From: Georg Mueller Sender: "Electronic music \"gearhead\" list" To: Multiple recipients of list SYNTH-L Subject: Frankfurt Musik Messe 94 Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 15:30:24 +0100 This is my anual Frankfurt Musik Messe posting, giving a subjective and incomplete view of the new gear, showed at the fair. Have fun. Georg. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** HARDWARE ** Quasimidi --------- Quasar synth expander DM 1998,- That's a nice sounding digital box, 64 Mb ROM, more than 1000 sounds in ROM PCM+Filter(24dB /w res), FM, additive synthesis. One big BLACK knob, 4 editing knobs. Programmable, yes, but only relative to existing sounds. Analog synth samples, drums, pigs, whales and jodlers. Check it out. Ooops, it's only distributed mailorder from the company in Germany. Photon They showed a mockup under glass. That's the keyboard version of the Quasar. Funny design. Seems to be a nice of German manufacturers, to do funny product design, see Waldorf and Hohner. Well, 3 LCDs, 12 dials and lots of clear buttons. Marion Systems -------------- MSR-2 Modular-Synthesizer Tom Oberheim was in Frankfurt. I talked to him, nice guy. The marion is based on custom Curtis chips named MS 1215 and uses CEMs as amps and s/h for the CVs only. The next module will probably be a sample playback thingy. They plan to release the spec of the bus in the Mainframe to 3rd parties. Stay tuned. Soundwise it's close to the Matrix 6/1000 stuff, but multitimbral. Lame demo, too much non analog sounds too cover those sweeps. TSI --- novation BassStation nice sounding analog bass synth, the knobs are way too small, same for switches, bummer, env 1 and 2 share same 4 pots, select with a switch. Waldorf MicroWave, Wave They showed the ugly green mean machine, a limited uWave edition (99) with V2.0 software. They had a Wave up and running, you could twiddle the knobs, but no speaker there. Charlie Lab Digitar 6 short guitar strings for strumming on a belt, chords are received via midi Controll Synthesis ------------------ Deep Bass Nine They had one there, but no demo. Fewer but better knobs than BassStation, rack mounted, can be used as one channel MIDI to CV convertor, external audio input for the filter. Doepfer ------- They showed 2 new masterkeyboards. MK68 with hammer action or wooden keys. TMK2 a two manual masterkeyboard. Then again a funny thing, great for live performance, the DIMITRI, a MIDI trigger sequencer. Now hold your breath. 8 tracks with 16 buttons and LEDs, in total 184 LEDs and 200 buttons. 9 HE 19" rack. Fits nice (optical) with the MAQ16/3. Price DM 1.298,- (kit) DM 1.998,- (assembled). The prices are for the beta machine, so you have to play beta tester. Later the price will be 10-20% higher. E-MU ---- If you read KEYBOARD, you know the new products allready Korg ---- They re-released the Stagepiano SG-1 DN and showed their Physical Modeling Drum. I missed the demo :-( Yamaha ------ VL-1 was there, but no hype, I don't know, if they demoed it. Same for the VP1 prototype. Hohner ------ ADAM Advanced Digital/Analog Musical-Instrument Designed together with Waldorf (optics Axel Hartman, code Stefan Stenzel) lots of buttons and sliders, more the organ type I think. Generalmusic ------------ S2/S3 Turbo Lots of sounds, nice display, sliders for twiddling, good sounding resonant filters. Better controll over Oscs with Turbo kit. Voce ---- SPIN Rotating Speaker Simulator B3 Organ Expander electric piano model based additive synthesis Alesis ------ QuadraSynth I hate the display, no filter res Akai ---- S3200, S3000, S2800 Midi Stereo Digital Sampler They now sell sample editing software for Atari and MAC, called Sample Tools Roland ------ S-760 Sampler JV-90, JV-50, JV-35 well, who cares SDX-330 Dimensional Expander 16 chorus, flanger, pan, rotary fx SRV-330 Dimensional Space Reverb SDE-330 Dimensional Space Delay GR-09 Guitar Synthesizer 1k buck range Kawai ----- KC20 GM sound keyboard looks like a Spectra MDK-61 II Masterkeyboard same for that DATACAT Mini-Masterkeyboard funny, a tonebank without tones :-) GB Guitar with ROM cards ice on stick ** SOFTWARE ** Sound Quest ----------- MIDI QUEST for Windows DM 498,- Modular Editor (has uWave editor) SOLO QUEST DM 198,- one module MIDI QUEST for MAC DM 498,- Emagic ------ Sound Diver The new modular editor for MAC and Atari, recomended for the MicroWave fan, allready contains V2.0 support, and graphical UPAW editing. WOW. Similar to PolyFrame, still no support for Casio gear, but comunicates with Logic. DM 600,- ** MISC ** Touched by Sound ---------------- The smallest booth, but the highest analog/vintage per m^2 index. They refurbish, hunt and sell used gear, analog and digital synths. They showed on the fair, and you could play them, guys, JP 8, Chroma, DX7 Programmer, Fairlight II, Polyfusion Modular, MemoryMoog, EDP Wasp and Gnat, MKS70 and much much much more. IRIS (research institute of FARFISA) ------------------------------------ They showed MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) a powerfull DSP development tool, user interface running on Atari TT. There was a small room, in which they held talks on the subject. LPC, Vocoder, FFT, PM ... Galitzendoerfer --------------- He was there, and this year his hardware looked the same as last year, but I missed him. Sorry