I experienced the same thing. Killer deal on a SG, but the S8 was calling.
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Would love to hear some clips if you get chance to record and post something.
I’ll try. Maybe I’ll try recreating the Radiohead ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ tone. I have a patch on my P10 that is spot on. I’ll see how close it can get.
I’m doing it. I contacted the shop again and they are willing to do the discount on the 8 again.
For anyone after the Gemini, sounds like they might have the same deal on it this weekend too.
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Will be joining the club next week. Missed the cutoff (no pun intended) for delivery tomorrow by the time they responded.
@udo-audio where do I sign up for the extra voice upgrade?
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I’m a guitar player in remission, so here is my best take of a Prophet 5 double-tracked with the Super 8. Probably should have increased the sustain, but this was done in 5 mins.
Patch notes:
Watch the Alex Ball video to learn how the envelopes and what not are set. Use drive setting 1 or 2. Load the same patch into each performance layer and pan them hard left(lower), hard right(upper). That creates the double-track sound. This is why I bought the Super 8. Not interested in arpeggios over chords!
Non-binaural mode for both.
I’ll say, the Super 6 didn’t hit the same character as my P5 on this sound, but the Super 8 is virtual indistinguishable in tone to the P5 for this particular sound. The filter sounds good. Maybe it’s the drive circuit. Maybe it’s all the voices summing into the mixer or vca.
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Got mine yesterday (Sunday) and spent 8 hours or so on it.
Love how spacious the panel is. The keybed is lovely and easily the nicest of all the synths I have.
There are some quirks for sure compared to other synths. The shared sliders throw me on occasions. One thing that’s a bit odd is that when routing anything from LFO 2 in the mod matrix, it’ll only affect the mod matrix destination if LFO 2 is being actively applied from the left hand controller area (via the trigger, aftertouch or set to always on). I wanted to create a constantly modulated delay line whilst still being able to bring LFO 2 in and out on other destinations.
Patch management wasn’t intuitively obvious but am getting there after reading the manual again. The fact that a blinking patch light doesn’t mean the same thing as a blinking bank light caught me out, as did having patch buttons to the left of bank buttons (I’m used to the Juno layout).
I hadn’t realised the delay time knob has an LED as from the playing position it’s obscured by the knob. Would possibly have been better being located at 10-12 o’clock as opposed to 2 o’clock. It’s done like that to match the tempo knob on the other side, whereas mirroring it may have been preferable.
Getting some really nice sounds out of it now and really enjoying playing it.
Need to sit with it some more to find out if its quirky workflow is something I’ll get accustomed to.
Have found a couple of things which feel like bugs, such as synced cross mod triggering only every 2nd keypress when envelope is routed to cross mod in the mod matrix and voices are set to be a non-binaural poly mode. Also had occasions where playing in manual mode, switched to a preset and then switched back to manual (without touching controls) and the sound was different than when I exited manual. Wondering if it’s something to do with the resolution of the pot scanning or if I have a jittery control somewhere.
This one will need to be returned (or repaired in the field) as two of the keys have a plastic spur sticking out of their side. Must’ve come out of the mould wrong and slipped through QC both at Fatar and during assembly.
I’m enjoying not staring at a screen. Would still like to see pass-through knob behaviour and some kind of LED indication of when the stored value is matched (plenty of choices for that between the Manual, Layer, Patch, Performance the 1-8 and A-H buttons).
Looking forward to playing it lots more tomorrow.
Sorry to hear about the plastic burrs. They’ll probably send you a couple replacement keys. The keybed really is fantastic. Although I prefer jump behavior, many would like to see pass-thru behavior on their synths. I do agree that an LED indicator for stored slider values is needed. Sometimes, I tweak a patch to fit a song or slight revisions are made to a patch as I play it more and more. Nice to know where the starting position is stored. The patch and performance hierarchy threw me for a loop at first. One little user experience tweak would be to ship the empty patch set as all init patch files. If you try selecting one, you can’t as nothing is stored there. I had to copy a few over to the flashing A-H side(bank B) and then duplicate them. Also, the performances on the B side had to be copied from A, and those performance pointed to patches on the A side after being copied. What a PITA! Took me a minute to sort out. All those performances have to point to init patches on the b side. To sort it out I needed a bunch of blank patches nested inside a bunch of blank performances. I tried to do this from the laptop side, but copy and paste didn’t work. @udoaudio Hope y’all can make this change for future users. Maybe they figured most people would create a patch from manual mode and then store it in the b side. I happened to want to start from an init patch stored there and then save it.
Either way, what I’m suggesting is easy and might help people like myself.
Other than that and a few minor choices, this thing is fantastic.
I really didn’t want two sets of controls staring at me.
I’m sure UDO will eventually address all the user requests. I had my Super 6 for 4 years with zero issues. Anyone hesitant to buy shouldn’t be.
