The Daydreamer Synth 1 is an unique 6-voice paraphonic synthesizer that’s designed to be sustainable, open source and affordable.
It features a unique wood case, 6 analog oscillators and VCAs, digitally-controlled envelopes and modulators, a diode ladder low-pass filter, and an analog Bucket Brigade Delay effect.
Here’s a demo of the Daydreamer Synth 1 in action:
Features:
- 6 Analog VCOs (Voltage Controlled Oscillators)
- 6 Analog VCAs (Voltage Controlled Amplifiers)
- LFSR White Noise generator
- Velocity Sensitivity
- Legato / Portamento / Pitch Glide
- LED Note Indicators
- Digital to Analog Envelope Generator
- Digital to Analog LFO
- Diode Ladder Low Pass VCF (Voltage Controlled Filter)
- LFO Modulated VCO and VCF
- Paraphony / Polyphony
- Note Recycling
- PT2399 Bucket Brigade Delay
- Open source hardware and software
Pricing and Availability:
The Daydreamer Synth 1 is available now for $299 USD. You can download the schematics from the Daydreamer site and source code is available via Github.
via altwire
Interesting, but it it sounds like the oscillators do not track very accurately. Can this instrument be played with oscillators being musically in tune to each other? Or was it designed for polyphonic synth effects, because that is what the demo seems to focus on…
Around 13:00 it is sounding pretty nice.I can see the potential.
Actually meant 9:00
Some peculiar choices in this one – for instance, all of the CVs are generated by a TLC59041 LED driver. It outputs 16 channels of 12-bit digital PWM data, which are then sent to what Daydreamer calls “CV inverters” but look like recovery filters.
Re: oscillator tracking mentioned in other comments, there’s not any adjustment for that. There’s a “tuning” trimmer for each VCO that sets the pitch when the knob is at its detent, but that’s it…
The output mixer (and only the output mixer!) using a 741 also seems peculiar; is there some kind of “worse is better” woo-woo going on here?
Yes, this seems like a hobbyist project from a “what if”-idea pile. Building it from wood to make it a fire hazard and prone to dents and tear on the road and in the studio, sounds like a concepts looking cute on paper..
Meowww meowww should be the name of the first sound
I actually like this a lot. It hits a spot which not many synths aim for, which is “simple” bread-and-butter polysynth sounds with an analog texture. Think of it as somewhere between a juno 106 and a Volca Keys, good for chords, stabs, arpeggios, that kind of thing. I really wanted an MFB Synth Pro to fill this exact niche, but it’s stupidly expensive for such a limited instrument. Think I’m gonna grab this.
For bread and butter I go straight for software these days with the millions of options available. Most specialized synths even do bread and butter, so why build another basic synth (I am also looking at you, Moog and almost every Kickstarter synth…)
Software (insert yawn emoji)
Mine arrived today. I REALLY like the sound. It’s very simple, which isn’t a bad thing– I have any number of complex synthesizers to play with if I want simple, and this frees those up to do their complicated things instead. Being able to stack 6 oscillators is pretty exciting. The filter self-oscillates and gets pretty exciting too. I was an old-school Poly-800 user, so a single filter isn’t a new experience for me– being able to stack the 6 voices into a single super beefy solo voice is pretty nice too. Yeah, it might be a hobby project turned product, but it’s pretty fun and I’ve definitely played worse synthesizers for 300 bucks.