Messe: Creamware's cheap digital Arp Odyssey

Moogulator has a great scoop on this, the latest Creamware ASB box. The Prodyssey is a digital recreation of the Arp Odyssey in a fantastic-looking fader-covered box, which should sell for £600-ish. The rest of the range includes a Minimoog, a Prophet 5 and a Hammond B4. They're basically a VST plugins transformed into hardware, which is a wonderful idea. I really hope they're selling well.

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

They certainly seem to be reselling well on ebay and the like.

# posted by

Doktor Future : 9:56 pm

is it just me, or does the fact that knobs dont move to the positions of stored patches seem even more egregious when they're sliders?

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:22 pm

egregious?? how about THIS for egregious!!!

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:32 pm

They're not "a VST plug-ins transformed into hardware", they're hardware DSP cards transformed into hardware DSP cards in boxes with wooden end cheeks and sliders that don't move to the position of stored patches.

I want one.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:13 pm

Yeah. Patch recall seems kinda silly when something has absolute positioned knobs and/or sliders. Do you think they could sell this ARP emulation for $100-200 cheaper if it was just the DSP and the interface... no patch storage, at all? I'd still want that.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:07 am

Personally, I'm excited to see this box. The other models in the series sound quite good (as did the original DSP plugins).

How is having non-moving faders make this unit any worse than say a Virus, or a Nord, or any number of classic analog synths with patch memory?

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:24 am

DSPs are just chips. it's software.

it's hardware running software that emulates hardware.

my brain hurts.

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:41 am

what about the patch leads? it should have patch leads surely? like that mini-korg ms10 controller

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:12 pm

Didn't mean to suggest I wanted automated faders. I love digital synths (like the Nord, etc.). I just meant that if you're going to have the interface of a machine that couldn't store patches, why not just let the sliders and knobs be your patch storage?

There's nothing wrong with patch sheets. Plus, if you could do a MIDI snapshot of the patch to an external device... there's some storage.

I like, when using analogs like those that these are attempting to recreate, that you can never 100% recapture a previous sound.

That's all I was suggesting: cheaper hardware that is a little more basic... just the settings that you can see and MIDI in/out/thru. That would be fun. :)

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:07 pm

Yes, but...

How fricking cool would it be to have a synth with flying faders? They can't cost much these days... Didn't one of the big ol' vintage polyphonics have motorised knobs?

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 3:13 pm

Twelve note polyphonic.
Did I just say 12 note polyphonic?
I meant TWELVE NOTE POLYPHONIC.

That's why a digital Odyssey is a good idea.

Sliders should not be any more painful than knobs for editing patches. I hope they give a choice of 'jump to value' and 'change on pass though old value'.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:24 pm

If this is what software piracy has led to, then three cheers for software piracy, and long live Creamware.

It's nice to have some real boxes to play with rather than mousing around, regardless of the knob positions.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:22 am