In search for an old Kraftwerk Reason Refill I´ve lost…
… I came across this intriguing and inspiring site.
Some years ago I had quite a nice Kraftwerk refill that I lost in transfer between laptops 
and searching through the old sources I soon realized that refill was nowhere to be found, but to my great surpirise I came acroos the original author again and actually managed to download some of those refills again and being such a nice person I of course would like to share it with all of you guys 
Take a look at this Kraftwerk/Apple/Widgets/VST multimedia artist and enjoy…
This months VST – Memorymoon
MemoryMoon v1.3 VSTi-AMPLiFY
Memorymoon is inspired by the clic synthesizers. The
sound is powerful. It has 6 voicecards with 3 oscillators,
noise oscillator, amp and 2 filters. Settings above 5V in
the mixer introduces overdrive.
Features include: 6 voice unison. Osc sync. Many envelope
curves. Graphic envelopes. Arpeggiator and trancegate. Hold
function. LFO, Voice-LFO, and Delay-time can be synced to
host clock or to tapped tempo. You can tap tempo with a
sustainpedal or with a button.
There is “voice-card drift” settings for tune, amp, filter
cutoff and pulse width. So each voice-card can sound
slightly different. It is also possible to play soundfonts
and drum-loops in wav-format. This is intended for live
performance.
Here’s where you can download it >>
Rozzbox – monophoner Hybridsynthesizer
You just have to listen to this little machine.
Go to Rozzbox home page and click on the mp3 demos – it is so nice and retro.
Well what is it;
“Die “RozzBox” V2 ist ein monophoner Hybridsynthesizer mit beachtlichem Funktionsumfang. ”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6pLpIAxnw]
KORG lunchbox synth
For those of you who haven´t seen this already
Crammed a digital delay, spring reverb and function generator into a lunchbox. The fact that it says korg is sort of a synth geek joke. _ Big thanks go out to tonepad.com and generalguitargadgets.com for being such great resources for this beginner. All boards etched by me using press-n-peel blue and RadioShack etchant.
audio samples are here for all settings full and here for a little restraint
Prophet'08 and Akai MPC released at NAMM
Prophet ’08 Synthesizer Module
A beauty!!
The Prophet ’08 Synthesizer Module is a tabletop “knobby” module with all of the features and controls of the Prophet ’08 Keyboard (minus the keyboard, of course) in an even more compact enclosure. Includes rack ears for optional rack-mounting. The eight-voice synthesizer with the completely analog signal path brought to the table features like velocity and aftertouch as well as an arpeggiator, gated stop sequencer, and split and layer sounds.
Akai MPC5000
The MPC5000 is the first MPC ever to include 8-track streaming hard disk recording, a 20-voice, 3-oscillator analog synthesizer with arpeggiator, a new sequencing engine with 960 ppq resolution, pad and track muting and mixing, 64 continuous sample tracks. There’s even a new FX engine with 4 FX buses and 2FX per bus.
In addition, the MPC5000 features a 64-voice drum/phrase sampler with 64MB memory Ð expandable up to 192MB. The display is twice the size of the MPC2500 and MPC1000 so waveforms appear crystal-clear. Integrated Chop Shop 2.0 now supports stereo chops and Patched Phrases. The MPC5000 is the first MPC to include Random and Cycle sample playback in addition to velocity Zone Play. A turntable preamp is also included.
The MPC5000’s virtual analog synth eliminates need for external analog synth modules or buggy software based synthesizers. The new 8-track direct to disk recorder lets you produce your whole song in the MPC and then mix it down with the internal sequenced programs and any input thru material. Add the optional CD/DVD drive and you can then burn an audio or data CD or your mix. Over 650MB of premium-quality sounds from Loopmasters are included to get you up and running with pro-quality production in seconds.
New vocoder from VirSyn – listen to it here
VirSyn has announced the release of MATRIX – The Voice Coder, “The Vocoder for the 21st century.”
And it sounds pretty cool too, listen for youselfs, LOL
MATRIX sets a new milestone in the long history of Vocoders started by Homer Dudley in 1936. This new application provides precise analog modelling 8-pole filters and extremely fast envelope followers for unprecedented resynthesis quality.
Additional features include: New voiced/unvoiced detection and pitch extraction algorithms for high intelligibility. Stereophonic synthesis filter bank preserves the spatial characteristic of the replacement signal.
