the watmm GAS thread

  On 5/16/2023 at 5:50 PM, DavieAddison said:

It looks like a PlayStation 1

It looks to me like they were going for Nagra SNST (those sweet mid-century surveillance recorders that you could actually still find for a couple hundred LESS than this thing until a few years ago), but halfway through someone said "what if we mde it look more like a Yak Bak?"

plus

equals

Plus just a hint of 

All joking aside, though, I like good design and I can appreciate overspending for the sake of it, but I think the TE stuff is butt ugly at any price.  I wouldn't shit talk it so much if I actually liked the designs (or if they were really ugly in a way that was funny or charming or even interesting; as it is, if i saw their products at a RISD senior show I'd rank them maybe a C+.

But I feel the same way about virtually every Apple design (especially the G3 and newer stuff) so I'm obviously not their target demographic.

  On 5/16/2023 at 7:43 PM, Taupe Beats said:

My concerns here are slightly different. It's more an issue of "Who's going to shoot first?".

The market for all this gear is still within a limited scope. The vast majority of stuff coming out ultimately overlaps all kinds of gear that's preceded it, often by the same company producing the new stuff. So when a developer goes out and tries to get some attention saying "hey this is a new concept!", I'm intrigued and want to learn/scrutinize. So then, when what they actually demonstrate doesn't really align to an actual new concept, it feels snake oil-ish. And I do think there's some legitimately negative consequence in that, as it may put other developers off who look up to some of these more successful developers. So yay more Roland/Oberheim cloning!

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fair points, yeah. had a bit of that with the Kodamo Mask 1 that just came out...it sounds good but it's not particularly unique from anything i've heard out of it so far.

yay more cloning 

i guess ultimately i'm just glad to see the market robust enough to allow for this sort of random development and experimentation happening. that means more good across the board, in theory.

  On 5/17/2023 at 12:13 AM, TubularCorporation said:

All joking aside, though, I like good design and I can appreciate overspending for the sake of it, but I think the TE stuff is butt ugly at any price.  I wouldn't shit talk it so much if I actually liked the designs (or if they were really ugly in a way that was funny or charming or even interesting; as it is, if i saw their products at a RISD senior show I'd rank them maybe a C+.

 

But I feel the same way about virtually every Apple design (especially the G3 and newer stuff) so I'm obviously not their target demographic.

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Ok, fair enough; you find them (te and apple) ugly or not interesting enough and that’s that 

But im curious to see which gear (comps, synths, music gear) designs do you like? 

  On 5/13/2023 at 5:51 PM, auxien said:

this is pretty fucking brilliant

tl;dw it's miniature controllable guitar feedback (but with tines not strings)

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"We're hitting the resonator with an electromagnetic hammer" - that's pretty cool actually, I guess they're just switching on and off an electromagnet really quick instead of physically hitting it with a hammer.. But also makes me wonder why they wouldn't just put some simple physical key action in there as well. Though it somehow weirds me out that they're calling it "acoustic synthesis" lol - is an electric guitar also acoustic synthesis? A pianola?

By the way was that forked tine shape they're showing ever used in any of the classic electric pianos?

Re: Erica Steam Pipe: finally people are getting around to doing 1% of what Yamaha VL did 30 years ago... (don't mean to diss it though, I'm happy for any and all attention that physmod synthesis gets)

  On 5/17/2023 at 12:08 PM, th555 said:

"We're hitting the resonator with an electromagnetic hammer" - that's pretty cool actually, I guess they're just switching on and off an electromagnet really quick instead of physically hitting it with a hammer..

If I understand the bit at 4:00 correctly, they're still "hitting" it but then the electrical signal they pick up goes into an electronic circuit where they boost it so it's sustained or kill it (see 4:45). It's the signal in the electronic circuit that they can do synthesis with it.

I believe, but I'm not sure, that this is different from a regular electric piano where the sustain is purely acoustic, albeit amplified. Here the sustain is electronic.

So basically it's a really convoluted method for generating sine waves

  On 5/17/2023 at 12:08 PM, th555 said:

"We're hitting the resonator with an electromagnetic hammer" - that's pretty cool actually, I guess they're just switching on and off an electromagnet really quick instead of physically hitting it with a hammer.. But also makes me wonder why they wouldn't just put some simple physical key action in there as well.

more control possible with the electromagnetic impulsing, i would assume. Tats/others may have said as much as well but i can't remember exactly (there's at least a half dozen videos about this on YT). physical key action could be tight but probably less control by default, or more difficult to achieve truly tight control.

  On 5/17/2023 at 12:08 PM, th555 said:

Though it somehow weirds me out that they're calling it "acoustic synthesis" lol - is an electric guitar also acoustic synthesis? A pianola?

that's why i brought up the guitar feedback thing...it's like being able to highly and expertly control guitar feedback in a highly musical way and more directly than just raw open feedbacking. could get really interesting after some more development.

  On 5/17/2023 at 10:41 AM, xox said:

Ok, fair enough; you find them (te and apple) ugly or not interesting enough and that’s that 

But im curious to see which gear (comps, synths, music gear) designs do you like? 

  On 5/17/2023 at 2:14 PM, auxien said:

that's why i brought up the guitar feedback thing...it's like being able to highly and expertly control guitar feedback in a highly musical way and more directly than just raw open feedbacking. could get really interesting after some more development.

