a ton of Osc and envs and lfo for that system. It never stayed in tune or scaled and stayed musical long enough to really make music with it. For blips and beeps wow it was amazing. Still I need to spend my money on Musical Instruments not sound fx machines. I wanted to hate this thing because it lacks a true 2 osc setup. The metalizer had my hopes high that I would love it for SYNC type sounds it could provide. It fails at the “sync” sound. Instead offers up something new and pretty musical. I heard that Daniel Myer of Haujobb and Covenant, used this thing on the last covenant tour. So I wanted to see what was up with it. I also ran into a arturia rep who brought one into Guitar Center by where I live. He had it plugged into a roland synth amp so i did not care for how it sounded through that thing. YUCK. Still I learned a valuable thing, On the mixer section, keep all the osc under the middle line on the mixer to get more head room, over the middle line is over driving the mixer. Makes it sound more aggressive but also cuts headroom, and kind of destroys the bass. So keep osc below middle line to hear it correctly.

The osc: It is very musical. Can get big with all WAVS running. PWM is kind of ok, different plavor than roland for sure. The ultra saw is amazing for leads, makes it sounds like more than one osc. Metalizer is cool and interesting, kind of reminds me more of ring mod than a sync sound. Unique for sure. The sub osc fattens the sound big time and, i love the sine wave option too. It lacks octave control switch on the env, so you just have to use the keyboard xpose, or control with a bigger keyboard to go low and high. I have not tested the scaling and tuning on this yet, but it sounds good so far.

The filter: This is a great filter that does not sound moog, or roland. It is a tad korgy and old yahmaha sounding. This is a good thing too. Multimode with resonance is the bomb, if you want really lively leads with out taking up much room in the mix but you still want it to stand out and cut. THIS IS IT!!!! This filter sound much different and better than the fruequensteiner I had on my modular. GOOD JOB ARTURIA. The Brute Factor is ok on conservative settings. On extreme settings its more for sound FX and gets very un musical.

The Envs: Snappy, tight, musical, shaped well. 2 of them, plus you can make it super slow with a switch for longer evolving sounds and drones. LOVE IT.

Modulations: Pretty good, 2 lfos, one for the mod wheel that is limited to vibrato and other things. the other for pwm, metalizer, osc, filter and amp. What i hate is that the PWM and Metalizer LFO destination are the same path so on for both, off for both, so kind of limiting :( Wish there was a switch.After touch can do filter and vibrato but its all or nothing so i wont use it.

The arp: This is the bomb. Reminds me of the sh101 but way better. I think it can do step recording, but i have not figured it out.

Build Quality: Love the case, its metal and kinda has weight to it, I love the knobs, move great and sound great when you tweak it while you play it. The sliders feel decent but not as good as the knobs. Switches are good. Pitch bend and mod wheel are decent. For the money, this is the bomb though.

LOVE IT. For sound fx too LOVE IT. For ARPS LOVE IT. For bass, LIKE IT good enough. This is no bass king tho. This is a arp and lead synth, bass synth 2nd. It does do some good bass, still I would go for a Moog Phatty, or minitaur, or older roland sh 2 for bass duties. This thing sounds exotic, like the old yahmaha cs30, like the korg ms 20. It has that kind of weirdness to the sound. It is not a bread and butter synth. It is botique, for style and original sounding stuff. Forget this thing if you want a minimoog bass, roland bonky sounds. Grab this if you want a great lead synth that gives you a flavor that is unlike any software, VA, or standard analog synth. This is what I wanted out of my modular, and it is 1/4 the price.. AMAZING!!!!!!!

12 out of 10!!!!!!

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Over All: I never personally liked the sound of the waldorf pulse, I had a pulse plus years back and thought the filter and osc were just not that musical or fat. Minitaur is too limited in modulations and waveforms, limited as a bass machine wont play high notes, it sounds good tho. Older moog stuff like the voyager and little phatty lack brightness because the vca prevents the filter from opening up all the way so no open osc bright sounds, say goodbye to the super bright leads of the 70s and 80s. Minibrute, I decided against because I would rather have the SEM Boomstar. Minimac is probably the best, but at 2300 us dollars i wont be picking that up any time soon. MFB Dominion X sounds promising, i’m not a fan of their build quality, bad luck with stuff I have owned from them in the past. Dark energy 2, one osc doesn’t cut it for me. None of the above suck, i think it’s amazing we have all these choices honestly. What a great time to be a mono synth freak. I can only hope that the Envs on these synths really give us the goods.

and the WINNER is?

For me, easy: BOOMSTAR. The one with the most bang for the buck. It has great sound as well, its the studio electronics code sound with snappy analog envelopes, so i know it sounds great from the demos I have heard of the CODE and ATC. Boomstar Moog. 2 osc + sub, tri, saw, pulse, sine, pwm, ring mod, xmod, filter fm, sync. The works. I also plan on getting the SEM model as well. The ATC sounds great, i just didn’t likes its ENVs, so they promised that this will be fixed on these boxes. Snappy envs, fast. Knobs galore. Who could ask for more? If you buy two you can link them together with their cv patchbay so you could have a monster 4 osc mono like the monopoly and it would still be less than the Macbeth Micromac. It is a steal at $799.

PS: This is just my personal opinion, yours may vary. Please post who you think the winner is in your opinion? Comment. Thank you.

In use: II had to setup apple bonjour and rtpmidi For windows 7, and i could use this inside of ableton, cubase and most other daws on the market for windows. What I really liked was being able to use the Ipad wireless over the wifi network into my daw. I could play the synth and edit at the same time, or record a midi seq and play it back in loop mode while i edit the sound. This is something I could not do with other apps. I tried booting up old emagic sound diver, and had all kinds of trouble using my usb midi controller and my pci midi at the same time. I had trouble with midiquest software that was supposed to work as a vst plugin, it never worked and had a horrid interface. I was pulling my hair out. I read about rekon’s editors and read about all the bugs in the mopho and mks80 editors. I have tried ther Itetra and the Imks80 editors from iControlMIDI and it worked. No hiccups, and installing the wireless stuff was not all that hard once I found the rtp midi instructions.

The interface on these apps are very simple. The look and feel is strange as well. edting the sliders from left to right dragging motions, with plus and minus buttons to edit incrementally. You have to jump around some pages to get to the different controllers, there is the osc page with lots of osc related stuff, then the filter page with the filter env and filter settings etc etc. It just works. It loads super fast as well. This is way cheaper than buying the hardware to edit these synths, and i love that its wireless, i can put this on my lap while i play my keyboard or mess with the sequencer. Convenient.

Things I would like to see added: Being able to control the synths save functions from the app. The app should have memories to back up your patches and store the ones you make on the app on the ipad’s memory, so if something happens to your synth, you can recall your edits. Would also like to see a resend all current parameters to the synth, because in real world usage, sometimes the sequencers will reset the synth you are using when you stop the sequencer and you will lose all your edits.

