Phosphor Sneak Peak...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
I will put up some far more sophisticated demos, movies, the usual shit here in a few days, but here’s a little clip of the UI, and a very simple little sound clip.
[Embedded media, no longer available.]
Phosphor Test 1 by Chris Randall
In the audio example, there are two instances of Phosphor: one is playing the melody, and the other is doing bass chores. (Percussion is Axon, the “Dotted Rhythm” preset, and drums are Tattoo.)
As you’ve no doubt guessed from the screenshot and the audio demo, Phosphor is an additive polysynth. Rather than going whole hog like Chameleon5000, we went the other direction, and Phosphor is, for all intents and purposes, a clone of the alphaSyntauri in entirety. You see the little space invader switch next to the partials? Each section where it’s appropriate there is one of those, and it puts that section (and only that section, be it envelope, partials, noise) in to alphaSyntauri mode, where it sonically reverts to a much earlier computer music era.
I’ll explain more about this at the appropriate time, with audio and video examples, but suffice to say this is a fun little synth, and sounds like absolutely nothing else. Won’t be too long.
27 comments
sounds awesome!
YES!!! thanks for not doing another "subtractive/virtual analog(ue)" - the world has enough of those. i've dug the sound and possibilities of additive back to the land of the kawai k5 - not as old as your alphaS, but i'm not as old as you, either (almost...). :-)
sounds great, chris (and adam, to squeak in one more parenthetical)!
Stylin'!
If boobs is with this, I'm with boobs.
- c
Also: Retro switch on noise = pure win if it sounds anything like I'm picturing it.
I've always been a fan of more digital noise sources rather than white noise, from the S/H noise on Vember Audio's Surge to the Digital mode on Zebra 2's noise module.
It sounds _exactly_ like you think. When it's off, it's white noise. When it's on, it's shift register noise (which is exactly what you think it is, space invader noise) that is also modded by key position.
-CR
A+++!
Wow, i had forgotten all about the ol' alphaSyntauri. Good call on this one.
Wow, this looks like a lot of fun! I love how individual your plugs are.
Sounds interesting. I'm not sure whether I'd buy it though. At least not yet. But please release a 64 bit version. And than put your hands on EOS and make it 64 bit compliant as well.
I'm with Chad.
IS IT PROTOOL RT-ASS COMPATIBLE?
Tired old joke aside, I was telling myself yesterday that I wouldn't be getting any new plugins for a long, long time. Clearly, I lied to myself, as I reckon I'll pick this up on the day it's released.
I'm with Puffer. Who's with Chad. We will likely all be with Boobs soon.
Excellent!
- Hugo
Very cool indeed.
i like the way this sounds like fun before even playing it.
can the space invader switch be switched with midi?
:#
Looks great, Sounds great - I want it 4 Christmas!
Yes, the space invader switches can be MIDI-learned.
-CR
Loving the green display.
Audio Damage is continuing to kick ass. I love the new GUI style, and emulating the alphaSyntauri is brilliant. I so wanted that synth back in 1982.
:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYDkGJmSfy0
Unopened? Are you psychic?
I bought the K5000s because of someone's bright idea here that it was smart to buy old synths to use as controllers. I've never had any kind of anything with a nice keyboard (because I can't really play) but this keyboard is really nice. So nice it's made me play more and get better at it.
Then I kind of fell in love with the synth. I'm not sure why, I never got into Chameleon5000, and never clicked with anything digitalish at all, but this made me realize I was just doing it wrong.
If anyone would like to step outside we can discuss it further.
bb
I'm dying to know how Adam came to receive a Monotron and how he came to return it unopened. There's gotta be a story, right?
It's like some kind of riddle!
- c
It's kind of my fault. I told him that the sounds he heard in that song I put up in the last post are the absolute limit of what the monotron can do (and then some, as I did a lot of post-pro work as well) and that it was very noisy.
Having been a spectator for his gear purchasing/selling habits for some time, I'll just mention that inscrutable are his ways, sometimes.
-CR
I can't understand returning a Monotron without trying it. Fucking fantastic filter in there.
However, I know Adam is pretty capable with a soldering iron. And the Monotron filter is just a handful of transistors and one FET - no hard to find components in there whatsoever. So he could probably put together a full on MS-20 filter section in an afternoon and slap it into a module, to go into his enormo system.
@bongo_x: I cheerfully concede the fight before it starts. I had the rack version; it didn't grab me. I bought it after they were discontinued and Sam Ash or some other dealer was blowing them out for cheap. Part of the problem, as I recall, is that it didn't have the same complement of panel controls that the keyboard had, and I found it tedious to work with. So I sold it.
@beauty_pill et al: it's not much of a story and certainly not a riddle, but since CR has described my ways as "inscrutable" I'll rise to the bait and disclose what little story there is. I ordered the Monotron just after CR received his. I ordered it late on a Friday so it took a week for it to arrive. I had several things in mind for it, besides the obvious applications. One notion was to build it into a module in my synthesizer, using just the filter. Another was to use its filter in conjunction with the wavetable-based digital oscillators I've been experimenting with lately, since hooking it to a breadboard would be more convenient than hooking a breadboard to a filter in my modular synth.
After I ordered it, a couple of things transpired. One was that CR messed with his, wrote a track with it, and decided along the way that it was noisy. That didn't bode well for any of my intended applications for it. Another was that I observed that I already have eight filter modules in my synth (nine, counting the filter bank) and probably don't need to add more filters. Also, I used to have the MOTM-420 filter, which is ostensibly a close reproduction of the MS-20 filter (one of the two, that is). It's the only SynthTech filter that I didn't like enough to keep, so I had to ask myself why I'd want to put a different, less-capable version of the same filter into my nearly-full cabinent. (OTOH the person who bought that module from me says he uses it more than any other filter in his synth, so mileages may vary.) On top of that, since the Monotron runs off a couple of 1.5V batteries it uses an LM324 op-amp, which is specifically designed for single-ended power supplies. My modular runs on the usual +/-15V dual supplies and hence I'd probably have to rebuild a substantial amount of the silly Monotron just to make it work properly in the system. (Doing that would probably lower its noise floor, but I digress.) So in short the idea of putting the Monotron into a module ended up looking like far more hassle than it would be worth to me.
So, when it arrived, I left it in its box and thought about it over the weekend. I watched the promo videos for it and decided that it wasn't something I was likely to use more than once. No offense intended to the people that have one and enjoy it, but it's just not something that I need and I already have enough clutter in this room. I briefly considered keeping it for its ribbon controller, but I already have a KP3, a Z1, and an iPad.
I guess I could have taken it out of the box long enough to give it a quick listen, but it seemed like it would be simpler to get a RMA for it if I could say that it was completely unused, unopened, etc. So that's what I did.
That's the long version of the story. The short version is that it was an impulse buy and by the time it arrived I realized that I didn't want it after all.
--Adam
Adam, I appreciate your full explanation. I will allow it.
Also, Phosphor needs to be released before Christmas.
I have spoken.
- c
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