FR Revolution first impressions

[zone_ahead]

i've had it for about a week and a half. so far, so good.

 

it's an interesting concept and i think it's going to work well in real-world applications.

 

build quality is decent. it's not a tank but it's pretty sturdy. the metal chasis is a little lighter than some of my other metal gear. knobs are nice - not too tight or loose.

 

i'm really liking the interface. a little weird at first, but once you start to think on "its" terms, it starts to make real sense. really thought out as far as what would make a great live interface with easy access to tweaking the hell out of the sequencer as well as the synth parameters. dare i say it has a "feng shui" feel to it with the circular design. just everything is in it's right place for maximum usage. if you place your hands spread out thumb-to-thumb over the middle of the box you can touch just about every parameter.

 

i've never had a chance to really sit down and use a 303 so i can't really A/B the two, but to my ears it comes pretty close to nailing it. as long as the cv mod and accent decay knobs are set in the right places, i think you would be hard pressed trying to pick it out of a track as not being a real 303.

 

for a single osc synth, it sounds really big. i have A/B'd it with some of my 303 clone vsti's and there's no comparison - it's got that fullness and warmth to it.

 

the accent decay is a nice little addition and yields some nice non-303 results. with it turned down all the way you can get some interesting percussive sounds and actually i accidentally came across a pretty convincing slap-bass sound doing that. with it turned up it you get a real uber-filtered feel to the accented notes. playing around with the envelope decay and accent decay you can get some nice syncopated sub-rhythms going on underneath the main rhythm.

 

the overdrive is DIRTY - instant acid. the amount of overdrive is related to the amount of resonance on the filter, and actually the only way to control the overdrive aside from on/off is from the resonance knob.

 

the audio in and cv in have been a lot of fun to play around with and is where you really start to break out of the 303 mold and yields some out of this world sounds. routing the headphone out to the audio in produces some wicked resonant sounds. seagulls galore. with the jack 1/2 in the audio out you still get some of the orginal audio signal and with it all the way in you are just getting the self-oscillation of the filter. playing around with that and the overdrive and delays generates some cool pseudo-tape loop noises. you can get just plain evil {censored} from it, ala the demos from the future retro site, but you can also get some more "usable' results as well.

 

i will say the digital effects are kind of weak. no control except for wet/dry. they will come in handy in certain occasions, but they could have been implemented a little better. there are 8 reverb algorithms, 2 delays, 1 chorus, 1 flange, 2 chorus+reverb, 1 lowpass filter, and 1 rotary speaker effect, - i could have done with less reverbs. i would have rather had more delays or more modulation effects. it would have been nice to have some tempo based delays as well.

 

the sequencer is simple but sweet. really built to tweak live. building up and switching out patterns while it is running is a breeze. the remix feature is actually pretty usable too. there are two remix knobs each with 16 algorithms which can be used solely or in conjunction with each other. blindly tweaking them live generally yields some nice results and i think once you start to remember certain settings and combinations you would be able to get seamless transitions and fills with little effort - i'm looking forward to using it to control my other gear.

 

overall, i've been really happy with it. it's been a blast to play with and i think once mastered it would be hard to beat in a live setting.

 

if i have some times i'll try to post some demos to the kss demo sticky.

[BOBA JFET]

That sounds like a really cool box. I'm planning on buying a TB-303 next month, maybe at that point we can do a head-to-head comparison (using the same patterns and settings, maybe sweeping some parameters) and see how close they are. The thing I'm most curious about is the square wave.

[J3RK]

Ahh, the tricky square wave. I'd be curious about that too, because if I was getting something that basically emulates a 303, then I'd want that hollow-pseudo-square wave instead of a real one. I love a proper square wave too, but that hollow 303 boosted sawtooth or whatever it is, is quite nice! I'd actually like to have a synth that did both methods.

[zone_ahead]

 

Originally posted by BOBA JFET That sounds like a really cool box. I'm planning on buying a TB-303 next month, maybe at that point we can do a head-to-head comparison (using the same patterns and settings, maybe sweeping some parameters) and see how close they are. The thing I'm most curious about is the square wave.

 

 

i'd be down to do some comparisons of the two. curious myself how close it would be side-by-side a TB.

[BOBA JFET]

 

Originally posted by J3RK Ahh, the tricky square wave. I'd be curious about that too, because if I was getting something that basically emulates a 303, then I'd want that hollow-pseudo-square wave instead of a real one. I love a proper square wave too, but that hollow 303 boosted sawtooth or whatever it is, is quite nice! I'd actually like to have a synth that did both methods.