Final thoughts: This saved me a lot of money, I had an ipad, spend 20 or 30 bucks on the editor, and wow you have a programmer for your old analogs. If you were to buy the hardware editors they can break, and cost a small fortune. This app has really saved the day for my knob-less analogs. I give it a 4 out of 5!

Click here to buy this application!

You can download this soft synth for free by clicking here.

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Functions: 6.0
When you buy this, there are some sounds that you get with it, in my honest opinion for the style of music that I write, it is rather disappointing if you want to make industrial, dance, techno, goa, ebm, idm, or glitch. If you like hip hop and slow tempo stuff, yes the sound set is great. The thing is, when you have your Ipad connected to your pc via itunes, you goto the ipad, then to the apps section, then select the electrify folder, you can drag and drop .zip files that you make with your sounds, .wav files you wish to use. I have a really great library of drum sounds, as you can see from the video, I have gold baby and my custom kits that I have made since the beginning of Velvet Acid Christ from the roland w-30, asr10, asrx, emu e6400, akai s5000 samplers. I was able to load all of mine in it no problem, converted all my sounds with chicken systems long ago into .wav format from all my gear ages ago. What sucks is, there are not kits premade, you have to just load in all your sounds for each song project you make. It’s pretty easy to do. Once you do this, you can make this thing sound amazing. I can do any style with my sound libs. I have almost every drum machine sampled and a ton of custom fx drenched drums I made myself over the years. You can only load 8 drum sounds per song. This is pretty limited but I found it adequate for basic beats. Every voice has its own filter, pan, pitch and fx send settings, you can normalize sounds, but I found this not to work very well, it seemed to do very little and the display did not get filled up after I normalized sounds. There are 2 master fx, you can make one fx a run into fx b as well to chain two. There is no performance pads or drum triggers that you can trigger with your fingers, so you cannot play beats in while recording. THIS SUCKS. Basically it is like a tr808 with out being able to play it live. You can push in the notes on the 16 entries on the music screen on the bottom half of the screen. Above that are controls for volume and pitch, you have to toggle between, pitch, decay, filter, volume etc etc. Above that are the instrument slots that have mane rows for making different patterns for each instrument, this is very well done. You can have up to 8 patterns for each sound that you can switch to in real time. It is easy to mute and solo tracks, there are only 8. You can also export the mix to a .wav file and copy it from Itunes onto your desktop and into any daw you might use.

Interface: 8.0
Getting around is very easy. This app is laid out really well and looks pretty cool. Its neat that you can control the filter for each sound with your finger like a koas pad. Its easy to load up a sound, and you can preview them before you load them. This is very cool. Tweaking knobs works well, but you have to get used to its orientation. I wish the editing when putting notes in the sequencer was more responsive like on the Ielectribe. Some times it feels really sluggish when programming it. It is pretty easy to get a beat up and running if you know how to use a 808 style hardware sequencer.

IndustElectrifyHexfix93 by Hexfix93

Sound: 9.5
This is what matters over all. With my drum libraries, I was able to get really good sounding renders out of this. They blew the Ielectribe and IMS20 out of the water on sound quality. More full, more bass, more solid and punchy sounding. I load these loops I make into renoise, throw on a bus compressor and some eq, and WOW this is it. This sounds better than battery on the pc, hands down, it sounds better than Idrum vst. The filters sound so usable. The fx are pretty great as well. It sucks that there is not more individual fx for each sound, and the lack of a really good distortion, and the complete lack of limiter/compressor really makes me scratch my head, these are essential for drum processing. Still, I am able to get great sounding stuff out of this if the sounds I put in it are top notch. It sums the drums pretty damn good. About as good as renoise does. I do like the verb ok, and the delays. The chorus and phaser flange stuff was meh, as was the distortions. The distortion never gets mean enough. The electribe has way better fx, way better.

Overall: 8.5
I really hope that he updates this app, adds real time recording mode into it, this is a must. Add some compressors and tube saturation stuff. This is really easy to use, and it really renders top notch audio quality for a software app. I think it sounds much better than logic and cubase for drums :) I think the sound quality is great. Love this for taking all my custom drum libs, and making beats ANYWHERE ANYTIME. I like to program drums, so this is cool, I just hope they update this and add more features. I highly recommend this app!

Pros: Amazing Audio quality, Good interface, can load your own sounds in via Itunes, Easy to get beats up and running if you know how to use 808 909 style hardware sequencers. I am using this for Velvet Acid Christ, and Toxic Coma.

Cons: No real time record and playing of sounds, everything is programmed.
Some of the FX are Lackluster. It is missing a lot of key features for a percussion box style sequencer. I am also bummed out that no one makes sequencers with 32nd and 64th note capabilities for doing glitch and super fast percussion rolls. Pisses me off I am always stuck in 16ths. This is a problem with most all apps these days. You can cheat, double the tempo and make 2 bars 1, and then you can have 32nd notes, but still, I find this annoying.

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Wow. My jaw dropped when I saw this app on Matrix Synth blog. I left Apple a year ago for Android and the future of touch tablets only to find an extreme lack of 3rd party software. I missed the iElectribe a ton. My envy grew and grew when Gravy showed up in Denver with his, making beats with it for the newest Toxic Coma track “DIGITAL GRAVY”. Already jonesing for an ipad for the iElectribe, seeing the ims-20 videos on Matrix Synth sent me over the top (I HAVE TO SELL STUFF TO PAY FOR THIS NOW). I bought an ipad again. And immediatly bought the ims-20 app. This is a xox style sequencer drum synth groovebox app.

Functions: 9.0
Think of this as rebirth. Except this time it’s a pure synth engine doing all the work. Not pcm sample drums, but rather that all the drum sounds are made with the ms20 VA sound engine. This rocks. The iElectribe was a hybrid engine, half VA and half pcm samples, which does offer more variation for the percussion, but for some reason I really love how this synth engine sounds. Then there is one dedicated true mono synth engine that replicates the ms20 vintage analog synth from korg. I have actually used the ms20 a bit at a friend’s house years ago and thought it was over rated next to my sh2 for bread and butter sounds. The thing is, for out there sci-fi, buzzy, aggressive in your face sounds, the ms20 can scream bloody murder in the right hands(think old aphex twin, and most goa trance). Although it still retains most of it’s sonic character, the VA ims20 is not as beefy or as raw sounding as the real thing. The synth is very easy to use. The mono synth that is. It’s straight up like a real analog synth. The drum parts are pretty much the ms20 engine as well, and you can edit the sounds for each drum sound by hitting the edit button in one of the sections of the drum edit sections. So essentially this is a 7 voice VA. You can use the drum parts for synth sounds and sequence them as well. Some of the demos that it comes with show this off. There are only two fx engines. Very limited. The typical korg fx, delays, chorus, verbs, and grain shift etc. The effects can change from pattern to pattern as well. They sound pretty good though. The sequencer is modeled after the old korg sequencer that came out about the same time the ms20 did, the Sq-10. Except you get 16 steps instead of 12. This took me some time to get used to. You have 3 knobs. The bottom one is the gate, which determines the length of the note. The middle knob is the octave, which controls which octave to play. The top knob is the note to play. As you turn them text appears on the screen and tells you what the value is. There is no slide and accent like on the 303 and rebirth, so no super acid for you here. You get those 3 knobs for each step of the sequence, which is 16th notes for one measure. There are also patterns, and you can make songs out of the patterns. While in pattern edit modes you can use the utility button on the top right of the screen to copy patterns which contains the seq for drums and synth parts for one measure. You can also render the patterns to a .wav file and import them into your favorite daw and do whatever you want to them, loop them etc. In order to accomplish this you have to connect the ipad into a mac or pc via usb, then run itunes, under apps you should see if you scroll down the files section for the different apps, there you can drag and drop the .wavs to any dir on the computer. This app also supports Soundcloud, so you can export to Soundcloud from the app itself. Below is a clip I made for Toxic Coma. It will be in one of the new songs I am working on.

