23 thoughts on “BitRumble Offers 5 Channels Of Synth Action (Sneak Preview)

    1. I was going to say it’s “analog-style” because it’s built like a virtual analog. It’s not FM. It’s not wavetable. It’s not sample-based.

      But since it doesn’t seem to have a filter, it doesn’t seem much like a VA to me, so yeah, pretty weird stretch to say it’s analog-style.

      1. Remember: Even sid moss chips are often considered a digital staple in chiptune and various 8-bit musics, though the core of their oscillators are analog. (So I’ve heard)

        1. The SID chip has an analog filter and three digital oscillators. However, the oscillator design is quite clever and avoids aliasing by updating the waveforms based on a 1 MHz clock. The combination of the analog filter and the phase accumulator oscillators makes the SID hard to emulate on low powered microcontrollers.

  1. This sounds like a gameboy on steroids!
    Shame about the lack of filtering, listening to the demo I feel it would be a really cool machine with more synthesis options.. Hope the price makes up for it though!

  2. Love 8 bit sounds but I’m not sure that matrix interface looks like much fun. I also wonder what the sample rate is on it. 4-12bit sounds definately add some awesome machine crunch by bringing the digital noise floor up to audible values while low sample rates just add aliasing in the higher frequencies, which due to it’s random relationship to the fundamental pitch of a note isn’t as usueful musically as low bitrate. Interesting that the famous chiptunes chips, the NES 2A03 (probabaly also the Gameboy as it has similar architecture to the NES) and the Commodore 64 SID chip have sample rates up in the MHz so all that character to the sound is simply the low bitrates and creativity of programming.

    1. It looks a bit fidly, but it is at least logical, and should bring the price point down a fair bit. Hope he gives it a full midi implementation, though. Overall, though, it’s looking good. I’m guessing it’s a fairly early prototype, but a bit more polish should get it looking pretty slick. Most importantly, it’s got the sound. Filtering’d be good, but it sems to pack a lot in a small and simple box.

  3. What is with all the 8bit things coming out? Is it really cheap or easy to do?
    There’s heaps of cool ideas in cool formats but they all sound like turd

    1. Two answers; One technological, one psycho/sociological.
      The technological;
      Yes, it’s cheap, and yes, it’s easier. 8-bit devices have been around for longer than devices with greater bit-depths like 32- and 64-bit, and have been used for cheap, simple items (toys, alarm clocks, stuff like that) for ages, which brings the cost down. Also, crucially on things like this, they’re easier to develop for. Due to the cheapness and availability, 8-bit devices are popular with electronics hobbyists, and a lot of the more popular dev boards (like the arduino) use 8-bit microprocessors. While 32-bit ARM processors are becoming more common, and easier to develop for, they still lag behind, and tend to be more expensive.
      True Analog, obviously, is considerably more complex, and requires a rather different skill set to develop.

      So, now, the psycho/socialogical reasoning;
      People tend to become nogolstic for things from their youth. As people get older, the prime audience for things changes. At present, a lot of the people into synths etc. will have grown up with games and computers like the commadore 64, atari, NES, stuff like that, and grown up with the music and the sounds that went along with that. Now, they look back to those sounds, and try to replicate them.
      Likewise, the current analog resurgence is most likely driven in part by the same sort of factors; people looking back to early 90’s techno scene, where, although they came from an earlier era largely, analog synths were used as they were, at the time, cheap, and available.

      That’s my view on things from the viewpoint of someone with reasonable technological knowledge, sod all socialogical knowledge, and is too young to have any personal knowlege of the period in question anyhow.

  4. This little guy has nice, open high mids with a gentle high end roll off. So many otherwise worthy VAs have deficient high mids and highs, imho. It doesn’t have quite the gut impact of real analog, but it’s got the right texture & grit up there. I’d enjoy owning one.

  5. wow – really attractive format (a bit small, but hey, why not?)… and the demo sells it well (a bit long, but, overall, a nice workout!) as long as they make it sync-able, then I’ll definitely be waiting to test that! sounds tasty/nasty enough for me.

  6. Please make the price right. As a music instructor, I want awesome affordable synths that parents will be willing to buy for their kids. So far in all of my years, not one student’s parents have bought them a synth or drum machine. Plus I want one, or 7.

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