Digital Sound Chips – The Underrground Scientists -has posted information on the Blue Box synthesizer, a synth inspired by Steve Jobs, Woz & 70’s phone phreaks:
The blue box was originaly a device to call for free, used by the early hackers, aka phone phreaks.
Every thing went in another direction in the early 70ties when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak the founders of Apple the worlds largest computer company and their friend Captain Crunch, was making a “free” call from a phone booth to get some friends to pick them up.
Steve Jobs was making the call as the cop showed up when Jobs was standing in the phone booth with the blue box in his hand.
What is this, the police said? When you punch the buttons they all make tones, so Wozniak said: It’s an electronic music synthesizer.
The police man got them all into the police car, and drove them down to the station, stating that a man named Moog beat them to it.
The rest is history. The thought about the blue box as a electronic music synthesizer was born.
According to the company, the Digital Sound Chips Blue Box is “the worlds smallest fully featured synthesizer”.
See the Digital Sound Chips site for audio demos.
The Blue Box is priced at €195.00. Details below.
Specifications:
- Casing dimensions: (W x D x H) 7.5cm x 2.5cm x 11cm.
- Casing dimensions: (W x D x H) 2.95″ x 0.99″ x 4.38″.
- MIDI-in: Syncs to MIDI clock, Responds to Program Change, Pitch Bend, Note Velocity, Expression Controller, Breath Controller, full parameter control by CC messages and more.
- 3.5mm stereo plug for line out (can drive headphones).
- Uses AAA batterys for power (24 hour battey life).
- Mechanical on/off switch.
- Digital endless knob for real-time editing and performance.
- 2 LED’s for fast parameter visualization.
- 72 preset sounds, that can be edited and saved.
- One octave keyboard, with real-time access to 3 octaves.
- Free sound editor for MIDI control via your computer.
- MIDI-out: Notes, Program Change, mod. wheel, CC and more is available via breakout cable.
- 2 OSC’s with 32 different waveforms to choose from.
- 2 Digital filters. Low Pass in series with High Pass.
- 1 Preamp output stage. Can be overdriven for distortion.
- 3 Fast step sequencers, for SID drums, arpeggios and more.1 LFO. Wide range and 32 different waveforms and more.
- * 3 ADSR’s, for filter, volume and sync. PM (phase modulation), Subtractive and True Noise synthesis.
- Unique percussion mode for live performance and more.
via matrixsynth
I'm totally getting one of these blue boxes to go with my Monotron (the search for portable weird battery powered drums ends). Just put in my order.
The sound demo's are really great, the interface is very odd, I wish they gave more info about how the sound is synthesized. It's getting ridiculous how much gear there is I want to buy, I'm going broke….