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Just popped in again to say the Super 8 is pretty flawless. The tone is outstanding and patch creation is a joy. I was going to keep my Prophet for classic tones, but I’ve been able to replicate them no problem. The digital waves are a delight. I’m surprised at how well the engine handles fm and ring mod simultaneously.
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Does that mean you’re thinking of selling the Prophet?
I love mine, but have generally spent more time playing the Juno 106 I had on loan (which I’ve now bought from my friend as he had two).
The Super 8 does nod a little towards the 106 in some ways, which is partly why I’m enjoying it.
I’ve definitely considered letting my Prophet go more recently: I do much prefer synths with at least some built-in effects. The Summit I had was great but the keybed was not fun to play. The S8’s keybed puts all my others to shame.
I have the Prophet currently listed for sale. I may pick up the module later, but so far the Super 8 is covering the same territory. I wasn’t able to match the warmth with the Super 6, but now I feel like I’m good and the P10 is redundant. The Juno is a classic. I thought about grabbing an Ob-x8, but all the good stuff is on the screen. I have a big modular system that I want to get back to playing. Polysynths just make me lazy, so just one is enough.
What did you think about the keybed in the Super 8 vs the Prophet? I think it’s fabulous. The Prophet will respond to Poly-AT, albeit just lfo speed for osc b and filter cutoff. Might be neat for you to try.
One thing I’m getting a lot of mileage out of is the digital waves. I spent 20 hours sampling modular waves. Everything from sample and hold waveforms, phase distortion, tzfm, ring mod, shift registers, runglers, audiorate triggered drum modules, etc. I’m getting tones that sound like woodwinds, doublebass, and electric pianos. Really wish this thing could modulate the phase of the digital waves. The super 6 did have lfo 1 phase in the matrix, which was neat when using lfo1 at audiorate. In the Super 8, the delay time can be set to 1ms and modulated with dds2. That sounds neat. If we can get sub 1ms times, I would jump up and down with excitement.
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I have the P10 and whilst its TP/9 keybed is really nice, it’s not as nice as the TP/8SK in the S8, which is only second to the TP/8S in something like the Nonlinear labs C15.
As for the mono/poly thing, I’m the other way: I have too many monos (trying to sell one or two of them) and I much prefer playing polys as the stuff I write is very much rooted in harmony and chordal playing as opposed to loads of modulation-heavy/soundscape/ambient music. I guess that’s why I feel the 106 is the first poly I really fell in love with - simple but with enough variation to be interesting, such that I can dial up something quickly and it inspires music immediately. I can see why Jacob Mann uses his so much.
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I totally get the aspect of finding inspiration quickly with a polysynth. I’m thinking about modular as a mini orchestra where each instrument is largely monophonic. Expert Sleepers make that possible. Modulation is really what modular is about. I observe the Super 8 and the whole line up is modular adjacent. Plenty of modulation available and ways to animate the sound. They really thought of everything. For example, need an FM index? There’s no need for an additional VCA and envelope, use the mod matrix with ENV 1 to XMOD. I do sometimes wish for linear tzfm and wavefolding. That’s where I use modular. I’d like to see UDO break into a fpga-based drum sampler/machine like the analog rytm. Maybe a granular synth or something undiscovered. Their MO seems to be high-quality instruments that you keep for a real long time. I may make an all Super 8 track this week to demonstrate its abilities and post it here. That way, any kids on the fence will jump in the yard and start playing.
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As promised, here is a demo of the Super 8. Five hours from nothing including drum sampling to something decent. All the sounds are from the Super 8 including drums. Just some high pass eqs, verb and delay. Very little mixing. Hope you enjoy my okay playing!
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A bit sad as my S8 is going back to the shop tomorrow due to the burrs on a couple of keys. Not sure when I’ll get a replacement yet. Got some surgery next week which means no lifting synth boxes and difficulty sitting up anyway so probably ok that it won’t be soon.
There’s some really lovely sounds in there. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! I wouldn’t normally put so many tones in one tune, but trying to showcase the sound.
Sorry to hear about yours going back and the surgery. Good grief, hope all that gets sorted out quickly for you. Hopefully, your local or something and they can get you a new one so you don’t have to wait.
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Thanks, sadly I have a fair amount of hospital visits ahead of me: I’ve just finished the first block of ongoing cancer treatment and this operation is to check inside me to see how it’s going.
I’m sure I’ll get a replacement S8 soon enough. I requested a refund at this point, partly because I might not be able to deal with unpacking stuff for a while and wouldn’t be able to play it either if someone else were to open it. I’ll wait until I’ve recovered somewhat.
@udo-audio I haven’t peeked inside the S8; does the proposed voice expansion simply involve plugging in the extra voices into free slots in the existing main board, or would it require a new main board or daughter board?
If one of the latter two options, would there be any scope to even increase the voice count to 24?
I’m definitely up for adding however many voices can be maximally offered. I did manage to create a nice dual binaural patch that wasn’t sonically overwhelming and the four-voice limit is something I’d like to overcome.
Raising a beer to your good health and a Super 8!
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