toxiccomaims20.wav by Hexfix93

Interface:9.5
This is where the Ipad apps always shine: the ease of use, being able to tap the screen, use your finger on a knob and tweak it more like real hardware, in some cases better. In this case, I am floored. It’s a little strange at first look. At the top of the of the screen there are tons of these buttons, like synth, drum, effects global utility, etc. These navigate you to all the sections you need to jump to. What is really cool is that this is a semi modular synth, and you can tap and drag to connect virtual cables to the cv matrix on the right hand of the synth. You can really jack the sound up if you know what you are doing. You can also cv in and out of the seq to get really cool results. There are two virtual keyboards, a small one that is default and a bigger one you can call up; and two, yes, two, koas pads to tweak the sound. TWO KAOS PADS. You wont find that on any real MS20. You scroll the screen on the synth screen to scroll up and down to and from the seq. Its laid out pretty well. Because the Ipad is multi touch, you can mess with two kaos pads and tweak the knobs at the same time. KILLER for tweaking stuff. You can record all the tweaks into the pattern so it plays back your tweaks! This is AMAZING. You can play live into the seq then edit and tweak, or you can use the step editors. The drum sequencer is cook. It’s like the Roland tr808 etc.

Sound: 8.5
This is where I was surprised. I thought the iElectribe could sound a little hollow in the 60hz to 200hz, but this is a little thicker and more present down there and in the midrange. I love both of these Korg Ipad apps. They both sound pretty good. With enough post production you can get it to sit in a mix pretty well, but only when you render it to .wav and bypass the ipad’s DAC headphone/line out. The Ims20 sounds like the little brother of a real ms20, I can make it scream and sound aggressive, especially with the fx. The ms20 was always more of a lead/ sound fx acidic synth. It can do bass pretty good on this version. I thought the real version was a tad weak on bass compared to the ms10. This thing can do dance lines and aggressive industrial no problem. It still has that plastic sheen that most software VAs have, but if you put enough saturation vst plugs on it, you can make it sound more like the real thing, just a tad fainter with less juice on the resonance. I think this is the sound of trance / techno and old school industrial / glitch. This is not a super fat synth. This is good for melodic, weird acid lines, and grooves. What makes this better than the iElectribe is the 2 osc setup, hp and lp filter at the same time, ring mod, and the mod matrix with the semi modular patch bay. You can really make strange and messed up sounds with this synth engine. The lame synth presets don’t even scratch the surface. The main character comes from the two resonant filters, hp and low pass, mess with them just right and you can make it scream in this really cool way that no other synth or VA can.

Overall: 9.1
Because this is on the Ipad it makes it so easy to pick up and use anywhere to get ideas out, simple beats and synth lines. I find this a very inspirational tool. The iElectribe is more for beats. There is no real synth engine with a keyboard. This is the game changer. This is for real. Delivering on both fronts of a drum machine that is highly customizable and uses a real analog synth style engine. The sound is pretty good for a software VA.

Pros: Very easy to use, sounds great, laid out very well, touch screen, Soundcloud support built in, can export seqs to .wav files. This is a powerhouse seq, drum machine, synth with the ms20 character.

Cons: Not as good as a real ms20 sound wise. Sometimes the timing is glitchy when switching screens and doing certain actions while using the program. Hope they fix this in a future update. Lacking presets compared to the iElectribe. What is there does not show off the beef of what this has to offer.

Bottom line: If you have an Ipad, got it for music, and are into dance style anything, this is a MUST HAVE. I am very impressed. Right now it is $15.99, Sixteen dollars. WOW, this will only last until jan 2011. So get this soon, before the price goes up to 30 bucks!!!

Overview: What makes a tracker so cool is that it is old school and written to the hardware in old school code. The code is more efficient than today’s modern sequencers and can do more without sacrificing audio engine quality. This DAW looks, feels, and operates cryptically. The interface is not at all like other mainstream sequencer applications. It always seems to be the new users who are used to cubase & logic styles of sequencing. This is not for the faint of heart. This style of sequencer started in the 80s on the Atari st and Amiga computers. I used to use these on the Amiga and Atari back when we made music for our joke band Toxic Coma. I am very proficient in using this interface. I can even use the hexadecimal code commands to pull off live sample manipulations. I don’t think any music application is easy to use, but honestly this one is particularly difficult at first but don’t be put off as this is one of the powerful audio manipulators on the market and its dirt cheap, 59 bucks or something. There are Renoise tutorials on youtube, so if you plan to use this, I recommend searching on YouTube. What you have to understand about Renoise, first and foremost, is that it is a SAMPLER. It plays samples in its native mode. Think Sampler Sequencer. It started out as an audio sample sequencer, unlike cubase and logic that started out as midi sequencers then added in all the audio later. I think this is why the sound quality is so much better. It was programmed that way from the ground up.

Below: Toxic Coma Using Renoise.

Interface: 9.5
The interface is weird. It looks like code from an 8-bit computer. There are plenty of buttons and menus. The selection interface is pretty easy to navigate. Once you get used to it, it’s actually better than cubase for setting things up. Renoise has really beefed up the tracker, modernizing it in many ways, except the main notation interface is columns of letters and numbers and the whole screen scrolls. It defaults to a 16th note grid. Its a pattern sequencer. The default sequencer is 0 through 63, so 64 notes in each pattern per channel(you can change the patter lengths as well). You can add a ton of channels if you need them. Each column is a channel. It is really easy to step edit notes. It can record you live and in loop mode. The cool thing is that this is made for the computer. This makes the main qwerty keyboard your instrument. You can play a couple of octaves on the keyboard by default. This rocks if you have no real gear to use. This is how we managed Toxic Coma all those years at everyone’s house. All you need is a computer. I honestly love this interface. I am so used to it, been using it since 1989. So I understand it completely. Through the ages they have modernized this through the addition of effects, midi, high midi resolution, and vst plugins for instruments and effects. I love how the music is scrolling down the screen versus left to right which is typical of other sequencers. The big patterns by default force me to be more creative and stay out of looping 4×4 bars like you end up doing in cubase. So when you record audio into it, you have to edit it with the sample editor, assign it to an instrument slot, and then, trigger it with a note. You cannot lay audio down like a virtual tape recorder as you would in Cubase. I prefer everything being samples and not tape like chunks of audio, it makes me feel like sequencing and cutting up and looping anything how ever I want to. This style makes me edit and tweak everything way more than I ever do in cubase. In a way, I like how everything is accessible with out too much digging, intelligently placed tabs, the upper screen and lower screen contain important track and song functione. I love the track scopes, so cool, I love how the main pattern editor and sequencer is in the middle, and on the left is the pattern seq, on the left is all the cut, copy, past tools, set up for copying a whole pattern, track in pattern, track in song, everything you need to navigate and edit. You can highlight notes and programming data in a track and cntrl c and v them to copy etc. Once you figure this out, it becomes a breeze. I prefer this sequencer setup in all honesty.

