Thanks! I appreciate the vote of confidence. And who knows? I might try my hand at it. I’m glad I didn’t go this year. But it wouldn’t be that much trouble for me to get out to Anaheim next year.
As for this one in particular, I’m pretty sure everyone who approaches the team at Superbooth will bring up their problems with proprietary cartridges. They did it on the stream.
Yeah, I get that he thinks it’s cool. But I don’t know man, Nintendo doesn’t even use cartridges anymore. They use good old micro SD cards that you can pick up everywhere.
Which says a lot about his approach to product design, I’m afraid. I guess we’ll discover similarly questionable design choices in the rest of the product, too.
Here’s the main points (from auto-translated captions):
Overview:
Release via Kickstarter in October, available early 2024
€ 600 - €800 (depending on success of Kickstarter)
10 voice polyphonic mono-sampler (they don’t say how many voices, in the video you can hear only 2)
48kHz, 16-bit sampler engine
“analog-style”, i.e. one function per knob, 90% of the functions are available with a dedicated control, the rest is available via shift, menu seems only for configuration
portable: 2.2kg, built-in-battery, lasts for 4 hours (charged via USB)
100 MB of internal memory (18min, the cartridge can extend that, and it can stream directly from the cloud)
there will be a simple sample editor in the WOFI where you can set start and end, and normalize the sample
Connections
DIN-MIDI in/out/thru
CV/Gate: Gate in/out, CV in/out, mod out (whatever that is), you can route any parameter to CV
Audio in/out (2xStereo, 6.35mm TS)
USB: for power, MIDI, but no USB audio (yet) (he claims that is a problem because there is no standard, which is weird because there is class-compliant audio interfaces, but the translation may be off there). You can use USB for transferring samples apparently
Sync in/out
Headphone out (3.5mm TRS)
Speaker (“in case you forgot your headphones”)
microphone is for sampling (you can also sample through line-in, of course)
WiFi
card slot for custom cards (apparently they consider providing an adapter for SD cards in the future)
Sound (on the panel from left to right)
Emulation:
emulation is not aimed to be realistic, more like an effect
emulation has “presets” (e.g. some classic Japanese 8-bit and 12-bit samplers)
there are 5 parameters you can tweak to create your own effects (including sample rate and bit rate)
Samples can be pitched, stretched (IRCAM gave them a library for innovative time-stretching), there is a glitch control also
Play modes: one-shot, loop, reverse, “boomerang”
Envelope: ADSR, can be assigned to filter, amp, or both
Filter is digital (12 or 24db), not modeled after an existing filter
Texturer: is the granular effect (“granular shimmer”) with controls for grain size, grain density, effect depth, chaos is the grain stealing algorithm (starts with first-in-first-out, turning it up increases the randomness of stealing grains), mono or stereo
LFO (tri, pulse, saw), can be assigned to different parameters via learn, (one at a time), can be synced to clock
Sequencer
Monophonic 16-step sequencer
Recording via keyboard
button for tapping the tempo
Automation: sequence (multiple?) parameters
Start and end point can be changed in real-time
you can play over the sequencer
Piano-roll visualisation (of notes)
Cloud Platform:
cloud-platform for sharing sounds is free, and not mandatory
There will be premium content, but no subscription
a dedicated button to turn WiFi on and off
you can save samples and patches, there is versioning, and apparently no size-limit
direct streaming from cloud is possible
you can access the cloud directly from the device (also via hot-spot from your mobile, of course), but there will also be a web interface for the browser
The rest:
extensive midi and CV routing, filtering, and processing, they say it’s designed for easy integration into a modular setup
they showed a plugin version of the Texturer (with more features), available at Kickstarter launch as a reward for backers, and for sale for 50 Euros afterwards
they aim to create more plugins and hardware products
Edit: added infos from the rest of the video and from the second video below, mostly about cloud, price, emulation, USB,
No, it means simply they did not model it after an existing filter. Can you imagine analog filters for 10 voices (according to the article) in a device for €600?
What is interesting about the new video is that apparently you can create your own sampler emulations. The sampler “emulations” have 5 parameters, including bit rate, sample rate, and they expose those parameters, so you can create your own effects. It’s a nice idea,
I find the limitation of the Texturer to 8 grains is a bit low, compared with other granular samplers. I think the GR-1 (~€850) can do about 1000 grains or so, and you can use it as an effect on external signals, too.
I’m confused at 10 note polyphony but a mono sequencer. But it’s past my bed time so maybe I’m just out of it. I’m intrigued, though. Especially for 600 bucks.
Are they working on an Emulator II clone? All I found in a quick search was rumours.
But now I wonder, is it possible to play the AR polyphonically via a Blokas Midihub using
the Dispatcher pipe and some “clever” programming? If all tracks were set up with an identical sound (same sample ans same parameter settings, and noise or nothing as analog machine), that would give you up to 12 8 voices with analog filters for ~€ 600 (used).
A pity I sold my AR for the Syntakt, so I don’t have an excuse to order a Midihub.
