MyVolts Crazy Chain - reviewed!

MyVolts are no strangers to making power solutions and I make no secret that I get free samples from time to time to test out. Crazy Chain is their latest foray into powering multiple items with a twist; it's a fully modular power solution that you can mix and match equipment of different plug sizes and even polarities so you can add as many devices as you need.

Blog update 2020

Who would have thought having children would be such a busy experience? Between becoming a dad, moving house, a voluntary redundancy, COVID19 and all the other fun and games, there's not been much to report for some time. But things are finally settling down, so hopefully I can get back to more thoughts and ideas on music.

New Soundcloud music

Southerntrax · My Heart Beats

MyVolts mickXer - the Volca Mix killer

MyVolts are no stranger to electronics for musicians, having previously worked on iterations of their Volca power splitters for powering more than one Volca at a time. As mentioned in other posts, I've had quite a lot of respect for this for my growing collection of Korg's grooveboxes and Kaoss pads, however the subject of how to mix the audio out of so many devices working at once created a new problems.

Revenge of the clones

Uli Behringer has been stirring up the synthesiser fanbase but good of late. In numerous posts on the Gearslutz forum, he proclaims his love for vintage hardware synthesisers and, astonished at some of the prices that the second hand market commands, has taken it upon himself to mass produce low priced clones to make the hardware of yesteryear available to all. If the quality and price is right, this could be the most disruptive force in decades.

2018 - Unsealing the door on the bunker

It has been quite a long time since I posted on this music blog, but quite a lot has happened in the year since I have and I deserve to provide an update,

7 things I learned about Korg from their AMA

Following a recent Reddit AMA on the r/synthesizers subreddit shortly after the announcement of the newly minted Monologue, Nick Kwas from Korg was on hand and able to answer questions from the synthesiser community and it was gratifying to see how many questions Nick was able to go through.

Having read the rather large post, I have collected some of the insights I found of interest from the AMA based on Nick’s responses in a short form version here.

MyVolts Splitter Version 2 - review

Thanks to MyVolts for supplying the review cable for this post. If you want to get your own with a discount, CAROLVOLCA2 on their website will get you £3 off before 14 October 2016.

As alluded to earlier in the week, the folks at MyVolts have just released version two of their power splitter cable for up to five Korg Volcas, and now that mine has arrived I thought I would take it for a quick spin.

MyVolts Power Splitter Version 2: Power Harder

Fresh from coverage and feedback from all the major synth sites including Synthtopia and SonicState, those geniuses at MyVolts have been busy updating their five-way Korg Volca power splitter for powering multiple Volcas through either one wall wart or a single USB charger. I have been a fan of this device ever since it was announced, so more updates are very much welcome.

From the looks of things, the cable seems to be the same length from the split point and the connectors are now right angled rather than upright/straight ones. I recall this was one of the main suggestions that Nick Batt had when they covered this via YouTube and when you're using Volcas in an upright rack or next to each other the upright connectors can obscure the controls of another Volca. With right angles I'm hopeful that the connector will be much more inconspicuous.

MyVolts have kindly provided me with one of the new splitter leads to try out, so as soon as I get it plugged in I'll let you know how it fares. In the meantime, if you have multiple Volcas and haven't sorted out a power solution, you can do a lot worse than picking up one of these, plus use code CAROVOLCA2 on the MyVolts website before 14 October 2016 and save yourself a few quid too.

Links:
http://myvolts.co.uk/product/18809/- New 5 way splitter

A guide to Second Hand Synths in UK

So you want to buy a synthesiser, but don't necessarily have the budget to go all out on a new item: where do you go next? The UK second hand market is full of options and people selling their gear for a variety of reasons, whether it's to raise funds for newer hardware, whether children on the way, a change to all in the box or perhaps relocating to another country.

However, it can be daunting for newcomers to know where to get the best deals or just what to expect in terms of prices, availability, selection and so on. So here's a little run down of some of the places to go where you can check listings and maybe pick up something fun to play with at a decent price.

And as always with these things; Caveat Emptor!

KMR Audio Synth Expo - May 13th

In an effort to get some interest in their new range of synthesisers, the good folks at KMR Audio in North London organised a little get together of synth makers last month. I popped up to a far off place at the end of the Northern line called Totteridge and Whetstone to see what all the fuss was about, chat with makers and have a few free beers.

Hiatus ended (hopefully)

I've been pretty busy with work and other projects, while being distracted by Reddit's r/synthesisers group and Twitter updates, but I'm hoping to get back into blogging again soon. 

