The Mono takes care of most of the beat, but not all.
Originally I wanted to find an excerpt better showcasing the pad potential of the BB - which is great - but ended up with this, ha ha, sorry
Have fun with your BB if you received it 
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People who are more knowledgeable than me can maybe answer my doubt: just by listening to the demos, why does this doesn’t sound as good as the Akemie’s Castle?
They are both based on the YMF262 chip. Yet from what I heard on YouTube the Akemie sound fantastic (the Taiko as well). The Blastbeats doesn’t sound that good. Why?
Is it the DA converter?
I received mine yesterday. I tried it maybe one hour or two.
I really like the synths, very textured in a good way. The vibrato, tremolo and wiggle allow to add a lot of movement in patches, it’s really satisfying.
Something I find a little annoying is the lack of screen when you want to edit a patch from a preset. It’s pretty confusing. But a catch value setting on the faders could fix this (or the value briefly shown with the top buttons like the wav or algo settings).
I got a Blast Beats mostly for the synths to add 4 voices of textured lo fi fm to my Digitone. About the drums, I think it’s interesting for sound design in a retrofuturistic aesthetic, it allows sound colors (it’s gritty, noisy, glitchy…) that Digitone can’t reproduce for example but don’t expect a real and deep kick that could be use alone in modern production.
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Most of the Akemie’s Castle demos are made with it in complement of a drum machine and are heavily processed.
Also, I suspect that ALM have put slighty overdrive, eq (to gain low range) and compression (to add snappiness) on the output of their module.
When I tried Blast Beats yesterday, I ended up to put the Oto Boum behind it. With a good distorsion and compression, it changes everything
I had a hunch that most of Akemie’s demos were processed, I couldn’t find a clean demo (where it’s clearly stated so).
If you feel like it, would you post a clip of the Blastbeats through the Boum? I’m really curious
Yes of course ! I’ll have some time during the rest of the week to do that
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The first play is unprocessed, on the second, Oto Boum is compressing and distorting everything.
I made this very quickly, I think I spend 30 minutes just on how navigate between banks and kits… 
(And I losed 2 or 3 times the kit I just made haha)
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this
it’s in my top 10 requests
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This time, I only used the 4 synths. Everything is sequenced by Octatrack and the output of BB is processed by Audiothingies Dr A and Oto Boum.
The large amount of noise is a choice of sound design, it’s not the noise floor of the device 
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Man this is great
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This being said, am I the only one to have saving issues with the BlastBeats?
Recently I spent quite some time editing a pattern but all my changes were lost the next time I turned the machine on. This is quite frustrating.
(I’m pretty sure I’m using the right procedure to save and could reproduce the issue several times in a row - I just don’t understand why saving works sometimes and sometimes not)
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Thanks !
About the saving issues, for the moment, I just made 5 patterns with its sequencer and everything was saved correctly. It’s more about kits saving that I’m confused… Sometimes, I have the feeling that some of the drums are high pitched (and shouldn’t) when I load a kit. Maybe it’s related to patterns automations that I forgot… I’ll do more test to be sure of what’s happening.
I’ve also noticed one bug when using in alternation and quickly “bend” and “freeze”, sometimes the patch stucks at a wrong pitch after a lot of bends (without recording )
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For saving issues, is it possible there’s an issue from not saving the kit as well as the pattern? Sometimes quite specific aspects of the oddly sequenced noises can be heavily determined by the kit.
Hey,
I don’t know if anybody had the same saving issues as me (nobody seemed to complain), but this was solved in FW 2.0!
Alex also added track shuffling (you can nudge the steps around) and unquantized recording, both of which are really welcome IMHO.
This is so cool!
I was really frustrated by the saving problem as I lost many good patterns due to that. Now I feel like working confidently again
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Encouraged by this, I resubmitted my feature requests to Alex
- Fader catch-up value
- Ability to change/define the note of a step after it has been created
- Ability to copy a step (in the same way as patterns and kits)
- Ability to copy non sequential sequencer pages in Length mode (e.g. copy page 2 on page 4, but not on page 3)
- Ability to reload/reset the kit by selecting it again in kit/patt mode
- Ability to “unwiggle” a single fader
- Routing presets (presets storing a whole output routing configuration, that you can change instantly)
- Exclusive outputs in routing mode
- Ability to set the speed of the Wiggle (not only its intensity) => e.g. hold Wiggle+Function and set the speed using Top buttons 1-10
- Ability to choose a waveform for the Wiggle (much like Tremolo and Vibrato)
Hopefully he will implement some of these over time
It’d take a bit of thinking to implement (2) in the UI and current workflow! Hold on the step maybe, to switch to pitch edit view.
I’m sad not to see more chat on this magnificent device!
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I’d like to post some bits one day but I’m overwhelmed with work at the moment.
And I hope Alex will end up brushing up the FW a bit soon.
On which: just seen, new firmware, 2.0!
Change Log
2.0
- New Features -
Pattern rotation (1 step at a time, forward or backward):
In step mode hold step, then press function for forward or kit/patt for backward.
Record/Punch with nudge (aka unquantified)
Hold rec and press tempo to toggle quantising on or off (default is on).
When quantising is off nudge is added to recorded steps, allowing to punch/record notes in-between steps.
- Fixes -
Fixed a bug preventing synth patterns to be saved under certain conditions
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Yeah, I’m a bit unfair, he did recently, which solved the issue I had with saving.
(in addition to the new (great) features you mention)