Paia Fatman

So, I'm thinking of getting one of these, mainly so I can use the midi in-cv out to control my MS-10 (the analog sequencer I built only does 8 steps & one octave at the moment). It's not much more expensive than most midi/cv converters I've seen, & has a synthesizer thrown in as well.

What I'm wondering, though, is how good is the midi to cv conversion? Would it be better to just buy a dedicated converter?

the cv on mine has always been off a bit -- maybe if i went back and recalibrated it, it'd be ok....

paia 9700 modular might work a bit better, with the midi2cv8. or, yes, get a dedicated converter.

edit: i use the fatman as a gate source all the time, it's great for that.

How off? "Charming analog imperfections" off or "this sounds like crap" off?

The other options I was looking at were the midi2CV8 kit or a Kenton Pro-Solo. The main attraction of the Fatman is that it's a synth along with a converter, & would make recording multi-oscillator parts much easier.

"you go an octave up and it's not the same note" off. haven't tried velocity (in a way that'd let hear how good it is, anyways). fatman's oscillators are 555's, nothing to write home about, but there are mods to replace it with better ones. the real good part is the filter -- i usually wind up using it as a midi filter... in that context velocity->cutoff being a bit inaccurate is no bother. then i might take the gate out and use it for whatever in parallel.

hesitantly, i'd say go with the kenton. a converter counts as infrastructre (monitors, mixers, wheelie chair) and homebuilding stuff of that sort can meet with uneven results imho! i'd never want to build a mixing desk; i'd tear my hair out tracking down minor bugs and sources of noise/hiss. similarly, midi/cv is something you notice if it's even a tad off. i'm not sure how accurate/easy to calibrate the midi2cv8 is -- my decision would hinge on that, or wanting the paia 9700 :)

Well, in that case it looks like I'll be going with Kenton. Better to have one synth that can perform properly than two synths that sound wonky (I've got my own little electronics project for that).

Thanks.

+500 for the Kenton converters. Rock solid and they'll translate anything to anything. Not really, but pretty much.

do you want to buy my pro solo?

£100 + postage

Shit, I bought one off of Ebay yesterday for a fair bit more than that.

Oh well, thanks for the offer, though...

  On 4/29/2010 at 9:52 PM, chunky said:

do you want to buy my pro solo?

£100 + postage

so you broke or quitting music or wat?

teaching english in china soon

£100 or so for a ferry to japan and back :-D