Drum machines, magazines and more!

Atmegadrum software released today

The Atmegadrum software is now available from the Soulsby Synths website. It turns the Atmegatron into a 16-part 16-step drum machine. It also features a global pitch LFO and individual instrument volumes and delay effects.

The default sample rate is a crunchy sounding 8kHz and this can be tweaked. Check out this YouTube video to hear it in action. There's an audio demo track on Soundcloud too.

In the near future there will be software to allow users to upload their own drum samples to the Atmegadrum.

Latest Atmegatron Reviews

If you've still not got an Atmegatron and want to know more about it, be sure to check out some of these reviews:

• Sound On Sound (June). "Paul Soulsby’s debut product is a small synth of violently unrestrained character."
• Future Music (June). "The unit is certainly fun to use and sounds as gnarly and unrefined as you would expect."
• Palm Sounds. An audio interview with Paul Soulsby and demonstration video.
• Sounds and Gear. A highly in-depth video review.

Soulsby Synths at Games Britannia

Soulsby Synths will be at Games Britannia Live! in Sheffield on 28th and 29th June. It's a family friendly video gaming and coding festival.

During the day there will be Atmegatrons out for people to play and visitors will have the opportunity to try sampling their own voice into the Atmegatron.

During the evening there is a "Chiptune Gig In The Garden". Soulsby Synths and _ensnare_ have teamed up and will be performing live. Be sure not to miss this!!!

Atmegatron Complete back in stock soon!

A limited run of Atmegatron Completes will be available in the second week of June. If you would like one of these please email the waiting list, as these have nearly sold out already!

Development is well underway with the miniAtmegatron DIY kit and Eurorack project. I hope to have more news on these projects in the next few weeks.

May 2014 News

Future Music review and demo

This months Future Music features a nice review of the Atmegatron (on page 94 to be precise!).  There's also some great demos on the DVD.  They demonstrate live sound creation on the Atmegatron, as well as providing a preview of some of the upcoming software versions.

Palm Sounds interview

I was recently interviewed by Ashley Elsdon from Palm Sounds.  You can hear the interview here. It covers my own history with synthesizers and also the inspiration and development story behind the Atmegatron.
We also made a quick demonstration video of the Atmegatron, which will be available soon on the Palm Sounds YouTube channel.

Sounds and Gear review

JK from Sounds and Gear recently did an amazing review of the Atmegatron. Check it out here. The YouTube video is really in-depth and covers pretty much everything there is to know about the Atmegatron.

What's new at Soulsby Synthesizers

You may have noticed that we are currently sold out of Atmegatron Completes. There will be limited stock available at the end of this month (May). Add your name to the waiting list, to be certain to get one.
More progress has been made with the miniAtmegatron kit and also a new exciting Eurorack project.  Below is an enigmatic picture of the miniAtmegatron prototype working on my desk. The miniAtmegatron will eventually be in the form of an Arduino Uno shield that is a DIY kit.

The next Atmegatron software to be released will be The Atmegadrum.  A 16 part, 16 step drum programmable drum machine. This should be available by the end of next week.

Atcyclotron software released today!

The Atcyclotron: Turn your Atmegatron into a brand new synth! 

The Atcyclotron software is the first major alternative software release for the Atmegatron. It turns the Atmegatron into a wavetable cycling synthesizer. The key difference is that the sound now consists of 4 waveforms rather than one, which allows for more complex timbres to be created. It can do everything from grinding dubstep basses to bright modulated lead sounds.

The Atcyclotron source code can be downloaded from the downloads page.

Check out this YouTube tutorial to see how to upload the software and to hear the Atcyclotron in action.

You can also hear the sounds of the Atcyclotron in this Piney Gir remix.  All sounds (apart from vocals) are created by the Atcyclotron. There is also a dry mix of it, so you can hear exactly what the Atcyclotron software is doing.

There will be more software versions over the coming months which turn your Atmegatron into a polysynth, drum machine and more!  

In other news...

We had a great Arduino Day last week demonstrating the Atmegatron at London Arduino and Furtherfield/Codasign. It was fantastic talking to so many people about the Atmegatron and I was also able to demo the prototype for a new DIY kit version of a mini-atmegatron. I hope to have it in production in a few months. Watch this space!

Giraffe Audio are now stocking the Atmegatron and I had the pleasure of visiting their impressive showroom last week. If you live in the Midlands (of the UK!) I recommend checking it out.

