The Neuron completes a quartet of impressive drum voices for
me, sitting pretty next to ALM Busy Circuit’s Dinky’s Tako
(click HERE for my video), the Hexinverter Mutant Machine
(featured in a Future Music magazine feature from me next
month) and the Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas (video
coming next year from me, but believe me it can punch holes in
walls that one). The Neuron is an FM based all in one drum
voice which is capable of kicks, hard FM hits, snares and all
sorts of quirky custom made percussion sounds. Interestingly
it’s core oscillator waveform is a sample direct from a Roland
TR-909 and it then uses an FM oscillator with a pure sine for
modulation. The on board envelopes are super fast and are
percussion tuned (I imagine that means extra exponential decay
curves) and it also has on board saturation and distortion
options. I haven’t had my hands on one yet, but I hopefully will do soon and it will feature in some videos in the coming months. Click HERE for the Audio Damage site with video demos and all the info.
Over the hills and far away a new delay has come out to play! Ok so corny crappy Teletubbies reference but the little cartoon blob reminded me of kids TV. With the kids TV brain-fart out of the way … New company Alright Devices has released Chronoblob which is a digital delay module that can sync to external clocks or work at it's own variable rate. There's 4 CV inputs for Time, Feedback, Sync (the tempo input) and Hold. The feedback is an OTA-based analogue circuit and can be pushed up to beyond unity gain for near-infinite decay or harsh saturating feedback … and I love a bit of that! There's a couple more features to set it apart including a send and return for processing the delay. The hold input will freeze whatever is in the audio buffer, which is sure to encourage all sorts of glitches and stuttering FX and there's still a few more features so check out the unit on the Alright Devices website HERE.
Ok so shameless plug, I have a new sample pack out. Well it's not really samples but a set of patches and instruments for Ableton Live. I know for many who are into modular and hardware this won't be of much interest so I won't say too much. But Ableton Synth Instruments provides 10 macro rack instruments for super simple use. 8 macros knobs all scaled and routed to provide maximum flexibility for getting to your own customs sounds quickly. There's additive synthesis, analogue style poly stuff, FM, physical modelling strings, and a custom pad designer and loads more. Click HERE to check it out. Click HERE to check out it's predecessor 'Bass Instruments'.