Below: Industrial!!!

Effects: 8.0
The default effects actually work well. I love the delays and the compressors. They work ok, better than Cubase fx. I don’t care for the reverbs much. The chorus is ok. The flange is usable. The phaser is pretty damn good. I like the eqs as well. Everything is pretty usable. The cool fx come from being able to manipulate the samples with the numbers on the grid next to the note value. You can do amazingly crazy, high resolution pitch bends(256 resolution, twice that of logic and cubase). Think plague of babies on that Toxic Coma song. You can restart the sample position point with the code as well. Think Attack of the Wheenies by Toxic Coma. This is something you cannot do with modern DAWS. You can do automation as well.

Below: Fast Twitch tweaking with midi interface, Bad ass.

Functions: 9.5
Supports Rewire, supports VSTi, and VST fx, has plug in compensation, high resolution timing thats tight, multi core/processor support, tons of keyboard shortcuts, a sampler and sample editor, Low Latency Sound Engine, instrument editor where you can select a slot and easily make a drum kit, split up the keyboard and put different samples on different keys, and supports many sample file formats. It also renders to wav file. The way it handles VST instruments is great, only puts a load on the processor when it is playing and using the synth. It is amazing. This has the best mixing engine I have ever used. The sound quality is amazing. I can get things so loud with this, and I never need mastering for loudness. You can stack up sample tracks. This is amazing, even when you over drive the mix bus. It gets mean and warm, not cold and crunchy like good old Cubase does. The core of this code was written in Assembler, and is efficient, using a simple graphic and making audio the priority. It sounds better than any DAW on the market. I’m not joking around. This thing renders audio way better than any other daw on the market. Way better sound quality. The sequencer is pattern based. You can cut, copy, and paste to and from any pattern. On the left hand side of the screen is where you find the controls to set the play order of the patterns. You can copy a pattern to a new one, etc. You can use higher resolution than 16th notes. I still don’t know how to though. When exporting your mix to a wav, this is called rendering. Always be sure to select the high setting, this is how it gets the best sound quality. It spits out .WAV files. You can make music so HOT with this, by stacking tracks, and using tons of compressors and limiters. The last two Toxic Coma LPS were -4 rms, that is super fucking hot. MEGA LOUD!!!!! It manages this and keeps it warm and aggressive, not cold thin and sterile like cubase does when you try to make things really hot. I all most forgot to mention that this thing pitches samples better than any hardware sampler, any software sampler on the market. Meaning, taking one sound and playing it up and down a keyboard, it is great with super low aliasing. AMAZING!

Ease of Use: 7.5
The learning curve is high, like any DAW. This one takes some getting used to. It is very unique. To us old school tracker users, this is not a problem. To the newbies who are used to Cubase and other similar programs, yes, this will be hard for you to grasp at first. I highly recommend the Renoise tutorials on youtube.

Below: Even others can make Toxic Coma like shit with Renoise :).

Overall: 9.7
For me it is the best sounding computer application. It makes vsti instruments actually sound decent, unlike logic and cubase. The sound quality is amazing. This thing sums amazingly well and handles hot signals very well. It is easy to use and fast once you learn how to use it. I have made many lps with this software, and recently made Mental Twitch, which was on the last VAC Single. I am going to use Renoise a lot on the new VAC LP and make a more electronic record with it. I don’t think I will use Cubase or Logic ever again, I hope. Sick of the bad sound quality on those other DAWS. What really sucks is that I don’t write music as much as I should. Maybe with powerful laptop and Renoise with a lot of plugins, I will actually get things done. Portable as hell, I don’t need big midi keyboards. I can use the computer keyboard quite well because of how much better they mapped it for playing music. BUY THIS, LEARN IT, GET THE BEST SOUND QUALITY FROM A PC OR MAC! IT ONLY COSTS 58 EUROS!!!!!! Cheap! You can get professional results with this. MAC, PC, AND LINUX!!!!!

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So what was it that made me impulsively buy the iPad? I decided to go to the apple store on the launch day. I have been wanting another laptop to use around the house so I am not always in the studio. I mostly wanted it to read, surf the net, and write up reviews and things. I also wanted the iPod touch for the games and nothing else. I also wanted the iPod touch for some of the audio apps I had seen over the last year. Especially the drum sequencer type drum machines. Very cool with the touch controls as are the soft synths. The idea of being able to be any where with my headsets banging out beats with automation and good sound quality really appealed to me. I am working on the new LP already and didn’t want to wait for the next gen ipad. I picked up the unit, loved how it felt in my hands, then I plugged my headphones in, listened to the iPod part while surfing the web and noticed how the sound quality was a lot better, when over to the ipod touch and listened to that too, the iPod touch sounded worse. DACs are a big deal to me.

I was amazed at how fast it was browsing the web, that this 1ghz arm processor felt faster than my 2.16 duo core MacBook pro. So this is life with out flash? A fast browser? Bring on html5. Death to flash, that slow inefficient processor hog. The swipe gestures you use to scroll the screen is so fast and responsive, as is pinching to zoom in and out. Some times on web pages, I would have to zoom in to hit the link I wanted but only when i held the iPad in the thin horizontal view angle. Launching apps is weird, sometimes it will think I am swiping instead of selecting. Typing is great actually, except if you need numbers all the time, then its a major issue, so doing math stuff in a text editor is really annoying because you have to switch back and forth to the number mode or letter mode. No arrow keys to move the cursor around either. So you have to hit the pad on the text and hold and then this magnifying glass thing pops up and you move that around then it lets you drag the cursor to where you need to go, this is kind of annoying.

