Behringer has announced Enigma, designed to be an inexpensive, unofficial copy of the classic Buchla 208 Stored Program Sound Source.
The Buchla 208 is the voice of the Buchla Music Easel from 1972. The Music Easel, right, pairs the 208 with the 218 Touch Keyboard in a suitcase-style case.
The Behringer Enigma is not a straight clone of the original 208. It scales the original design down to Eurorack-compatible format, trades the program card connector of the original for patch storage, and adds DIN & USB MIDI control.
Behringer say about the Enigma:
“We have stared to design an “Easel 208” inspired Eurorack version called Enigma. While the analog section is an authentic replica of the original synth, which also includes 14 optocouplers, we plan to add total recall functionality with an OLED display and CC control plus USB/Midi.”
Behringer is in the design stages for the Enigma, so no time frame for availability has been announced. Behringer expects to price the Enigma at $399.
If you are looking for a handheld that enables you to run a desktop DAW, it turns out that Valve’s new Steam Deck is a better option. Valve Steam Deck can run Bitwig’s DAW and the VCV Rack 2 Pro synth as a plugin: a gaming handheld that music producers should be interested in, as well
CDM reports that both Bitwig Studio and VCV Rack 2 Pro (as a plugin) can already run on this new handheld gaming PC, which was released in February and enables you to access your full Steam library on the go (there’s also a dock so you can hook it up to an external display). It uses a Linux-based operating system, but compatibility with Windows PC games is also possible thanks to a Proton compatibility layer.
The upshot of all this is that Steam Deck should be capable of running all music software that’s Linux native (hence the compatibility with Bitwig and VCV Rack). Running certain Windows PC plugins isn’t out of the question, either.
CDM got the inside scoop from musician Aroon Karvna, who’s been testing the Steam Deck as a portable music-making device. Whether a machine like this would be preferable to an iPad in this context is debatable, but it could be a platform worth keeping an eye on.
Good luck getting hold of a Steam Deck, though – even if you reserve one now you probably won’t be receiving it until the last quarter of this year. The cheapest version, which has 64GB of storage, costs $469.99/£349, with prices rising to $609.99/£459 and $763.79/£569 for the 256GB and 512GB models respectively. Find out more on the Valve website.
Cazio, a free VST plugin emulates the Casio MT-100 “toy keyboard” from the ‘80s
The name Retro Cazio points that SampleScience’s new free plugin emulates an old-school Casio keyboard MT-100, a 1983 model that generated its sounds using the NEC D931 chip. These sounds are not high-end, but they certainly have a ‘vibe’
This was very much an entry-level home keyboard, which explains the 20 toy-like sounds that Retro Cazio includes. There’s also a single drum kit, along with a multi-LFO, high-pass/low-pass filter, reverb, glide, an ADSR envelope and a choice of three voice modes: polyphonic, legato and mono.
