Soniccouture has introduced Ondioline, a virtual recreation of the rare French monosynth.
The Ondioline was made in France in the 1950s and 60s, and was conceived as a low cost Ondes Martenot; sharing the same lateral vibrato keyboard, with a knee-lever to shape volume.
It was entirely valve-based with its own built-in amplifier and inspired the Clavioline, Jennings Univox and Hammond Solovox. The sound can be surprisingly realistic when the vibrato and knee lever are used together – organic, sinuous and extremely expressive.
In collaboration with Goldfrapps’ Will Gregory and Dan Wilson from Hideaway Studio, Soniccouture extensively restored and modified Ondioline no.599 to be sampled and recreated as a Kontakt instrument.
Specifications:
- 24bit 96khz Sampling\
- 3.4GB Download (6 GB instrument before Kontakt Compression)
- Full convolution modelling of original Ondioline filter switches
- 6 octave range – every Ondioline key sampled for every oscillator shape
- Original speaker cabinet modelling + line-out sampling
- Ondes Martneot speaker models also included
- Performance setup: manual vibrato & knee lever control + aftertouch + Polyphonic Mode
- Original Georges Jenny presets included + sound design snapshots
- Kontakt Player + NKS Compatible (Kontakt 5.5 required)
Soniccouture Ondioline is available now for US $99.
Close but no cigar, at least to my ears.
I wonder if matching a single specimen of the original instrument is important at all. Many products that are sold as re-creations are marketed using the comparison with the original (as if there was such a thing, especially with really old and really funky equipment like in this case). Why not market the product by demonstrating the musical usefulness? At least this video demonstration does this as well. You cannot fully re-create an instrument because you would also have to re-create the interface. But if you have a new instrument that is useful in some ways then that is a good thing.
Am I the only person who noticed that in the very last part of “Runaway” (1:51 in the video), the keyboardist’s hand is moving up the keyboard while the notes are moving down?