More about MATRIX and sound demos:
www.virsyn.de/en/E_Products/E_MATRIX/e_matrix.html
Features
– 32 channel filter bank.
– stereophonic synthesis.
– voiced/unvoiced detection
– Pitch tracking
– Formant shift
– Pause filling
– Channel matrix
– Pan position and level for each channel.
– 16 internal oscillators.
– Easy user interface.
Host compatibility
– VST 2.4
– AudioUnit
– RTAS
Minimal system requirements PC
° Pentium IV 1.6 Ghz processor or Athlon XP/MP
° Windows XP
° USB port required for Syncrosoft copy protection device
° 16-bit Soundcard with DirectX/ASIO driver
Minimal system requirements Mac
° PowerPC G4/G5 1.6 GHz / Intel Mac
° Mac OS X version 10.4
° USB port required for Syncrosoft copy protection device
KikAxxe – faithful emulation of a classic ARP AXXE synthesizer
Nice little new synthesizer to play around with.
Built from the same award winning analog modeling technology used for TimewARP 2600, KikAXXE delivers a fat analog sound and much more.
In addition to the faithful emulation of a classic ARP AXXE synthesizer, KikAXXE includes a 16 step analog style sequencer, a drum machine and a modeled tape delay. All in all, KikAXXE is a blast to use.
Download a 30 day trial here >>
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTn__bAsuYc]
Gladiator from Tone2
Seems like we have to wait until Xmas to see this beauty in action on Mac – can´t wait
Advanced HCM (new synthesis), FM, AM, PWM, sync, phase modulation, Vocoder sounds, waveshaping, distortion, supersaw, additive sounds, resynthesis sounds, phase distortion sounds, sample playback, 30208 waveforms, 18 OSCs per voice, 40 different stereo filters, 20 effects, real stereo, 162x oversampling, programmable ARP & Step LFO/trancegate, BPM syncable, microtuning, EQ, modular routing
Gladiator is the biggest Tone2 project so far.
You need (must) to listen to it …
Really good sounding electro >>
C=iao
Introducing the Atari Punk Keyboard
Well who hasn´t dreamt endless nights wishing for Santa to put one of these goodies in your xmas stocking. Some fine tuning though and I believe we have a killer mass market product, LOL
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIDqMIzRdk]
Nostalgia – Casio SK1 Sampler Keyboard
The Casio SK1 was once the cheapest sampler in the world. Now that some software samplers are available for free off the internet and magazine cover CDs, the SK1 probably doesn’t qualify for that title anymore.
The sampling was 8-bit and with a bandwidth of around 4kHz (compared with CDs’ 16-bit, 20kHz bandwidth), it’s fair to assume that you know what to expect of the sound quality – distinctly low lo-fi !
It offered a handful of sampled instrumental sounds stored in ROM but its main appeal was its ability to sample. Of course, with such poor sample quality, it was another of those novelty ‘toys’ like the Stylophone and Casio’s own VL-Tone.
There was little you could do with the sound once you’d sampled it but there were thirteen preset envelope shapes you could apply to the sample along with portamento and vibrato. Interpolation was also poor and so sounds (preset or sampled) didn’t transpose well but that only added to their ‘character’. There was no way to store your sample which was lost when you switched the SK1 off!
Naturally, the keyboard was not velocity sensitive but neither was there was any MIDI to play the sounds with velocity from an external keyboard to overcome that limitation.
The SK1 also came with ‘drum’ sounds in ROM which were required for the auto-accompaniment function.
The SK1 is used by Fatboy Slim, Beck, Autechre, Portishead and Blur (amongst other lo-fi enthusiasts) who favour it even today, presumably for its lo-fi, crusty sound quality.
Louis van Dompselaar has kindly donated the entire soundset from his own SK1. The samples were taken from the line out and Louis deliberately powered the thing off batteries to eliminate mains hum. There is a distinct DC ‘thump’ at the start of each of the preset instruments but this is apparently a ‘feature’ of the real thing! There are eight presets and all but one are presented ‘authentically’. However, the ‘Voice’ preset has been run through Antares Infinity looping software to create quite a beautiful and ethereal pad sound which, despite its humble origins, sounds quite classy and ‘expensive’.
The SK1’s drum samples are also included in Nostalgia which Louis has extracted from the patterns. Most bear little or no relationship to their acoustic counterparts but they are interesting metallic electronic percussion sounds nonetheless that could find a place in any number of musical genres.
DATAMASKIN