Most of the commercial products that use electromagnetic feedback like this have been really guitar oriented (the original electromagnetic sustainers that use a mechanically coupled driver were patented over 100 years ago and designed for Hawaiian slack key players, and as far as I know the eBow was the first commercial product that drove the string itself, although the exact same principle has been used for spring reverbs since at least the 1940s).

I jsut found out about this while I was checking to see if there were any commercial keyboard instrumnts that drove the strings with electromagnets out there.  It's not commercial but it's pretty cool:

Composers have been driving piano strings with electromagnets since the 50s at least but this is a whole other level of it.

This is all reminding me of back around 2004 when I wanted to convert a turntable into a delay by mounting a disk with some kind of tape-like magnetic coating on the platter and using two linear tracking arms on opposite sides with tape heads where the styluses would normally be, and simple mechanical controls to move them across the radius of the platter. Sort of like a cross between an Echoplex and the Drum Buddy.  I didn't have any electroncis experience at all back then, though, and now that I do I don't have easy access to dozens of free (or at least $50-$10) turntables anymore.

@TubularCorporation

So you basically like vintage stuff? Me too

btw… i have something you like:

  On 5/17/2023 at 2:14 PM, auxien said:

that's why i brought up the guitar feedback thing...it's like being able to highly and expertly control guitar feedback in a highly musical way and more directly than just raw open feedbacking. could get really interesting after some more development.

That’s a pretty good analogy. Something acoustic sets in motion a feedback loop in an electronic circuit. Only difference is in guitar feedback the feedback loop is maintained by the strings  picking up the sound from the speaker and feeding it back into the pickups and here it’s done electronically, in a kind of resonance circuit (like in filters).

If you listen to the demos, this is in fact exactly what it sounds like. First the tines are hit and you get a bell like sound and then you’re sustain which sounds like a sine wave (like resonance and guitar feedback).

  On 5/17/2023 at 4:04 PM, xox said:

So you basically like vintage stuff?

Not across the board, it's more that I favor a functional, humanist design philosophy and that has been out of fashion for the last 20 years or so.  

I also think it's hard to talk about functional design if you haven't used the thing hands-on (I haven't built a Lyra 8 yet but I made an exception for it.  Everytrhing else I posted is something that I have either owned or used extensively at some point.

I think the Hydrasynth is an amazing piece of design from what I've seen, but I haven't used one.  I really like the design of the Kilpatrick Phenol and the Linnstrument (even though I'm not a fan of grid cotnrollers in general, aesthetically or functionally). The DrumBuddy is a phenomenal piece of design but I didn't think you'd take it seriously in context.  I didn't include the OTO BAM because of it's retro-ish aesthetic, I included it because I've had one for a few years and it has oen of the fastest, most intuitive interfaces of any piece of gear I've handled in my life.  I actually think their visual designs are a bit gimmicky, maybe even borderline ugly, but as a tool that you need to physically interact with they're exceptional. Kind of how I feel about Elektron stuff, it's ugly but it's so natural to use that once you spend some time with it the underlying elegance of the design comes out - it's designed for your hands, not your eyes.  A bit less so with the newer, square-button stuff. 

I'm struggling to think of musical equipment from the last 30 years that comes anywhere near the quality of design that goes into the average gamepad, though.

Of all the things I posted, the IBM Model M is easily the best and most important.

I was thinking about it a litte (because this is one of my sort of pet issues) and I think this is a good analogy for what bugs me about the new milled-aluminum TE designs:

is to

as

is to

A few more examples of good design and then I can't put off work any longer:

(Visually I think the earlier, sharp-cornered models up to Hero 4 are nicer, but rounding it off is definitely a better functional design since those sharp corners were a stress point so the newer, rounded models should be less likely to break).

(I've never used a Blackmagic controller so my opinion might change after I felt the buttons and jog wheel, but in terms of layout and visual design it's excellent).

musical instrument design has all been downhill since this tbqh

$7,000 TE bone flute when 

  On 5/17/2023 at 8:30 PM, auxien said:

musical instrument design has all been downhill since this tbqh

Meh. The single reed(tm) upgrade from 10,000 BC made it possible to play  square waves and not just sines, so that was kind of cool.

Tiptop Audio's new proprietary connection for Eurorack is legit LOL. Esp. when he has to explain how this is somehow different from MIDI.

  On 5/17/2023 at 9:24 PM, Limo said:

Meh. The single reed(tm) upgrade from 10,000 BC made it possible to play  square waves and not just sines, so that was kind of cool.

 

 

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need a wavetable flute otherwise i just can't get into these days tho

  On 5/18/2023 at 2:21 AM, auxien said:

need a wavetable flute otherwise i just can't get into these days tho

Judging from Superbooth the wave table trend has passed and it’s now all about physical modeling so I guess it’s time to put a flute in your flute.

@Nil

yeah beautiful dictaphone

i could maybe place it on my coffee table and just watch the spinning “tape” reel spins

This wins everything

  On 5/19/2023 at 6:29 PM, Taupe Beats said:

This wins everything

 

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lol yes this was v good fun

been in love with my Peak since i got it about 3 years ago, but occasionally i'll see something like this vid and wonder if i want to jump up to the Summit. even more knobs and front-facing options for live manipulation. and obv more notes.