I plan on reviewing games and audio apps on this device for the VAC site and e EDT site. Games were lack luster at first. I first downloaded this diablo like dungeon rpg. It had this fake analog stick control, and it sucked. It wasn’t for a few days that I realized that I could us tap controls on that game, and that instantly made it better. Then i downloaded the need for speed game, and it looks ok, kind of a bad frame rate, and is fun and controls well by tilting the iPad to steer it like a steering wheel. kind of cool. It wasn’t until I downloaded Flightcontrol HD, and Mirrors edge for the ipad that I really was kind of impressed with it as a gaming device. Mirrors edge looks great and is fun to play. Flightcontrol HD is a simple game where you draw flight paths with your fingers to land air planes. If two planes collide its game over. This is surprisingly fun, I saw the review for this on the Iphone via AREA5 and thought I’d give the iPad hd version a shot. It didn’t disappoint. The games are really cheap compared to DS and PSP and this is a real plus for me. Comparing the games on iPad isn’t fair though, the iPad games are shorter on average than a psp or ds game. So far as a gaming platform, it has potential, but it’s not even close to worth it for that yet. The video below shows me messing around with the ipad and all the stuff I have for it.

Overall how do I feel about the iPad?
Music Tools:
Audio apps kick major ass, the Ielectribe software drum machine from korg is worth the price of the iPad alone $9.99, a used electribe costs a little less used on the second hand market but I feel the software with the ipads DAC sounds better to me than the old electribe I used to own. Not to mention it’s easier to use with the drag menus. Other apps are coming as well. Being able to control a daw with it via Bluetooth is really cool. Using it as a drum pad, mixer controls. This thing is amazing for this kind of thing. Seriously, using the Ielectribe is way better than using the hardware. Easy to name stuff, and i love turning knobs with the touch screen, takes a little getting used to, but its kick ass like real hardware finally as far as the interface goes. For Audio apps, I give is a 9 out of 10.

Internet Device:
I do hate flash but the lack of flash on the iPad really is a hinderance if you want to look at sites like hulu and fail blog and media based sites that use a lot of flash players for video. I really like the touch interface for web browsing, so as long as you are reading sites its fine. This is a double edged sword, great interface but a lack of content due to the lack of flash support, so no flash games on Facebook or myspace, i hate those any way. I want html5 to take over because it is open source and flash is not. So in the end I think if enough ipads sell, flash could come to an end, and I couldn’t be happier about that. The lack of a good free chat i’m chat program that runs in the background is a big minus as well. Internet features gets a 7 out of 10.

Media:
Too big to be an effective iPod player, even though it has way better sound quality over the iPod touch. The iPod portion lacks cover flow as well, WTF apple? The screen is 4:3, not wide screen, so movies have a huge black bar, that really sucks. I think the 4:3 is a throw back to old computer screens, which i prefer for web viewing honestly, but for movies, epic fail. Media gets a 6 out of 10.

Games:
It’s to early to say weather or not it will succeed. I will say the fake analog controls have got to go, they are awful. The games here now are um, ok, not great, not terrible. kind of generic and no where near sony or nintendo, but way ahead of the zune and the other phone companies touch phones. The. Video a card in this reminds me of old pc stuff, like a few generations back. Reminds me of a dreamcast on roids in higher resolution. Nothing ground breaking other than the battery life. As a gaming platform I give this a 6 out of 10. I must say though, I see a lot of potential for god games and touch games.

Apps:
The lack of a number pad really ruins this for many types of applications. I have not tried pages, or iworks. It’s on here though so that really says to me that this is serious, because the windows media apps for phones are awful. These apps are very polished compared to the competition. The PDF stuff on this is garbage. I could not even. Read the manual for my access virus snow on this thing. They have a lot of bugs to fix on this thing, even the text app it comes with is buggy and has word wrap issues when typing large text files, I am experiencing this as I type this. It gets stuff wrong but the stuff it gets right is spot on, the Marvel comics app is amazing. The Book store and reader is great. There is a lot of promise here. I give the apps for the iPad a 7 out of 10. Lots of potential, but not there yet.

The Hardware:
The screen is gorgeous, this is what attracted me to it in the store. WOW. It’s a little heavy, but not a problem for me. Playing certain games does get tiring tho, because of holding it up, its not heavy, but its heavy enough that after an hour, its tiring. The motion controls are great. The touch interface is great, typing is pretty good, the keyboard is ok, but having to hit a key to switch the keypad to numbers and symbols is really annoying. Ok for text, but bad for typing in numbers. The battery life is amazing, i can use it all day and still have charge the next day for a while before I have to charge it, more than 10 hours and 1 month on stand bye. WOW. The interface is very responsive. No camera, so what, I don’t care, bad viewing angle because of how you hold the device, camera up your nose is not a good thing. I give the hardware a 9 out of 10.

Overall:
Apple is wrong, this is not revolutionary. It is good, but fails in many areas. It is great because finally we have a tablet that reminds me of star trek. The lack of being able to multi task apps is a major downer(yes it’s coming, but not till fall). It lacks flash, needs a bigger screen for wide screen two work. It’s not perfect. I must say though, It has apps other devices don’t like some of the games, Iworks, and Ielectribe that are all priced just right. This is a multi media device that has some functionality of computers. This is not a laptop. This is more like a Ipod, nintendo ds, Sony psp mixed into one device, with a big screen and a touch of osx thrown in. Does it live up to apple’s hype? sort of. If you like audio apps, or iphone apps, its a good thing. If not, you want and internet laptop device? Stay very very very far away from this thing.

What does apple need to do to fix this? We need flash, we need directional control, and screen stretching functions, in word press(no arrow keys), i cannot do any real editing because of this on the ipad. If it was not for me liking the ielectribe so much, i might actually sell this thing. I only like this 100% for the audio apps, everything else needs a ton of work. They have to fix this shit! I will say it though, I really love this thing, the Ielectribe, taking beats any where with 10 hr battery life, man this alone makes it worth it for me. I do use it for media, internet and everything despite thinking it is kind of weak at some things. By no means is this a bad review. Its a good device, but it is far from perfect. I give this overall a 6.955555 out of 10.

Cubase 2.8 with serial on win 98 is tight(you have to put the comptuer in 256 colors, and tweak the os a little), but not this tight. Atari is slightly tighter than the ASQ10, but by a hair. These three sequencers kick the crap out of any modern software on the market today. So if you want tight timing on your hardware like I do. This is the only solution.

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This is my secret weapon. It can step in and do most any job. Yeah, the sounds are compressed rompler stuff, but seriously, the filters in this have this wet sound, this air to them that really makes things cut in the mix and sound lush and vibrant. I love the filters on this, I tried to like the triton, but the filters were not the same. I tried to love the M3, but the filters just don’t come close. These filters can sounds very acidic, and almost roland like, but a wee bit thinner. This is what is great, because you can stack so many sounds together and create these lush landscapes. With sound diver on the PC I am able to edit just about anything I want and get this to go where i need it to. Digital sample oscillators and two amazing filters to run in series or parallel. In combi mode, this is where the dream scapes happen and blow your mind away. Atmosphere and absynth on the PC TRY to do what this does, and they both fail big time. What is it about the trinity that makes it so special. In combi mode you can stack 8 programs on top of each other. You have 8 insert fx and 2 master fx. LOTS OF FX POWER! These fx are really good too. I prefer them to the ksp8 fx, not kidding either. The compressors with the verbs on drums can bring out brutal in your face industrial sounds. Add some over drive to a bass line and tweak the filter and you get mean acid. The bread and butter presets suck. But the motion synth presets are really good in combi and prog mode. The drums in this are the best workstation drums I have ever heard. All you need is 2 of these things, and you can cover a lot of ground. In the combi mode, you can make this like a vast array of modular synths. The modulations in this are really good and you can really get the sounds to animate, you can hear this in my audio clip above.

