OM-1 Cassette Synthesizer

This looks really neat. I'm really interested in feeding non-tape things through it, though.

 

http://www.ondemagnetique.com/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YbyZPRTo10

not trying to be a dick but the whole idea is that it adjusts the speed of the tape player to give you the different pitches. says on the site you can run non-tape external audio into it but all that does is let you use this thing's volume controls. so essentially you'd be buying this thing just to use it as an (expensive) volume control. well, it has attack and release so you'd essentially just be using this as a VCA+AR envelope combo, which isn't really exciting or anything. it's pretty basic, simple functionality that's been around for ages in a ton of stuff. it would be a handy bonus feature to have with this thing but if that was the main thing you did with it you'd be ignoring 95% of it's actual purpose and using it for something you could probably get cheaper elsewhere. like for a similar price you could prob get a tiptop audio single row eurorack case and a super cheap but still nice VCA module and ADSR one which would actually give you some additional functions over this thing but without the 'force sensitive' thing which, mainly is just a trigger isn't it? maybe the harder you hit it the louder the envelope allows the sound to go? basically a velocity sensitive button or something? i dunno that's just not a reason to get this thing imo.

 

what i would like to know is how it's altering the speed of the player? do they modify walkmans for use with this thing? i don't see that info anywhere on the site. i've been into that idea for ages, having something like CV over pitch tape speed. gieskes.nl/ has a few things for that purpose including a eurorack module designed to send control signals out to modified walkmans (which is what i'm assuming the thing you linked does), but his stuff is super obscure in the sense that nobody seems to talk about it much and its just pretty weird uncharted territory kind of. the thing you linked looks probably more solid in terms of being trustworthy and easy to figure out.

 

sweet. now what i wanna see is people doing this kind of thing with 3 head decks like the marantz pmd line so you can send CV lfo's etc to the speed and get tape flange/chorus effects.

Edited July 19, 2016 by MisterE

  On 7/19/2016 at 6:14 AM, MisterE said:

what i would like to know is how it's altering the speed of the player?

Pulse width modulation on the tape player's motor.

  On 7/19/2016 at 6:14 AM, MisterE said:

not trying to be a dick but the whole idea is that it adjusts the speed of the tape player to give you the different pitches. says on the site you can run non-tape external audio into it but all that does is let you use this thing's volume controls. so essentially you'd be buying this thing just to use it as an (expensive) volume control. well, it has attack and release so you'd essentially just be using this as a VCA+AR envelope combo, which isn't really exciting or anything. it's pretty basic, simple functionality that's been around for ages in a ton of stuff. it would be a handy bonus feature to have with this thing but if that was the main thing you did with it you'd be ignoring 95% of it's actual purpose and using it for something you could probably get cheaper elsewhere. like for a similar price you could prob get a tiptop audio single row eurorack case and a super cheap but still nice VCA module and ADSR one which would actually give you some additional functions over this thing but without the 'force sensitive' thing which, mainly is just a trigger isn't it? maybe the harder you hit it the louder the envelope allows the sound to go? basically a velocity sensitive button or something? i dunno that's just not a reason to get this thing imo.

 

what i would like to know is how it's altering the speed of the player? do they modify walkmans for use with this thing? i don't see that info anywhere on the site. i've been into that idea for ages, having something like CV over pitch tape speed. gieskes.nl/ has a few things for that purpose including a eurorack module designed to send control signals out to modified walkmans (which is what i'm assuming the thing you linked does), but his stuff is super obscure in the sense that nobody seems to talk about it much and its just pretty weird uncharted territory kind of. the thing you linked looks probably more solid in terms of being trustworthy and easy to figure out.

 

sweet. now what i wanna see is people doing this kind of thing with 3 head decks like the marantz pmd line so you can send CV lfo's etc to the speed and get tape flange/chorus effects.

 

Thanks?

  On 7/19/2016 at 7:44 AM, psn said:

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 6:14 AM, MisterE said:

what i would like to know is how it's altering the speed of the player?

Pulse width modulation on the tape player's motor.

 

oh? is it not just adjusting the voltage going to the cassette player?

  On 7/19/2016 at 8:39 AM, modey said:

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 7:44 AM, psn said:

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 6:14 AM, MisterE said:

what i would like to know is how it's altering the speed of the player?

 

Pulse width modulation on the tape player's motor.

oh? is it not just adjusting the voltage going to the cassette player?

