A mkII Super 6 (+ desktop) or a mono/duophonic UDO?
Obvs you may want something completely different and the UDO peeps there again but personally I’m torn at the minute. I absolutely love how focused the desktop is even though I’m principally a keyboard player. But the extra VCA mod paths the S8/SG get you would be invaluable plus not needing to remove the right jack for true mono. I’m monitoring the prices of Super 8 bcos for me synths in general are starting to become bit unaffordable n I want to get in there at current prices or thereabouts. So an S8 is definitely on the cards for me but there’s always the promise of tomorrow’s product.
I’d love to see the S6 series become even more refined in terms of voicing and architecture. Actually I would prefer that the S6 does not become any more complex. The opposite if anything, elegance or ‘economy’ is the name of the game for me.
The prospect of a smaller monophonic/duophonic UDO is a nice thought, something with a similar family sound that layers well with the polys. I’m team hybrid all the way but I can conceive of ways of introducing more legit analogue into the platform. Personally and perhaps controversially I think drift/slop/vintage kinda sux vs actual analogue. Stuff like LFO2 potentially being analogue (believe it or not I think it makes a difference), the potential for analogue waveshaping on DDS2, envelopes that have even more character, tuned by ear not eye. Again, I think this component modelling and per voice offsets that some synths do is kinda redundant vs better tuned circuits. Our ears are so perceptive and real, stable analogue is more acoustically attractive than digitally coded attempts at analogue instability. One area on the S6 I think could do with improving is how good the DA sample and hold mod circuits are. For example if you set the filter to self oscillation and then route either of the envelopes to the filter and apply some sustain there is a frustrating lack of pitch consistency. I want more accuracy there rather than drift, I’ll still be able to hear it’s analogue.
Anyway, just throwing some thoughts out there, UDO FTW into the late 2020s!
One more thing. I think some thoughtful form of voice address/note stealing vis-a-vis the arpeggiator would be cool. This is something I thought from playing around with Juno 6 and how it steals notes when playing arps. imo things should remain repetitively consistent to timebases of 4/8 and 3/6/(12) so I kind of think that probably either a poly count of 8 or 12 is a good minimum. Perhaps a 57 key (low E) 8 or 12 voice should be the base UDO synth. But now I’m really being fanciful lol, who cares about 57 note key range!!? I’d even rate a 50 key base model with low B. If you’re a bona fida play in all the keys player then you know how valuable that low B is for playing in C# or alternatively how handy a 57 key low E would be. I’m going off on one now though.
One other thing I feel I should address since it’s something that UDO detractors love to harp on about is the screen and mod matrix situation.
Personally I think it was a bold, singular move to not include a screen on the UDO synths. I’m still totally behind it. But I have to admit there are times when I just say f it and delete mod routings because I’ve lost track of what is going where. I use the mod matrix as a live thing, settings things up and deleting them as I go.
The first thing that comes to mind in making that easier to keep track of is something the Nords have/had and I think is present on the to be released Frap Tools poly which is a LED for each parameter on the synth so we could hold a mod source and see it flashed up where it’s going to.
Personally I don’t even really care about presets so I’d be stoked to see an UDO poly with no onboard patch memory recall! Live in the moment baby!!!
A great troll move for the screen/display whiners would be like, ok, give it a value display if needs must but only make it two characters and hexadecimal It’s really not that hard to get accustomed to and makes a lot of sense for MIDI value ranges of 128/256.
Alternatively give it a 3 character 14 segment display like the VFD segments on the JX-8P such that some segments are slanted/offset/dots instead of strictly symmetrical. Could be a bit too cryptic though. I’d prefer to carry on with no display at all.
I’ve been saying monosynth keytar for years. With all the interest in MPE and expressive playing, making the neck into a routable mod source with a touch strip and some angle sensors seems like a cool idea. And, you can still have it be a functional monosynth without the neck, or offer different attatchments if people want to have the synth played on a desktop/kb stand. Like, a theremin, light sensor, external mic/talkbox/vocoder hookup, etc.
Heh, I saw an interview with George & Nick Batt where they were talking about keytars.
I wonder how well Korg and Roland’s keytars have done for them over the past 15 odd years? I do kinda like them, been curious about a Korg RK-100s a couple of times. I think it’d be hard to approach the body design of one like that. Perhaps something with token strap pins like the SH-101 and DX-100 I could see but again it would not be trivial to make a neck add-on. Tbf when I mentioned a mono/duophonic UDO I didn’t even have in mind something with a keyboard, I was imagining a small square-ish module with CV functionality. Could be interesting to play around with the duophonic nature since I guess they already have the 2 voice poly upgrade modules for Super 8.
I’ve had my SG for about a year, and not being able to get any feedback on where a patch’s settings are is the only serious gripe I have.
Just last night I was working with a patch I made months ago, and have no clue how I made it.
Sequential also has a great system where a little dot shows up when you have a parameter dialed to match the original patch. It seems like at least something like that would go a long way.
It’s frustrating because it’s such a joy to create patches the machine is so wonderfully hands on. But there does need to be a bit more feedback on what’s going on.
Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any way to see custom mod destinations since they don’t all have LEDs, and that’s where an editor would be helpful. I guess if they came out with a MkII version, but I don’t see that happening, and with hardware, that can be pretty upsetting for owners of the original versions.
They just need to add an LED indicator that blinks when the knob or slider matches the stored value like Prophet 5/10.
On topic, I want to see a drum machine/sampler. A FPGA-bazed sampler could offer some fidelity and features not heard at the present moment with standard dsp and current sampling/repitching techniques. A pure analog mono has been done to death. Something with a lot of haptic feedback and building on the ribbon technology could offer a hands on experience not currently available. MPC pads and conventional interfaces are abundant. Time for some new methods and interactions. 2 mono and 6 stereo channels for samples each with multimode filter and vca. All the groundwork has been laid with the current lineup
It’s really not that hard to get accustomed to and makes a lot of sense for MIDI value ranges of 128/256.