TR-Rack vs Trinity. Well, no touch screen. But seriously, I can edit the fx from the front panel no problem, I figured out how to use the interface without sound diver, but you need sound diver to edit some things like the envelopes because the front panel wont let you edit everything unfortunately. You cannot upgrade these. But the good thing is that there are 4 banks of rom sounds, and the trinity synth only has 2 unless you buy the rom cards and install them your self. When I had my trinity keyboard, I didn’t have that much other gear so I was using it in seq mode which is the multitimberal mode, 16 tracks, and there you get sounds without fx, and you have to custom build your fx chains and send your parts to them in the fx mixer page of the sequencer mode. In this mode you don’t get to use the great combi patches, so in old vac I hardly ever used those. Now that i have two racks I can use one for drums, and one for combis. Seq/Multi mode on the rack is really limiting, because you only get one memory so you have to manually change it on every song you make and back it up on the computer via sysex. The small screen makes editing the multi really hard, and you cannot see patch names only bank and numbers in this mode. So multi is a no go for the racks. So you get one patch at a time in prog mode, and get to layer up to 8 programs in combi. The racks are not good for multi timber setups. I like using the TR racks in prog and combi mode. This works out great for me, and its easy to take a preset and mangle it with fx. The FX are so great, verbs, delays, flanger, phaser, chorus, decimator, bit crunch, limiter, amp sim, over drive/high gain. All of these can make lush or super mean and twisted sound depending on how you tweak the parameters. The DACs on these are better than the triton. Tritons sound crunchy, these have this warm color to them. This air to them that I have not heard on any other synth to date. Not even the flag ship oasys has this AIR in the sound that I love so much. Seriously. I have read reviews on sonic state that said, you cannot do industrial with this, truth is, i made most of calling of the dead with a trinity keyboard. So they obviously don’t know how to mess with FX worth a shit. LOL. No software fx, and rompler can even touch the sound quality and fx quality of the trinity. The triton cannot either. The m3 fx are damn good, but the filters and sounds are not as good in my opinion. What I cannot believe is that these racks go on ebay now for about 200 to 300 dollars. In the right hands. These can kick major ass. I give this a 15 out of 10. No joke, this is my favorite workstation of all time.

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What really sets this apart from other synths is the fact that it hardly aliases. So when you start playing notes up high on the keyboard, the sound stays together and doesn’t lose its fullness and turn into un-pleasant distortion like the Virus A thru TI still to this day does. The jp8080 also aliases really bad when you play it up high to the point that I never play it up high. The new nord lead 2x, well I have mess around with it at the store and think it sounds like it lost some of its quality, the sound is fainter and not as present. The nord lead 3 sounds plain ugly, thin and gross like a software synth. The nord 1 as they age get gritty because the dac’s get uncalibrated and end up sounding like a sid station. I find the nord lead 2 to actually deliver all the sounds my jupiter 8, 6, and modular gave me with a slight digital sheen, granted, it’s not as lush as analog. Doesn’t matter much in the mix. I find I can get it to sit perfectly, and with a little eq I can do what I want with it. There are no effects either, but who cares, buy some outboard fx because they sound better than internal most all the time. 16 voices of polyphony, 4 timbers, can layer 4 sounds together to make huge sounds. Unison is good, I love the portamento. The arp kind of sucks because you cannot sync it to midi clock or manually edit the tempo time in bpm. There are no names for patches, only numbers, and when you install a memory card and get 4 banks of 100, finding the sound without names is tedious. If you have a daw, you can send it arp lines no problem so no big deal. This is not the ultimate bass synth, in fact I think the virus does bass a lot better and why people flock to it over the nord lead. It is why I find the virus and nord Compliment each other well. One cannot replace the other. This is a lead synth, that can do good pads, strings, sound fx, arps, and leads. Easy to edit, way easier to make sounds with over the jp8080 and virus a. The interface is better. I don’t hear any stepping when I tweak the knobs either. I like the notch, band pass, and high pass filters on this way more than the an1x, jp8080, and virus multimode filters. The low pass is kind of boring and under whelming though. I give the other synths the edge on low pass filters. This is a tweakers wet dream. I give this a 7.5 out of 10.

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WOW. After really messing about with it over the last couple of weeks, I have pure love in my heart for this beast. And yes, it is a beast. Sampling with it is the bomb. Easy to use, I have only 16mb, but I can easily sample at every octave for like 10 to 20 seconds no problem. This thing plays back what is put in, with a slight color that adds life and oooomph to the sound. I just can’t get enough. I seriously think this really adds more to the sound. It’s like my high end fx, my lexicon pcm 96 and ksp8, those fx units will add to the sounds and spit out something better than you put in. I am amazed. Seriously. I tried so hard to love software samplers, used halion, emu x, kontakt, and exs24. Nothing on those ever sounded like this. Nothing. I mean I would sample my analogs and they would sound digital. This thing still sounds analog even after its in the sampler. At first, I thought it ruined my drums, because when you first import sounds into this thing, it sets the attack on the TVA(amp env) to 1 instead of 0, so the first part of my kicks would get cut off. I figured out how to edit it. They kick the crap out of battery and kontakt for drums, everything is hot, loud and punches like it should, as compared to the limp more faint sound of these software samplers. But I did find a huge problem for drums, this is from another user on the gear sluts forums “Roland S-sampler: the envelopes regularly “mis-fire” — don’t know how else to explain it, but occasional hits will sound flabby, which is especially noticeable and problematic on drums… like let’s say you have set DCA Attack @ 0, and Release @ 3 for a really tight drum sound, it’s like occassionally it will hit where it sounds more like Attack @ 3, Release @ 50 …… myself and 2 of my friends all owned S-750s and it was the same on all of ours”. So I have to deduct some points here, this is not good for drums.