Priorities for me:

• More Saturday soundtracks
• Modular DIY building
• Experiences with Bitwig
• KMR Audio's Synth Expo tomorrow
• Novation's XioSynth - new second hand hardware!
• Novation BassStation II - borrowing for a while
• Volca FM impressions
• Finally finishing some stuff for Soundcloud

MyVolts 5 way power splitter cable - Part 2

After the great reaction I got from my first article on MyVolts’ rather handy five way splitter cable I thought I would do some additional testing to see if it can play nicely with some other Korg gear that uses the same power connectors.

NAMM 2016 rumour roundup part 2

More NAMM 2016! With only a couple of days to go before the press day, I have discovered that there are plenty of other things of note that I completely missed in my first article.

So here are even more NAMM rumours!

NAMM 2016 - rumour mill roundup

It's nearly here! Now that the New Year has been and gone, the Winter NAMM show will be returning to Anaheim, CA from 21-24 January 2016 and promises to showcase all the latest products that musicians will be lusting after over the next 12 months. Naturally this gets the gear geek in me incredibly excited!

As is customary, I usually scour the usual news sites about a couple of weeks before the event takes place for the inevitable product teasers and fakes that are running around that will interest me and some thoughts about other manufacturers that will be joining the show (so expect a subjective list full of synthesisers, drum machines and sound effect news - no guitars sadly). We certainly won't have to wait very long, as the Wednesday before the show is usually a press day, with videos starting to trickle out of conference rooms from the evening onwards.

So here's a collection of all the NAMM 2016 news that I have collected ahead of next week's convention!

Happy New Year & Resolutions

Photo courtesy of the awesome people at www.stocksnap.io

A very Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you enjoyed the break over the Christmas period. May 2016 bring you everything you are working for!

As is customary for the time of year, I have a few resolutions for the new year that I would like to stick to for music making and branch further out into a wider variety of music-related topics and coverage.

New Roland Boutique range

It's been a busy week for all concerned in the Roland world, with lots of speculation on Roland's Boutique new range of synthesisers - presumably from the video based on their popular JP-8, Juno 106 and JP-3X synthesisers from the 80s.

Despite people looking at and enhancing the end of the video for further insights into the trailer, very few details were forthcoming from Roland about their new product lineup - not even a date when the next teaser or announcement would be made. 

Much to the chagrin of Roland, that all changed over the weekend.

Hack-a-brute!

One of the more interesting things about newer style synthesisers is that their creators sometimes go out of their way to make their products slightly more tweakable and editable for the masses to enjoy. Korg are an excellent example of this, as they are well known for going the extra mile on their recent analogue gear (Monotrons and Volcas) to label the PCBs with convenient solder points to easily add further functions.

As an owner of both the MiniBrute and MicroBrute, in part due to the involvement of Grenoble's Yves Usson in the design as well as the sounds they can make, I am pleased to see that he has convinced Arturia to release PDFs of the internal schematics and is currently curating a list of hacks, modifications and alterations on his Hack a Brute website.

Matrixsynth turns 10

Amazing news from Matrix over at long-time blog Matrixsynth - the blog has just reached the ripe old age of 10 years old.

It's certainly an awe-inspiring achievement and amazing to think that the blog is updated every single day with new content from across the globe. While I wish I could do the same, unfortunately I don't have the time to do so but it's good to have the bar for quality raised quite so high for synth-related content. I still remember it was the first place I found out that George Duke had died, along with the original Volca press release and numerous other newsworthy items. If you haven't already bookmarked the blog, then you really ought to.

Some amazing site stats from Matrix himself:

• Formed in 2005, a year before Facebook became open
• 127,448 posts, all hand curated
• 46,832,215 page views (as of midnight EST)
• Only missed a single day of posting back on August 6, 2005

"I had no idea there would be something to post every single day of the year moving forward. Think about that a bit. There is something to share every single day. What an wonderful world of synths we live in."

Here's to another ten years!

Original post:
http://www.matrixsynth.com/2015/07/matrixsynth-turns-10.html

Helm - multi platform VST

Another day, another pretty VST to try out! Helm gets some interest for running as a multi-platform virtual subtractive synth with lots of interesting features that I haven't come across in a free VST so far. Whether you're PC, Mac or Linux, 32 or 64bit, VST or standalone executable, Helm has all the major options covered for all major DAWs, so it would be rude of you not to download it.