New Critter and Guitari Organelle hardware updates

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New stuff:

• Built-in Speaker
• Built-in Microphone
• Battery Power
• MIDI Jacks

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I’ve been wanting an Organelle for a while now, and the new version looks crazy-good, but I don’t really like the speaker and the extended size that goes with it. It also has twice the RAM though, so I’m not sure I should get this one or the older version…

To Organelle users : have you ever feel that the RAM limitation was an issue? I’m not into crazy stuff I believe, just polyphonic synth and external processing.

The updates make this very intriguing to me, especially the battery power. I have not kept up on all of the patches, or updates. Anyone who has one, what are your favorite patches and or features?

Oh nice!

Nice promo vid

And after me acting all cool in another thread earlier today about how I’m pretty happy with my gear these days and very little comes out to tempt me… This update addresses everything that put me off getting one in the past.

Fun promo too.

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Actually amazing promo vid.

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I can understand why they’ve added microphone and speaker and battery , the market now expects it as op-z , volca has speaker , small portable things have speakers , but personally I think speakers in these devices sound bad and I’d rather have more cpu/ stuff for studio.
If I use anything portable I use headphone.
When I’ve had volcas, circuit etc I don’t think I ever used speaker.
it does show continued commitment to the platform though , and that price point is getting more competitive.

I’d like one but I’d barely use it.

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To Organelle users : have you ever feel that the RAM limitation was an issue? I’m not into crazy stuff I believe, just polyphonic synth and external processing.

Not until I started playing with Orac, where you’ll likely run into the processor/RAM ceiling as soon as you build anything reasonably complex. In my opinion, just about everyone with an Organelle should be spending time making music with (and/or contributing modules to) Orac, and just about everyone using Orac will benefit from these upgrades. It’s a clear win. I feel weird about the form factor (the speaker actually seems like it will be pretty good, to be fair), but I wouldn’t hesitate to say this revision is a clear choice over Mk 1 for literally everything else. The TRS midi jacks are a huge plus for me - as a USB MIDI host, the Organelle Mk 1 rarely plays well with your computer/DAW without a lot of fiddling or some additional purchase.

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right, i’ve fire in my belly now to upgrade my olde worlde organelle to fit a Raspberry Pi 4B 4gb inside, utilise the organelle UI, add a microphone, midi DIN, battery and NO SPEAKER.

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I just saw that the new one is raspberry pi 3+ , just as 4 gets released.

I wonder if you could swap a 4 into it.

Thank you very much for your answer! I followed the whole Orac thing from afar and that’s kinda what I expected, the new Organelle seems to be perfect for building crazy stuff with it. The MIDI thing is very cool too but I heard that the Organelle and the Digitakt get along together pretty well with MIDI over USB feature so the dedicated ports are not essential for me (I’m a DAWless person). Still a tough call tho, I’ll probably wait to see how low the used prices get.

Anyway thank you again. :slight_smile:

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Just ordered it. This will officially be my third piece of hardware (after the DT & DN of course). I feel like such a GAS hipster.

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Best product video ever!
I never felt the need to use orac for more complex patches though. I’m actually overwhelmed by the amount of different synths, samplers and fx of the normal Organelle. Mainly using the fx for sound mangling.
But nonetheless it’s a great update.

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I got the “old” one this year and it was always very awkward for me, to have such a little self contained unit that can only be powered with a power cable. Especially when also having the OP-1 sitting next to it.

But in the end I wouldn’t trade portability for a larger size, a speaker that I wouldn’t use and a higher price…

I’m actually kinda curious about the speaker… sometimes little speakers have some character that can even be worth micing. They’ve made an amp and I think a eurorack speaker in the past although I have no clue what people really thought of those products. If I had to guess its probably better than any other portable synths built in speakers but really that ain’t saying much as a 20$ bluetooth speaker is normally better than the built in ones. I think maybe more importantly if the speaker is decent it really does help make it a more social instrument, built in mic even more so… it probably would be a fun thing to have around just for messing about when company is over.

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Yea, I have Volcas, the Op-1 & K.O. Always thought the speakers were stupid until I was at a friends house with my Op-1, there was no speakers to plug the Op-1 into, so I was like YES! So glad this has a speaker.

The Op-1 speaker isn’t great, but it’s not too bad either. Good enough for us to jam out & have a little fun.

I guess it just depends on how many times you’re in a situation like that & how good the speaker is.

Mic’ing the speaker is a good idea, I think I’m going to play around with that. The Op-1 speaker def has character

Hmmm … are you really sure the Pi 4B will fit in there? The new organelle uses a Compute Module 3+ and the old one uses a similar form factor from a different manufacturer … that’s quite different to a Pi 4B in all dimensions + connectivity.

I was wondering this as well. I used to have a pocket piano, and the speaker was pretty good. So if it’s on that level then I think it should be good, considering the size.