Synthesist and sound designer Matt Johnson (Jamiroquai) shared this video, demoing his new collection of patches for the Oberheim OB-X8 synthesizer.
Oberheim released a free firmware update for the OB-X8 in July that added some interesting new synthesis capabilities, including a new binaural mode, new filter modes, MPE support and more.
Johnson says that he recently updated, and he’s created a new sound library featuring the new capabilities.
What he has to say about the new sound library:
New presets making use of ther new Binaural and Double + Modes. Please note you have to have OS V2.0 firmware installed on your Oberheim in order to use these sounds.
There are 4 groups of Binaural/User sounds which go into banks 8-11 and 2 groups of Double+ sounds that go into 15 and 16, total 48 sounds.
Please note these are presets for OBX8 owners only, not samples.”
Johnson also shares his thoughts on the update and the OB-X8.
Oberheim OBX8 Binaural and Double+ 48 Presets is available now for £18.99.
What Body Synths has to say about the Metal Fetishist:
“The Metal Fetishist is a beat-making platform designed for rythm discovery and percussive sound design. The unapologetically digital sound engine includes a single oscillator, a white noise source, a resonant multi-mode filter and a digital distortion section featuring downsampling and overdrive.”
The Metal Fetishist is available now for about $400.
LA Priest shared this demo of the Polygene, an all-analog, class A, all-transistor polyphonic synthesizer.
Inspired by the earliest polysynths of the 1970s, the Polygene is fully polyphonic, can be tuned to any scale or tuning, is multi-timbral and completely touch sensitive:
What they have to say about it:
“Touching any part of the synthesizer bridges connections in the circuitry and creates a unique sound.
Every area of the instrument’s gold plated circuitry can change its tone. At the top, oscillator transistors can be synchronised by touching them, while below there are 24 pressure sensitive polyphonic pads and at the bottom a 24 note keyboard triggers a more familiar polyphonic synthesizer voice.
All of these can be played simultaneously and there are many more effects of the circuitry to be discovered, as each of the traces react differently to the touch.
12 tuning controls allow you to tune the 12 pairs of oscillators to any scale, from a standard equal tuning to any microtonal, non-western or even unison tuning.
The bottom 3 oscillators can go into the sub-bass range and using the oscillator sync method of bridging the transistors by hand, the bass oscillators can play a wider range of notes.
By using transistors as the only active components in the instrument, each oscillator passes through only a handful of sound shaping components before reaching your ears. Instruments that rely heavily on transistors (like the Minimoog and EMS Synthi for example) are famous for their raw, untamed sound that has much to do with this circuit topology.
The synthesizer is built into a hand-made cedar wood case.”
Features:
24 note polyphonic, mutli-timbral
Hand made using quality through-hole components
Discrete analog all-transistor circuitry (no ICs, analog or digital)
24 oscillators (12 tunable + 12 sub oscs)
24 VC Envelope Generators
24 VC Amplifiers
Unique diode filter with attack, lfo and cross modulation via touch pads
Oscillator LFO modulation
Touch-sensitive pitch bend
2x 24 note gold touch sensitive mini keyboards
The Polygene is priced at $1,539.09, but is currently listed as sold out.
