Soulsby Synthesizers Atmegatron, A Powerful 8-Bit Synth, Now Available

atmegatron-synthesizer

Soulsby Synthesizers has released the Atmegatron – a new 8-bit monosynth. It’s the debut product from Soulsby Synthesizers.

The Atmegatron combines the sounds of 1980s home computers with the flexibility and power of a modern synthesizer.

Here are official audio demos:

The Atmegatron is built on the open source Arduino platform. This means that the synthesis engine can be completely changed by uploading software to the synth. One minute it’s a monosynth, the next it’s a drum machine. Soulsby Synths plans to relese new and completely free software versions over the coming months.

Features:

  • 32 waveforms
  • 15 digital filter types
  • 2 ADSR envelopes
  • 1 LFO with 16 waveforms
  • an arpeggiator with 15 patterns and
  • loads of fx including phaser, distortion and the unique Wavecrusher.
  • 16 preset sounds and unlimited preset expandability via the Atmegatron Librarian software available for Mac or PC.

The Atmegatron is available in two versions:

  • Atmegatron Complete – £255 ex VAT & delivery.
  • Atmegatron Synthesizer
  • Power Supply
  • Printed 32 page colour manual
  • Quick reference guide
  • The Atmegatron Complete is housed in a beautiful white aluminium chassis with real walnut side panels.

Atmegatron PCB – £127 ex VAT & delivery.

  • Atmegatron Synthesizer PCB
  • Power Supply
  • Quick reference guide
  • The Atmegatron PCB comes with nylon pillars to keep the PCB raised from its resting surface. The PCB is perfect for programmers and hackers, but is not suitable for outside of the home due to its fragility.

See the Soulsby Synthesizers site for details.

27 thoughts on “Soulsby Synthesizers Atmegatron, A Powerful 8-Bit Synth, Now Available

      1. Well for me is a great comment, BTW these Blinky toys for hipsters. Where’s the Casio “DEMO” button? 😛

    1. You shouldn’t have to pay the VAT. That’s for euro buyers. If you’re ordering to the US, you SHOULD be exempt from that. The ONLY developer/retailer I have EVER seen try and tell me I had to pay the VAT, is uhe. Nobody else. Easy fix: fine you can’t figure out how to properly sell to US buyers, I won’t buy then. No biggie.

      1. Or… be nice and decent and ask for a valid quote excluding VAT. Particularly small companies are usually good at meeting customer requests – especially when they are reasonable.

  1. Thats something nicely different, with a true character – even though it will not match every production but who cares. I seriously wonder how such thing would be polyphonic, lets say 4 voices, a smooth filter and a crispy delay. Could be a real win 😉

    1. Hi, One of the software versions that can be uploaded to the synth is called The Atpolytron. It’s a 4 note paraphonic synth (paraphonic is like polyphonic, but all 4 notes share the same filter and envelopes). It has a very different character to the classic software. There’s a short clip of it here: http://chirb.it/Lfbprp. Will be uploading more soon. The delay and smooth filter may be achievable by creating software versions that removed other features.

  2. Sounds nice for a budget piece of gear. I’d have bad things to say if they wanted over $400. Also it’s a soundcloud stream, I’m sure it sounds better hands on.
    That being said: the demos suck. Not the songs, the songs themselves are fine. But if I’m shopping a piece of kit, I want to hear it naked. I don’t want to hear a bunch of dance tracks. Demos should be feature based and basic, not full productions. The choice of how to demo these in itself makes me question just how worth it they’d be. It just seems like poor product marketing. Unless you’re targeting people that don’t know shit about choosing their tools…. The Electribe types.

    1. Easy, tiger…
      First, this is a one-man show, so don’t expect the guy to be perfect at designing, manufacturing and shipping a synth *and* be the perfect marketing machine, too. Are you perfect at all aspects of making and distributing your music?
      Then, what is the problem with showing off how a full production with this synth could sound like? I find that very inspiring. And if you would have bothered to spend two minutes on some of the introduction and tutorial videos, you would have gotten all the raw synth sound that you’re asking for.

  3. I really like this, sounds great! But I imagine the casing would be expensive to post overseas which is a shame, it looks great!

  4. Man, I’d really like to support these guys, but I just can’t stomach paying nearly $500 (usd; delivered) for $50-$100 in hardware. Really guys, you’re only going to sell a handful at that price; cut it in half and you’ll sell hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.

    Too bad, because it really sounds good.

    1. It’s always awesome when people pull random numbers out of nowhere and then bitch about pricing.

      If you can make it for $100 and still pay your rent, then corner the market already.

    2. As the designer of the Meeblip synths, I can confirm that it’s *really* hard to manufacture small equipment runs at an affordable cost. You can’t simply pile up a heap of resistors, potentiometers, microcontrollers and I/O jacks and declare that because there are only $50 of parts on the table, that’s the cost of making the instrument. My guess is that the case alone costs between $100 and $150 by the time it’s machined and the artwork is applied.

      You also have to factor in the cost of hundreds or thousands of hours of hardware and firmware design time and all of the things that are required to manufacture and sell hardware — CE and FCC certification, recycling takeback and so on.

      Making boutique instruments is a tough business, and if there isn’t a small profit to be made, it simply isn’t sustainable in the long run.

      1. Quick reply to say thanks James (and I think the Meeblip looks and sounds great too!!). Everything that you’ve said is bang on. The cost of making a small run of synthesizers is very expensive. Then you need to factor in the 2 prototype PCBs I manufactured, the prototype case, FCC & CE testing, WEEE payments and at least something towards the 14 months I spent developing it!
        It costs a heck of a lot more than $50-$100 to manufacture. Maybe if I were producing 10,000 of them it would!!
        By supporting small companies you allow them to go on to make more products, hopefully which will then be in larger quantities and at lower prices. Plus you never know, owning the first batch of the first Soulsby Synth maybe worth something one day!!

  5. Great work and good luck to creators!!! I must say we need more much more independent creators and developers and just plain hackers that make all types of unorthodox music gear. I for one am always pleased to find out that people are taking the time to use there creativity to bring us all fantastic new music machines/devices/software. So I would suggest to us all to some how support these people when we can by buying, donating or just saying some constructive and encouraging words for these amazing people who go the distance to give us new ways or just accessible ways to be creative ourselves. Lets all face it, the big music machine companies at this point are on the way out!

  6. Nice sound and pocketable form factor. Are they going to be releasing a development kit for this? It could be the next OASYS-PCI if users could create their own synths. Also if they changed the named to ATMOS it would guarantee immediate sales to all the Doctor Who fans.

    1. Do you mean software development kit or DIY electronics kit? Software is available right now at http://www.soulsbysynths.com/downloads, so take a look! I’ve not had enough requests yet for a DIY electronics kit to make it cost effective. I’d have to do a completely new circuit design for leaded components (Atmegatron is currently SMD components). I really want to do a DIY kit version though, so you never know….

        1. Possibly in the future. I’ve certainly thought through how I’d do it. I’ve got another synth project I want to do first, plus supporting the Atmegatron will consume a lot of my time initially. But maybe in the future…

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