There are still a few Atmegatron Completes left from the first run. We still have stock of the PCBs too.  Here's the details:

• Atmegatron Complete. £255 + delivery + tax (customs duty outside the EU). Atmegatron housed in an aluminium case with beautiful walnut side panels. Comes with PSU, manual and quick reference card.
• Atmegatron PCB. £127 + delivery + tax (customs duty outside the EU). Atmegatron PCB with support pillars, PSU and quick reference card.

The Atmegatron is available online from Soulsby Synthesizers. Strictly limited supply.

Dates for the diary

There's now 3 exciting opportunities to try the Atmegatron coming up:

29th March - London Arduino

To mark Arduino Day, London Arduino are holding a day of workshops, demos and talks. The event is currently sold out, but there is a waiting list for return tickets. If you're lucky enough to get a ticket you'll be able to see the Atmegatron in action and can give it a test drive yourself!
London College of Communication
Elephant and Castle London, SE1 6SB

Update! 29th March - Furtherfield

Coinciding with Arduino Day 2014 Codasign and Furtherfield are organising a showcase of projects at Furtherfield Commons. The Atmegatron will be on display here too, so come along and make some 8-bit noise! The showcase is from 2.30-5pm.
Furtherfield Commons
330 Seven Sisters Rd
London N4 2PF

3rd April - Giraffe Audio launch week

If you're based in the Midlands, make sure you visit Giraffe Audio during their launch week (31st March - 4th April). They will have an Atmegatron on display and on the 3rd April I will be there too!
Giraffe Audio ltd
310b The Big Peg 
120 Vyse Street
Birmingham. B18 6ND

Atmegatron Latest News

Atmegatron selling fast!  Buy now to avoid disappointment!

It has been 2 weeks since the Atmegatron was launched and I have been frantically assembling and shipping units. Atmegatrons are now being used in the USA, Japan and Finland, to name just a few of the countries that I have been shipping to. I have been overwhelmed by the positive response that the Atmegatron has received so far. I hope to share some of these comments on the website soon.

Don't forget that the Atmegatron is available in 2 flavours:

• Atmegatron Complete

  £255 + delivery + tax (customs duty outside the EU). Atmegatron housed in an aluminium case with beautiful walnut side panels. Comes with PSU, manual and quick reference card.

• Atmegatron PCB

  £127 + delivery + tax (customs duty outside the EU). Atmegatron PCB with support pillars, PSU and quick reference card.

The Atmegatron is available exclusively online from Soulsby Synthesizers. Strictly limited supply.

Atcyclotron software out soon

The Atcyclotron software will be made available in 2 weeks time. It will be the first major alternative software version for the Atmegatron.

The Atcyclotron software allows the user to select 4 different waveforms, rather than just 1. These waveforms are then played in turn.  There are controls to set how many samples from each waveform are played and how many times they should loop. Here is a short clip of what it sounds like.

The Atcyclotron software really shows the Atmegatron's ability to change into totally different sounding synthesizers.
Why buy 1 synth when you can have ∞?

Atmegatron in action!

Be sure to check out Chicks On Speed on tour if you live in Australia. The Atmegatron is part of their live setup, so look out for it! Upcoming dates are:

• 20 March @Howler, Melbourne 
• 21 March @Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane 
• 5 April @Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle

There are also more Atmegatron demos by some exciting names in the pipeline.  Stay tuned to the demos page for those! You can also hear the Atmegatron factory presets on there too.

Soulsby Synthesizers - Atmegatron goes on sale today!

The Atmegatron. A powerful, unique, 8-bit monosynth.

The Atmegatron is a new 8-bit monosynth and the debut product from Soulsby Synthesizers. It's an electronic musician's dream, combining the sounds of 1980s home computers with the flexibility and power of a modern synthesizer. It adds a wide palette of new sounds to any studio setup and is also great for live use.

Features of the synth include: 32 waveforms, 15 digital filter types, 2 ADSR envelopes, 1 LFO with 16 waveforms, an arpeggiator with 15 patterns and loads of fx including phaser, distortion and the unique Wavecrusher. It also comes with 16 preset sounds and unlimited preset expandability via the Atmegatron Librarian software available for Mac or PC.

The Atmegatron is built on the open source Arduino platform. This means that the synthesis engine can be completely changed by uploading software to the synth. One minute it's a monosynth, the next it's a drum machine. Soulsby Synths will be releasing new and completely free software versions over the coming months.