What do I really like about this most of all? Inputs are on the front, the converters on this are amazing, I think they are apogee from the late 80s, I read that on some forum some where, too lazy to open it up and check. They really capture the sounds just right. I had to get my head around the complex sound structure, sample then that becomes a partial(layer up to 4 sounds as the osc, 4 mono, or 2 stereo pairs) which contains the filter and amp envs and settings like that, then the patch section where you can assign the partials to the keyboard any way you want(if you have a lot of partials, and want to edit the filter or the tva on each, there is a way to hit command then edit partials, then select global, so you can edit all the partials under the patch at once, so the settings on the filter and amp envs etc will effect all the sounds in the patch, this took me a while to get my head around. Then the performance where you assign patches to midi channels. The file system is really good(it intelligently will use the same samples over and over in different sounds with out making you save them over and over, unless you do physical edits on the samples themselves, so if you have a drum kit and one kit uses the same kick as another, it will know this, and only save the one kick but load the same one for both kits, so space isn’t wasted saving the same files over and over.), even though there is a 540 mb limit to how big a hd can be :(. You can use a mouse and external screen to use this unit. But you don’t need it, my screen is super dim, so I had to get a long composite video cable to reach my TV, then, neato. Easy to see everything. I have no problem editing stuff with the arrows and the big wheel. I also think this sampler can sync the osc(samples) like osc sync on analogs. I haven’t tried that yet.

Sampling is easy, I learned some stuff from the manuals and from some cool people over on gear sluts about how to edit stuff easier. So in partial mode, hit the command button, then sample, and it will create a partial with the sample real easy, same can be done in patch mode to make patches easy. Sampling is cool, although, when making any patch, partial, or sample, you have to name them, but once you do it will remember the name you entered again so you can just add 2 3 4 etc to the end of it easy. I remember sampling with the asrx, asr10, and emu e6400, I seriously prefer the s770 over those in sound and editing, when I sample a sound in, it automatically find the right start and end points to truncate, so it is good at saving space, and i don’t have to manually truncate myself. There are no FX, good, cause i usually hate internal fx. 24 voice poly. 8 outputs! Flopy disk, and a built in 40mb, yes MB :( HD. Without the HD you would have to load the OS of floppy every time you booted it up. So I am thankful there is one in there even though it’s only 40mb.

So it sounds amazing with low aliasing, really musical. So lush. The filters are digital, but they sound analog, the resonance is really wet if you set it just right, and the band pass and high pass are spot on and can sound really organic and analog. Todd and I compared some crumar string machine akai samples to kontakt 3, loaded them in via chicken systems translator on a zip disk. Loaded it in, played both and A and B them over and over, and we noticed that the s770 sounded fuller, more musical, had more harmonics in the sound, louder, smoother, punchier, present, warm and fat. VS the software which was more distant, thin, cold, had horrid aliasing distortions, the filters were like sand paper compared to the smooth organic filters in the s770. It was a joke. To think people are selling these things to buy software that sounds 10 times worse is an outrage.

I never used my software samplers in my music much, because it never would fit. Never matched my real analogs. The s770 does match and fit my other gear. Sits nice in the mix. So much easier to mix actually. I really wanted to get my hands on the ultimate sampler, the emu e3, the depeche mode violator sampler, but i couldn’t find one that was affordable. I picked this thing up for 200 plus shipping and i had to buy a power chord. It was mission the top of one of the knobs, but it all works. Samplers are a lot of work, but well worth the effort when you get one of these great old ones. Not all samplers are great. This thing kicks the crap out of the emu e4 i had, the sound quality of this, the bass end especially is magical, warm and fat, so analog, more than any other sampler i had. The ensoniq samplers sound musty and dirty compared to this. This is lush, big warm and analog. So is the E3. 16 bit sound in the s770 as well. 20 bit internal processes. Todd bought the big huge e3 rack from Danny Elfman’s studio! yes, and it is amazing. Real analog filters. But mine are good usable and i have multi mode, so i am really happy. Don’t get me wrong, the e4, and old asr samplers are better than the new hardware samplers from akai, and the software. But seriously, the e3, the s770 are like the ultimate in sound character, they sound analog and not digital. This is the best piece of gear I have bought in a longtime. Rock solid midi timing too.

Ok, I made a patch for you to hear. This is me, making my sh2 sound like a jupiter 8. With 24 voice poly, and resonant multimode filter :) This is a pad sound, i love the resonance on the higher notes, so lush. And the sampler still makes it sound like real analog. Amazing. Click here To listen to it. I sampled my s770 through my mackie onyx mixer with no eq, into the rme fireface 800. I am sure it would sound better if i went directly into the fireface 800. I give this a 7 out of 10. Awsome sampler!!!!!!

Now I converted some Akai strings. From xxlarge best services most wanted 2 string machines akai cd rom. Loaded them into kontakt 3, and into the roland s770. Kontakt 3 sounded thin, annoying, brittle and unmusical and machine like. The Roland s770 breathed this analog hue into the sounds, made it shimmer, the sounds had a lot more air in the top end, the pitching was way better with no aliasing. kontakt 3 aliased big time when playing it live even on the hq settings. The roland s770 really made my akai libraries come to life and sound more musical, more present, more hi fi and more cutting in the mix. Way more bass, mids and treble. It was smoother and musical.

I know why i have not used sampling libraries since i sold my emu e6400. They only sounds usable on a good hardware sampler. Sorry man. Soft synths are toys. The roland s770 sounds like a musical instrument. The filters are shimmery, wet and more analog sounding, the filters in kotakt3 were like sandpaper lofi make the sounds get thin and cold instantly. AWFUL! Software is AWFUL.

The difference is like a moped VS a Ferrari. Moped is the soft synth, s770 is the Ferrari. Holy crap, I can’t beleive I waited so long to come back to hardware. I thought sampling would be fine in the box. one cd drive, less hassle. The problem is, I would record all my analog synths in through my compressors, get them going in a mix, then run battery and kontakt and try and layer stuff and write drums, and even with the gold baby libs, they just didn’t fit good in the mix with battery and kontakt. Instantly, load the sounds into the s770, they come to life, and match the quality of my analog recordings, my analog instruments, the s770 plays nice with my analog hardware in the mix. NO SOFT SYNTHS DO. they never match the intensity of my modular, sh2, revolution or jupiter 8.

Now, thanks to chicken systems and a couple of zip drives! I am able to get great sounds into a great hardware sampler, that sounds loud, big, bassy and cutting and sit right in the mix with my huge analog modular stuff. This is no joke. This sampler is the shit. This is the best $200=s770, $150=chicken sys translator, $50 for 2 zip drives, one usb one scsi, and 15 for a mogaimi video cable that would reach my big tv from the s770. S770 is great, this is exactly what I needed, it plays drums back great, and does amazing strings, it has great filters, and is boundless. I havent even tried osc syncing samples yet, i bet that is cool, or this trick i read about from beer:

“Sound ON Sound – Synth Secrets has the a complete breakdown and re-construction of a lot of the classic sounds. My little trick that works best with a Roland S760 but should also work with hardware is to make use of Highpass Filters ! ( I know that sounds nuts but bare with me )- for the chesty sound you’re looking for you could try using a bit of Noise for a basic waveform then put it through the highpass filter – remembering that the resonance on a Highpass filter acts on the lower cutoff point you can sweep up from the bottom of the harmonic content and focus in on the range you need ( with a snappy EG modulating the VCA ) S760s Rule the roost for this trick – you can make HUGE bass drums with its filters

Just a thought.”

