New Alternative Atmegatron Software

There's now an alternative firmware version for the Atmegatron on the downloads page. This adds LFO delay and attack to the standard Atmegatron engine and is controlled by the filter cuttoff and resonance knobs in green mode. Many thanks to Rio for these additions. You can see his full explanation on the forum.

Superbooth 2021

So I got back from Berlin on Wednesday last week 1 day late and very tired! I had failed to fill in a required form and attempted to do it on the Eurostar platform, but the UK form is like War and Peace and I failed to complete it in time. I also ended up spending £110 on Day 2 COVID tests (first company scammed me, despite being on the official government list). I have a suspicion that the travel stress won't go away post-COVID. I think a lot of this is Brexit-related too. Sigh.

Superbooth was fantastic fun despite all the travel worries and it was great to chat to so many people. Overall I think the new ATX colour-scheme was a success. The audio demos seemed to go down well too. You can hear them on my Instagram account. I did some video interviews/demos which I'll link to below, but I want to mention a couple of things that I couldn't explain in the chaotic environment of Superbooth!

• I wasn't able to show as many features as I would have liked. I made a decision back in July to do a complete software rewrite of the protocol that makes all the parts of the synth talk to each other. This was a massive undertaking and I worked on it all day every day, right up until Superbooth. I managed to complete enough to do an audio demo of the Atmegatron, Atmegadrum and Piano engines, but there's still more to do now that I'm home. There's also the Odytron (analogue modelling), Delayerton (delay effects), Cyclotron (wavetable cycling), String machine and new Bezier engine to convert to the new protocol. There's also a lot more MIDI sequencer functionality to add. I will do more videos as this is completed.
• I had a power supply issue that I was unable to fix before the event. This resulted in a slight amplitude modulation of the entire audio output. I decided that it sounded fine through the speakers in the hall, but it's definitely audible on the video interviews using the direct input. I've been told by several people that the audio was fine for the interviews, but I thought full disclosure would be the most honest thing to do. Obviously this issue won't be in the released product!!

So here's the videos (in the order that they were shot!)

Synth Anatomy

Lesindes

Sonic State

I am very grateful for all the positive support at Superbooth and it has really fired me up to finish this project off. So I hope to be bringing you more videos, audio demos and information about the ATX range in the coming weeks.

New gwEm video

I had a delightful chat and cup of tea with gwEm the other day. We chat about synths, chiptune, MSXs, Amigas and much more. You can find the video on his channel here. His channel covers an array of interesting subjects such as his Atari tracker, vintage drum machines and samplers, tutorials and jams. I highly recommend checking it out!

New Easy Uploader version for OSX 10.14 and above

I've finally managed to update Easy Uploader so that it works on OSX 10.14 and above. Here's the link. It's also available on the downloads page.

Please also make sure that you have the latest driver for your FTDI cable installed. They're available on downloads page or via the FTDI website. There's also a new Beta version available for OSX 10.15 and above on the FTDI website. I have yet to test this with Easy Uploader. If you have OSX 10.14 and above and try this driver please do get in touch to let me know if it works!