Dieter Doepfer has announced that the Dark Energy synthesizer will be discontinued, because of unavailability of a rare chip:
The Dark Energy will be discontinued as the CEM3394 is no longer available and the negotiations with the manufacturer (OnChip, the Curtis Electromusic successor) concerning a new productions series of the CEM3394 were not successful so far.
We think about a redesign of the unit (Dark Energy II) but it will be another instrument with a different sound and features (e.g. probably a 12 dB multimode filter with lowpass, highpass, bandpass and notch instead of the 24 dB lowpass).
Now that it’s gone out of production, expect the prices on this much-loved synth to jump, as people realize that they must have a Dark Energy!
Yep – I wish I could have bought one of these little babies!
The Dark Energy II sounds kind of interesting, though…,
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Any word on how many were made?
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“Now that it’s gone out of production, expect the prices on this much-loved synth to jump, as people realize that they must have a Dark Energy!”
lol, priceless! Unfortunately, so true. How many shitty synths have been purchased just because they were old and “authentic analog”? Not saying there’s anything wrong with the Dark Energy, by the way, although I personally find myself cold towards it.
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Mixed feelings, since I own one. I hope they still make more compatible modules like the Dark Time.
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CEM3394 is a “low cost VCO, VCF and VCA chip”, so I can say, most of Dark Energy is unavailable :/
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Doepfer did well with that machine. Nice and simple and affordable.
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I hope no current Dark Energy owner suffers a catastrophic failure of their CEM3394 chip…
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NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
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bah, this sucks. well, time to save to get me the II
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looks like he’s having a dark time :puuuuuuuuuuun:
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