Fuck software for sound generation, synths, samplers. It all sucks compared to good hardware.

Sh2 pulse, saw, and sine with sub osc. Afg pulse, saw, and sine with sub osc. I used the rs 60 env, i plugged the afg into the polivoks, set the polivoks and the sh2 with the same env settings to the filter etc. Runs through the doepfer vca a131. on both the sh2, and afg, i left the filter wide open. I think they both sound good, but i prefer the sh2, it has this fatter sound i think. more smooth. What do you think? I recorded these through my mackie onyx mixer, and into my rme fireface 800 into logic 8.

http://www.velvetacidchrist.com/synth/sh2vsafgvsmassive.zip

it’s 22 mb, uncompressed 24bit wavs. Listen for your self. You make the call. I don’t think the AFG sounds vintage. and oh yeah, dig the doom music!!!! The AFG does sound good though! For shits and giggles, I used a VA soft synth too. Here are the massive samples. Massive is a native instruments VA that supposedly has no aliasing on the wavs and is the best out on the market. I am not impressed. You be the judge.

This filter is mean. Aggressive and in your face. It is more like a roland acid sound, but it has this big huge fatness of a moog. So I see it as more of a hybrid. Except, it has it’s own tone that sounds like neither. I dub the sound as “RUSSIAN ACID”. 2 pole filter is real close to the slope of the 3 pole 303. The low pass is a 12db, and the bandpass is a 6db. I love the low pass, and like the band pass as well, just not as much. Both are very usable. IF you can only have one low pass filter, and you like moog and roland, this is the filter for you, it’s like having both in one, with a little extra charm. It’s like a tb303 meets a minimoog. 10hp of space. It’s worth every penny. The more I use it, the more I love it. I have used it in a lot of my new songs, and it adds a lot of new character to my songs. This was the right step for me. The frequensteiner’s low pass just doesn’t cut it. So I use these two together now. The possibilities are endless. I thank shawn or analog haven, and harvestman for this module. I give this a 5 out of 5.

Pros: Big sound, even with the resonance turned up(so many other filters fail in this regard). A very unique sound. Something new and not typical. It’s not expensive. Only 10hp. Does leads and bass very very well. Love it. Sounds amazing when fm’d, especially if you crank the resonance. I love that it has a mixer on it. So for some sounds you don’t even need a mixer for a basic system, the filter will take two input signals.

Cons: I wish it had 3 cv inputs instead of 2, and had an attenuator for each instead of only one input attenuator.

You want fat? How about this, AFG with animated pulse with 2 lfos on the harmonics and the sub osc out square wave, the sine output into the vco6 fm3 turned up a little over half then re tuned and both pwm positive and negatived with varied lfo on each, then rs95e saw wave tuned down one octave as a sub, all into the polivoks. Click Here to listen to the demo of this configuration I made.

Update: Today i get home from work, power my modular on. Let it warm up. Test the tracking calibration on the livewire. NOW ITS PERFECT LIKE THE RS95e. No after playing it for 15 minutes, i had to calibrate it again. now its holding on pretty good. After a few days, I’m starting to think that i cannot live without this type of oscillator. It just does to much. Its a pain. Maybe mike brown can modify mine so it tracks better. Who knows. I don’t care that it doesn’t track as well as the vco6 and the rs95e, this thing sounds so good to me that i cannot give it up. Rtopia or someone can modify it so it tracks better, or if they simply put the tracking pot accessible from the front panel without me having to take the unit out of the case so often to calibrate it. This is worth the hassle so far. The model 15s i had would go out of calibration by almost a semitone with in a matter of minutes. This thing will only go out of calibration by a few cents, i’m talking cents. not semitones. But yes i’m that picky to where even cents will bug me. The tracking calibration issues i’m having on the afg are manageable, and i can actually get it tracking and in tune long enough to record it in and make songs with it. That was not the case with the pair of plan b model 15s I had. So it’s all good for now. The guys at livewire are really communicating with me and not blowing me off and doing a great job trying to help me with this problem. So i’m more than happy with the support from Livewire and analog haven. And don’t think that my AFG is broken, it’s not, i’m just so picky when it comes to calibration, that even a few cents makes me get a little bugged out.

Holy ^#%!. It has finally arrived. I have been waiting years for this thing. My initial reactions where wow. Then I tested the calibration for tracking. Not so good. Went to the analog haven web site forum and found instructions on how to calibrate it from rtopia. Yup, now it tracks great for about 2 hrs, then acts like i never calibrated. It has to warm up a bit for the tracking to totally lock in, but once it does, I get 4 octaves pretty dead on for about 2 hrs before i have to re calibrate it again. Ok. What makes this so much different? The amount of control. The animated waves are fracking incredible. It can sound like a big swimming pwm, or a buzz saw, or a pavement grinder. Don’t laugh, I know this is analog. But this reminds me of the jp-8080, the super saw and feedback oscillator. This is a lot different, but kind of a big step like the jp-8080 was when it came to new wave forms in the subtractive synth format a while back. This module gives you a lot of different sounds. More than any other oscillator on the market. For that alone I think it is worth the price of admission. I honestly like the sound of the sine, saw, pulse, tri on the cwejman vc06 a lot more. But the animated osc on the afg really push this in a new territory. Granted, if I use both pwm modes on the vco 6 at once, I can get damn close to the afg, as far as animated wavs. + I think the vco 6 sounds a tad better. Who cares though, because this has a lot more controls over the harmonics and animation I think the vco6 and the AFG clearly stand on the top of the hill of the eurorack modular format when it comes to oscillators. The over all tone of the AFG is robotic, and new. I’ve read that some claim that it sounds vintage. No way, It may drift a tad like a vintage and the oscillators will beat against another in your rack rather fantastically. I compared the AFG to my sh-2, and they sound NOTHING ALIKE. The afg sounds like a robot factory. The antimatter switch is ok. But I prefer the normal waveforms for most things. Antimatter really gets you into robot factory mode. So far my favorite thing about the AFG is the animated pulses. The alien waves are good, but the animated pulses take the cake for me. I give this a 5 out of 5.

Pros: Awesome animated sounds. Buzzy. Lots of controls. Capable of making a lot of new sounds that other oscillators cannot. Unique sounding. Boutique. Top of the line in design. Lots of great knobs. Sub oscillator out that sounds great and is switchable from pulse to saw(like having 2 osc in one box, like the good old junos).

Cons: Basic wave forms do not sound as good as the model 15 or the vco 6, they are not as fat. The footprint is huge, this is a big module, I had to evict a couple of loved modules to make room for this beast. Calibration will hold for 5 octaves for about 6 hrs, but then will slip down to 3 octaves, Plan b model 15 suffers from this as well. The vco 6 and rs95e I think calibrate the high and the low separately rather than use one for all, this is why those have much better results when it comes to tracking. The europeans have it figured out. The americans do not.

Click Here! To listen to my AFG demo showing off the animated outputs, and basic waveforms. All ran through the harvestman polivoks filter.