22 thoughts on “Exodus Digital Valkyrie Hands-On Demo

  1. I really like the look, but it sounds like he’s been seeing the various bitching about the colors.

    It was important to me to hear that the edit resolution is 8-bit, but the internal mod resolution is zipperlessly high (which is what I was hearing in the various demos on both counts).

    I had to look up FPGA (which didn’t help). But it sounds like another way to do DSP.

    This does look like an absolute monster.

      1. Traditional DSP is done either with dedicated ASICs (e.g. video codec chips), or software running on programmable DSP chips or regular CPUs.

        FPGAs are reconfigurable digital circuits (hence “field programmable gate arrays”) so they give you comparable functionality to a DSP ASIC but they are a) reconfigurable and customizable and b) usually more expensive per-unit than fixed-function devices (in volume at least). On the other hand, programming an FPGA is drastically faster and easier than creating and taping out a custom ASIC.

    1. I am sure the end checks would be adaptable to rack mounting but if the insides are bigger than euro, what would you want to happen? Have you used many full size/format synths? The designer wants the synth to be used live and the extra space make a LOT of difference.

      I will shut up now

  2. This guy is beautifully focused. Nice to hear Nick in there as well. A couple of my questions were answered, so allowing for the iffy compressions(s) you might hear online, it supports the interesting audio demos so far. It comes with a comprehensive editor, too, hallelujah. That particular Novation controller is a good partner for an 8-channel synth. Many controllers have 8-9 sliders, so I see some power users going for the multitimbral aspect. Give it a high-contrast color panel (bright letters, please) so it looks less like a cinder block and it should become even more popular. 2000 Euros/dollars/etc. seems like a fair basic price for the power. Its bound to develop a following; its a real labor-of-love synth. Nice job.

  3. I hope he has his eye on the lower end of the market too.It looks great and its good to see even more synths coming onto the market.Specially multi timbral and digital.

  4. I don’t know if all of you see the scope of this synthesizer and the technology behind. Sure thing the chassis may not look as pleasing as other synthesizers and resembles closely to the virus style. But that aside it’s a completely different beast!
    FPGA is not yet another DSP chip. In fact you can model the analog circuits like the ladder filter not in terms of mathematical formulas and put them into optimized source code but rather design real circuits that are burnt into the FPGA. With current FPGAs you can actually model a multitude of traditional DSP chips themselfes, burn them onto a single FPGA and run them in parallel. Hence the massive amount of voices – you can dedicate the whole chip with all its pins and computing power to all the purposes you need it for and only them specifically. All those voices have 10 Oscillators each, the envelopes and a moog modeled filter that sounds stunning.
    Why else would you want to use an FPGA instead of yet another DSP chip? Well Access have a big problem with DSP chips going out of production and all their nicely optimized source code for each and every aspect of the synthesizer becoming to a degree obsolete with it. They have to implement a whole lot of functionallity over and over again for each new DSP chip they decide to use. Not so with FPGAs (at least not to this extend) – they have a certain amount of Gates and you only have to lay out your existing product onto the new FPGA and that’s it. No changes to functionallity, topology, sample rate, conversions, talking to external hardware like DACs or I/Os or anything. If the housing of the FPGA remains the same you can also just pop in a new FPGA with more Gates and have even more functionality with still the same high quality audio outputs that are built onto the main board.
    Then again in the video with nick he talks about it being more of a platform rather than just the plain synth. It is planned that you exchange the front panel and buttons/knobs/displays and what have you and code on the FPGA (via USB) and off you go with a completely different synth/drum machine whatever with 8 individual analog outs as well as class compliant USB 2.0 audio streams at 24bit and 96 kHz (looking at you, ROLAND! With your shitty non-class-compliant TR-8, 08 09 and what not… also lacking the individual analog outputs).

    This is stunning/amazing/eye opening for me.

    And to top it all off this comes at well under 2k Euros. You don’t even get the evaluation FPGA boards with the number of gates needed to implement it yourself for this price – let alone any other virtual analog polyphonic synthesizer with those specs at all…

    I’m in no way connected or affiliated with this synthesizer/company/guy in the videos. Actually I was turned down by the first pictures as well… but after the video with nick and this video I’m left completely baffled, amazed… completely sold!

    1. I’m in agreement. If this comes to market, I think this might these machines could become game changers much like Nord/Access/Waldorf in the late 90’s and more recently Elektron. Here’s to hoping this comes to market soon! Looks like Manuel has been concentrating on the basics to make a very effective instrument, with a solid core structure/environment. Design looks very well thought out for functionality and user navigation.

  5. With this current unit being well under 2000 euros, instead of a desktop, a 61 key version with 256 polyphony and perhaps turning a couple of those sets of outputs into inputs. Hey, we’re all allowed to dream.

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