6/05/2008

Chimera BC16 mini synth review

After a week with the Chimera BC16, here's what I'm thinking...
The good bits:
1. Looks great, and feels fantastically well made.
2. Intuitive, fun, educational interface. You'll learn more about how synths work in a few hours with this than with years of VST plugins. My 5 yr-old son immeditately fell in love with it, making helicopters and sirens and turning the sound down, randomly turning knobs, then turning it up to see what came out. Nothing is labelled, so you have to listen.
3. It makes a huge range of noises. The digital multi-waveform oscillator will annoy purists, but it's versatile. A reasonably effective two-oscs-in-one system can sound pretty fat.
4. It's a quirky, unique synth, hand made in Britain and absolutely in the lineage of EMS, EDP, OSCar.
5. The sound is immediate, ballsy and gritty. Huge bass, huge brightness.
6. It's absolutely a real synth, not a toy. Compared with the Tenori On, this is a real (if simple) instrument. It makes any sound you can patch, not a bunch of presets.
6. It has no blue LEDs, but several red and green ones.
7. It's totally self contained - 6xAAA batteries last a few evenings. There is a power supply on the way (soon).
8. In theory, they can make these in any colour, including clear. That will be hot.
9. It's £136 shipped - the price of a Squier strat or an effects pedal, cheaper than many soft synths. The price is crucial, because it makes most of the other issues irrelevant.
The bad bits:
1. It's really hardware in Beta (track the updates on their blog). If you can wait a year, I think Chimera will either be out of business (and BC16s worth a fortune on eBay), or shipping a more refined version.
2. The output from the 1/8th inch headphone output is super hot, and fairly noisy. To get the best sound for recording, you need to make a mini banana plug -> 1/4 inch cable and take the sound direct. (They gave me one for this review and will be selling them soon)
3. The MIDI is being debugged as I write - barely works on mine, but should be much improved on the models being shipped now. If you can't imagine using it without midi, it's possibly not for you (yet).
4. There are a tonne of digital artefacts from the oscillators. I think it's cool, but if you're looking for silky analogue tone, buy a Moog Voyager at 14 times the price. Similarly, you're unlikely to write a love sonnet about the filter.
5. Delivery is flaky at the moment.
6. It's a perfect portable synth, but if you pull one out on a bus (let alone a 'plane), someone will call the bomb squad.
My recent computer woes mean I can't post any new sound samples, but the tried and tested 'loop random squiggles and add breakbeats' method was fun while it lasted.

11 comments:

  1. has anyone else besides music thing actually gotten one of these things yet?
    please post here if you have received yours or if you are still waiting (forever) like me.....

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's at least one other in the wild... http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3095590#3095590

    ReplyDelete
  3. Two things that make me a little nervous: searching flickr and youtube for "chimera bc16" brings up only Tom's photos and the manufacturer's videos. If the units were shipping in numbers I would expect there to be photos and video all over the shop.

    Also, Chimera's blog is starting to attract comments from irritated customers, though the company is responding to an extent. Honestly, page one line one of the Rules for Online Startups should be "people will wait if you communicate". I've seen so many companies focus exclusively on making and shipping the product and leave customers wondering what's going on -- which never works out very well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Man, I am so tempted to walk into their US office with a couple hundred bucks and see what happens.

    I was poking around on their site and their US "office" is about 3 miles from me, oddly enough.

    Although I do think it's just a house of a firend of the guy(s) who build them in the UK.

    Will report my findings.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
  5. " Man, I am so tempted to walk into their US office with a couple hundred bucks and see what happens."

    I don't think you'll find much. AFAIK, their US operation is just a forwarding/fullfillment house. The developer is convinced that in a while they'll have cleared the backlog and be shipping promptly. 'Soon'

    ReplyDelete
  6. I received an automated (I think) mail from the company yesterday giving an estimated shipping time, so it seems like they're gradually getting things going.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Here's another live-in-the-wild video (not by me):
    http://blip.tv/file/970372

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous10:39 pm

    I've ordered one and had a confirmation email (est. 22nd June). A friend's is apparently in the post...

    both UK

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. apologize if this is horribly wrong, but I'm a newbie to analog synth stuff and I was curious if this could be run through an Analogue Systems product like the French Connection?

    http://www.analoguesystems.co.uk/Reviews/fconnection_review.htm

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I have a BC16 !!!!!!!!
    Rad mini synth with massive balls!
    I had a small issue with it at first but super quick response from the company and under a 2 year warranty so if you have a problem dont worry.
    I had great internet communications fast and full of info.
    So turned out I had to send mine back to the UK
    but the turn around was surprisingly fast for the holidays

    lofifreq.com

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.