Wouldn't that effect the output too?

Yeah I guess so. Maybe just adjusting the voltage going to the motor..?

  On 7/19/2016 at 9:39 AM, modey said:

Yeah I guess so. Maybe just adjusting the voltage going to the motor..?

Maybe, yeah but that would presumably need a modified walkman/tape player as mentioned above.

 

It might come with a pre modded player which would be cool.

 

I like the device for a curiosity value but not sure how useful I personally would find it. The fact that it exists and that other musicians are interested fills me with joy though.

Sounds pretty cool with the reverb and delay. The tuning knobs could potentially help make some cool melodies.

 

Quite an interesting synth for £200. Unlikely to buy one but would like to mess around with tapes of 'lush' samples.

I just spent the exact same amount of money on a single distortion pedal, so I think I can justify buying this thing.

  On 7/19/2016 at 8:39 AM, modey said:

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 7:44 AM, psn said:

 

  On 7/19/2016 at 6:14 AM, MisterE said:

what i would like to know is how it's altering the speed of the player?

Pulse width modulation on the tape player's motor.

 

oh? is it not just adjusting the voltage going to the cassette player?

 

pulse width modulation is a method of adjusting the voltage (normally you need a low-pass filter to go with that but not with motors)

heh sorry, i guess that was way overly wordy just to say 'with external audio you're only getting amplitude envelopes out of this thing'. which would still be useful, moreso if you have a gate source. but imo just isnt the main attraction here

 

also i thought it'd be a lot more expensive. seems like a decent price if you're into the idea of buying lots of tapes and recording note drones to them. suppose you can get more experimental and record loops and other stuff on there too. i might have to keep an eye on this

nice find

It would be like a monophonic mellotron. A monotron if you will.

  On 7/20/2016 at 12:07 AM, MisterE said:

heh sorry, i guess that was way overly wordy just to say 'with external audio you're only getting amplitude envelopes out of this thing'. which would still be useful, moreso if you have a gate source. but imo just isnt the main attraction here

 

also i thought it'd be a lot more expensive. seems like a decent price if you're into the idea of buying lots of tapes and recording note drones to them. suppose you can get more experimental and record loops and other stuff on there too. i might have to keep an eye on this

nice find

 

 

I realize that it has a minimal use in that way, but you can still color the sound that's being fed through it and then resample it back into your DAW. That is interesting to me.

yeah i definitely agree. in fact i think people overlook envelopes and vcas when it comes to using stuff to get analog 'color' and always focus on filters. imo a vca and envelope lends almost as much color as a filter does in some cases

  On 7/20/2016 at 12:33 AM, th555 said:

It would be like a monophonic mellotron. A monotron if you will.

how cool would one of these be though? http://mysterycircuits.com/newmelloman/newmelloman.html

also the drumsette that guy made is just amazingly cool, how it works

They just came up for order again so I snagged one. I still find this little thing interesting. Also, some of my friends have kids now and it would be great to show them and pique their curiosity for sampling/synthesis.

 

I basically make music with toys, so it's pretty fitting I buy this.

agree with all the mellotron comparisons - considering that's a unique sound from a rare instrument this does seem to fill a niche nicely

Seems pretty cool but I have been able to create a very similar sound by running my audio into a 80a handheld tape recorder and manually adjusting the tape speed. Not exactly the same thing but definitely similar.

Not sure what to think. On one hand it is a monophonic Mellotron, but on the other hand...

 

  On 7/29/2017 at 12:02 AM, Salvatorin said:

Seems pretty cool but I have been able to create a very similar sound by running my audio into a 80a handheld tape recorder and manually adjusting the tape speed. Not exactly the same thing but definitely similar.

 

Exactly and it is more or less the same thing but with a cv gate. It would be more interesting as a $30-40 DIY project, especially for what it does and how much it costs. Why are the walkman and the controller separate, as well? I don't know if it was an aesthetics choice but it seems really clunky from a design perspective.

 

There was a video of a kid that put cassette tapehead readers on his fingers and strands of tape on a piece of wood and played the thing like a steel guitar. That was 100x more impressive and interesting than this thing which is the gear equivalent of a fidget spinner.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Entorwellian

It's an interesting concept and I would defo try my old Commodore Datassette tapes if I had it, but for that price? No. Maybe if it was like 20USD.