Why buy 1 synth when you can have ∞?

The Atmegatron is available in two versions:

Atmegatron Complete - £255 ex VAT & delivery.

• Atmegatron Synthesizer
• Power Supply
• Printed 32 page colour manual
• Quick reference guide

The Atmegatron Complete is housed in a beautiful white aluminium chassis with real walnut side panels.

Atmegatron PCB - £127 ex VAT & delivery.

• Atmegatron Synthesizer PCB
• Power Supply
• Quick reference guide

The Atmegatron PCB comes with nylon pillars to keep the PCB raised from its resting surface. The PCB is perfect for programmers and hackers, but is not suitable for outside of the home due to its fragility.

The Atmegatron is available exclusively online at Soulsby Synthesizers. Strictly limited supply.

Downloads page goes live

As promised, the downloads page has gone live. This contains the Arduino source code, the Atmegatron Librarian software and more. Use the forum to ask questions and post suggestions about the source code.

Atmegatrance - behind the scenes

The latest Atmegatron demo is a collaboration between _ensnare_ (AKA nervous_testpilot AKA Paul Taylor) and Soulsby Synthesizers (AKA Paul Soulsby). The track was produced in 2 days (1 day record, 1 day mix) and uses only Atmegatron sounds and minimal plugin effects. This is an important demo as it provides an insight into one of the most important features of the Atmegatron: the ability to upload different software and turn it into a completely different synthesizer.

This sounds complex and daunting but is staggeringly straightforward. It just involves connecting 1 cable, opening the Arduino code (which will be available from the website), flicking 1 switch on the Atmegatron and clicking the upload button! I'll be posting a tutorial video this week that demonstrates this process.

Chords

The expandability of the Atmegatron proved useful right from the offset, as the first track recorded was the chord sequence. The Atpolytron polyphonic synth software was uploaded to the Atmegatron, so that chords could be played without multi-tracking. Hear the Atpolytron software in action below. (Synth nerds - this is strictly speaking a 4-note paraphonic synth, not polyphonic. I'll go into why the polyphonic software isn't the standard Atmegatron software another time).
Atpolytron chords

Drums

Next came the drums. We returned to the classic Atmegatron software and created some drum sounds that we could sample. We used classic analogue synth techniques to make the drum sounds, e.g. pitch envelope on a sine wave for the kick, filter envelope and low pass filter on a noise wave for the snare etc. The high pass filter was used for the high hat and shaker. We also experimented with the Atmegadrum software, which turns the Atmegatron into a sampling drum machine. This didn't make the track, but you can be sure that there will be a lot more about this software in the near future. [edit: turns out that the Atmegadrum did make it into the track, it's just low in the mix.]
Atmegatron drum sounds

Bass

For this we experimented with the Atcyclotron software. This is wavetable cycling synthesis software and can generate sounds similar to the PPG Wave. Instead of using just 1 waveform you use 4 and a number samples from each waveform are outputted in turn. After we created a bass sound we then created sounds for breaks and drops by playing around with the wavetable cycling parameters.
Atcyclotron bass and fx

Leads

We then returned to the classic Atmegatron software for the remainder of the track. We recorded 2 different lead riffs using a variety of sounds, sometimes adjusting parameters like filter cutoff and LFO frequency live. Numerous of the Atmegatron's parameters are controllable via MIDI Controller messages and we made use of this to add portamento between certain notes.
Atmegatron lead sound
With all the key parts in place, it was time for Paul Soulsby to crack open a Smirnoff Ice and for Paul Taylor to thrash him at Speedball II.

FX and mix

The remainder of the day was spent recording fx and fill sounds. You can hear a riser sound below. This makes uses of the "Dugga Duh" LFO shape. This is synced by the MIDI clock, to keep it in time with the track.
Atmegatron riser sound

Paul (Taylor) then arranged and mixed the track the next day and gave it that classic _ensnare_ "massive banger" treatment! However he didn't use any plugins other than basic compressors, eqs, delays and reverbs and didn't add any additional sounds, so the track is still 100% pure Atmegatron.

Summary

I don't want to detract too much attention from the awesome software that ships with the Atmegatron, but I hope that its ability to change into completely different synths will eventually become a major part of the Atmegatron's appeal. When you buy an Atmegatron you don't get 1 synthesizer, you get ∞ synthesizers!