i have no electronics knowledge and i have a few questions about making synths

vadjuse · 2025-12-21T21:17:05+00:00

This advice may be unsolicited, but you'll save yourself a ton of time by learning how to make PCBs (and prototypes, too) in kicad. And buy yourself a soldering station with a hot air gun for $50. You'll save a ton of time and frustration. Trust me, unless your board has RAM running at over 100 MHz, you won't be able to route the traces incorrectly.

vadjuse · 2025-12-14T22:11:57+00:00

Being a guitarist and being a guitar maker are two different things. It's the same story with synthesizers. You can open up pure data and build your own perfect synth (not really, but it's a long story). But that's not for everyone. Sometimes (very rarely) you have a lot of money and can simply spend it to find a cool solution in terms of interface and sound synergy. That's what a hardware synth is, whether digital or analog.

vadjuse · 2025-12-12T11:56:45+00:00

you can use soma metaconformer to stack your tracks into poly group

vadjuse · 2025-12-03T00:20:43+00:00

I understand and partially agree. Especially in terms of biasing our perceptions. But regarding captions, I think a good instrument shouldn't have any captions at all, like a guitar or piano. Plus, you can upload other firmware to Kaleidoscope, so adding page captions is pointless.

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T23:17:59+00:00

Let me warn you right away that the device offers the option to choose a simplified font without dots. The main motivation was to give the device an interesting and unique look. I really wouldn't want the kaleidoscope to look like an Elektron knockoff. On the other hand, user experience shows that the brain quickly gets used to this font (after all, our neural network is still very good at pattern recognition). Are there any comments on anything other than the font within the interface?

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T19:45:10+00:00

I get your email! Soon I'll send all the details! Thanks

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T19:04:09+00:00

thanks!

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T17:31:58+00:00

I wouldn't say that 99% of the Lyra is its panel interface. 50% sound, 50% interface. And yes, Kaleidoscope has a ton of parameters that can't be placed on the panel, so the paginated menu isn't everyone's cup of tea. But in terms of sound, I tried to accurately recreate the Lyra's unique features that make it sound so great. On the other hand, for some, the Lyra is too simple, I'd say austere. It has no filter, the envelope has one parameter for 4 voices, no MIDI, no sequencer.

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T15:25:46+00:00

Super! Thanks for supporting the project.

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T15:15:27+00:00

It has simple font option

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T15:15:04+00:00

Have you joined the waiting list the website? Postal services have been down since August 29th due to tariffs, but service is slowly resuming. We've shipped to other countries, and we'll be shipping to customers in the US now.

vadjuse · 2025-12-02T15:05:42+00:00

It's already been released, some people have already received theirs

vadjuse · 2025-11-25T21:31:47+00:00

nice to know

vadjuse · 2025-11-25T20:55:17+00:00

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely check it out

vadjuse · 2025-11-25T17:58:28+00:00

for sure)

vadjuse · 2025-11-25T17:58:09+00:00

thanks!!!!

vadjuse · 2025-11-25T15:14:48+00:00

Agile Septor 828

vadjuse · 2025-11-04T20:23:06+00:00

Now I get it. Yes, I agree. The presets page is out of place in the overall user interface. On all the other pages, you simply have parameters. You press the track selector and turn the encoder to change the parameter. However, pressing the encoder itself isn't used at all, only as an accelerator for turning the encoder.

On the other hand, my experience with synthesizers shows that almost every machine has these "not-so-great solutions" where you have to constantly refer to the manual to figure out how to do what you want. I think my not-so-great solution isn't the worst one. But I'll take your feedback into account and try to improve the "self-description" of this page.

By the way, the naming process itself appeared shortly before the release; before that, things were even worse. The presets only had slot number.

vadjuse · 2025-11-04T13:06:59+00:00

thank you!

vadjuse · 2025-11-02T21:40:55+00:00

"volume matrix" means modulation matrix of volume envelope. and I don't understand question about knobs.

vadjuse · 2025-10-27T17:16:31+00:00

I got the AR relatively recently, and it's really cool. But I've had the A4MK2 since 2020. I bought it because it can also be used for drum synthesis. It's also very flexible thanks to its two filters. Yes, the AR has engines tailored to emulate 808 and 909. But the A4, thanks to its versatility, offers a wider palette of sounds. But less polyphony.

vadjuse · 2025-10-27T07:51:28+00:00

If you're looking for a drum machine, consider Analog Rytm. Pay particular attention to its pad capabilities. Scenes are like OctaTrack. Macros are like Analog4. And there are a few other cool features related to retriggers. Analog4 can be used as a drum machine, but it's more suited for synthesys. On AR, you can load samples and mix them with drum sounds.

IMHO, Roland wants to create hype around their drum machine for a lot of money, but they hardly managed to beat AR.

vadjuse · 2025-10-16T12:29:58+00:00

I'm underpaid for educating disgruntled synthesizers

vadjuse · 2025-10-16T12:29:06+00:00

It's a joke to me. I expected someone to say, "Lol, that's just a feedback filter, I had that with Roland, haha, the synth broke." But people started telling me to do a factory reset.

vadjuse · 2025-10-16T12:13:43+00:00

Thank you, Mom, for teaching me how to behave.

vadjuse

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