 

For similar results you can get pretty close by just sampling the cassette and playing around in a tracker or DAW.. The constantly moving tape position could maybe cause some problems but might be solvable. Or I guess you could just create it virtually in Reaktor..

  On 7/29/2017 at 12:21 PM, mokz said:

It's an interesting concept and I would defo try my old Commodore Datassette tapes if I had it, but for that price? No. Maybe if it was like 20USD.

 

For similar results you can get pretty close by just sampling the cassette and playing around in a tracker or DAW.. The constantly moving tape position could maybe cause some problems but might be solvable. Or I guess you could just create it virtually in Reaktor..

 

Yeah its mainly the price.

 

Why not have 4 cassette spaces and be able to make it into a polyphonic thing? Take advantage of fourtrack recording and be able to have four layers of sounds on so you can change in between four types of textures? An equal tempered keyboard? Tape echo options? That stuff would bump it up to $300.

 

It's a hipster designed and marketed turd to sell to hipsters.

Edited July 29, 2017 by Entorwellian

  On 7/29/2017 at 1:10 PM, Entorwellian said:

 

  On 7/29/2017 at 12:21 PM, mokz said:

It's an interesting concept and I would defo try my old Commodore Datassette tapes if I had it, but for that price? No. Maybe if it was like 20USD.

 

For similar results you can get pretty close by just sampling the cassette and playing around in a tracker or DAW.. The constantly moving tape position could maybe cause some problems but might be solvable. Or I guess you could just create it virtually in Reaktor..

 

Yeah its mainly the price.

 

Why not have 4 cassette spaces and be able to make it into a polyphonic thing? Take advantage of fourtrack recording and be able to have four layers of sounds on so you can change in between four types of textures? An equal tempered keyboard? Tape echo options? That stuff would bump it up to $300.

 

It's a hipster designed and marketed turd to sell to hipsters.

 

The 4-track idea is awesome! I've been thinking of making some 4-track tapes like that to run through effects or synths, like a faux dub thing. Would be even cooler if it could both play and record to the tracks. I'd consider paying $200 for a 4-track cassette recorder & player with CV input for the motor. Probably not just the controller though. Could be lots of fun with loops! 

 

Not going to argue against the simplicity or limitations of this thing (did anyone figure out how controlling the tape works or whether you have to modify a walkman to actually use it?) but there's still lots of room in the world of CV-controlled sampling. Cassettes could fill that, along with potential for some interesting properties (analog, affordable, standard format, computer not required, can leverage vast libraries of existing tapes). 

  On 7/19/2016 at 6:14 AM, MisterE said:

sweet. now what i wanna see is people doing this kind of thing with 3 head decks like the marantz pmd line so you can send CV lfo's etc to the speed and get tape flange/chorus effects.

 

Used to have a PMD (well technically still do but i needs new idlers). The space between the record and play heads is too wide for that but you can definitely get basic tape delay out of them, just like with a 3 head reel to reel.

 

 

Now what I would like to see someone make is a cassette based mechanical granular synthesizer, like Jacques Poullin's Phonogène Universal (not the one that the the Make Noise module is named after/inspired by unless I'm mistaken), the first implementation of time stretching back in the early 50s):

 

 

more or less a drum it playback heads mounted on it, spinning independently of the motion of the tape.  It requires some precision machining but given how accessible high quality CNC is today that shouldn't be too big a stumbling block anymore. In fact, since I'm pretty sure the tape doesn't have to actually touch the drum that the heads are mounted on, just the heads themselves, you could probably use laser cut acrylic or maybe even 3d printing for a lot of it.

 

Cassette tape is probably not nearly durable enough, though.

Edited July 30, 2017 by RSP

  Entorwellian said:

There was a video of a kid that put cassette tapehead readers on his fingers and strands of tape on a piece of wood and played the thing like a steel guitar. That was 100x more impressive and interesting than this thing which is the gear equivalent of a fidget spinner.

Link?

  On 7/31/2017 at 4:51 AM, Salvatorin said:

 

  Entorwellian said:

There was a video of a kid that put cassette tapehead readers on his fingers and strands of tape on a piece of wood and played the thing like a steel guitar. That was 100x more impressive and interesting than this thing which is the gear equivalent of a fidget spinner.

Link?

 

 

Yeah, I'd also love to see that, it's something I used to think about doing back in college but never actually tried.  one hand for playback, the other for recording.