 

 

According to FR's website, it emulates the square wave. Whether it actually sounds close or not remains to be seen. It looks like a lot of attention was paid to making a good TB-303 emu. I suspect it sounds very close, although to me there are things that will still make the TB-303 special, the poor bass response, imperfect pitch tracking, the sequencing, etc. not to mention the looks.

 

I might consider getting a revolution someday, mostly to mod.

[J3RK]

The fact that it's a piece of crap.

 

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE that sound. I write acid tracks frequently, and even toss a little into tracks that aren't acid-centric. Actually, the whole reason the 303 has the character that it does is BECAUSE it is a pile of crap. I hope they nailed the square-wave, because if they did, I want one. The whole reason I've never owned one, is because I hate the hardware itself. I wanted something newer and of a higher quality that made the same sounds. If they've got the glide down (effecting pitch and filter,) they have the square wave, and proper accents, then this may be what I've been looking for. To this point, I've been using Bassline, and while you can't really tell too much in a mix, there are some slight differences. I also wouldn't mind having tweakable hardware in front of me.

[BOBA JFET]

In some ways it's a pile of crap, but in others it's impressively resilient. Typically, unless batteries are left inside, I never hear of too many crapping out. The most common problems with them are cosmetic (cheap plastic case), and occasionally the buttons don't work very well (I'll probably buy one of those button replacement boards floating around on ebay). Mostly though, TB-303's seem to keep on truckin'.

 

So they're reliable pieces of crap.

 

I just feel at this point that I have to have one, so I won't have to compare, I won't have to wonder about accuracy. I grew up with acid, the 303 was a part of my upbringing. It might be stupid to pay so much for such a cheap, limited box, but you can't put a price on memories and at this point, I feel like I'm emotionally attached to the thing in a way. I'm really glad guys like Jered are producing boxes like the revolution, and also Mike at audiorealism on the software side. Eventually, as TB-303s die out, they will become so expensive nobody will be able to afford them, we need others to carry on the torch.

[J3RK]

Agreed.

 

I'm really not into silver-fleck painted plastic. The box itself is the main reason it's a pile of crap to me. If I bought one, I'd immediately take it out of that case, rip the control section out, make a 2 unit annodized alluminum rack case for it (a friend has a couple of mills in his garage,) mount some blue-LED VUs in it, replace buttons, LEDs and knobs with fancy ones, and be happy with my 303 Mk II. This is more or less what I did with my SID Station. I hated the original case, buttons, knobs, encoder wheel, and LCD. Replaced them all, crammed it in a 1 unit rack (annodized green,) made a new internal power supply for it, etc.

 

I too grew up on acid. (Starting early 90s though, didn't quite cathch the late 80s in that scene.) I'm emotionally attached to the sound. I can't quite transfer that to the plastic box it came out of though.

[robmix]

Hey, got any pics of that mod'ed SID ?

[Yoozer]

Goodness... I was looking forward to a review like this. Thanks.

 

Do you also have a picture of how it looks switched-on in your studio instead of a render?

[Array]

 

Originally posted by Yoozer Goodness... I was looking forward to a review like this. Thanks. Do you also have a picture of how it looks switched-on in your studio instead of a render?

 

 

http://www.stromkult.com/movie/revolution_promo.mov

[J3RK]

Yeah, I've got some. I just put up 3, because I don't know how much space I've got left. A couple of notes: The row of LEDs between the numeric buttons on the left cycle back and forth like the front of KIT from Knight Rider. They are controlled by the HC05 microcontroller on the power supply board. The display was switched to a Vacuum Fluorescent Display from the LCD it was previously. (VFDs look cooler.) My friend did most of the design work, I helped him put it together. If you look around for some of my more recent posts, you can read about our new SID related project. (Designing our own SID compatible chip using SSM filters Gonna be nice!) Anyway, here are the pics:

 

 

The power supply board is basically two separate power supplies. One for the analog portion of the SID, and one for the digital. It cuts down on noise a bit. Also, there are a few mistakes on the SID board that Elektron made, (ungrounded, unused data pins etc,) so when we design the new SID chip, we're also going to correct some of those flaws. I'll post more when we make some more progress.

[BOBA JFET]

Cool! It's a very clean design. You should get some legending done on the front panel, that would really up the class factor.

[J3RK]

Actually we have a totally new front panel, different knobs, different layout etc. The new case is done, just need to annodize, (clear/silver this time,) and put it all together when we're done with the new SID compatible synth chips we're making. I'm going to be writing the OS in the coming weeks/months.

[Yoozer]

Ask for one, get two! I initially meant the Revolution, but seeing this DIY project done is nice, too! Kudos!

[J3RK]

A bit on the new SIDish chip. It will have two modes (selectable by software, or dip-switch.) One is SID compatible, and one is enhanced. We're doing it all on FPGA. It will have none of the noise problems that the SID had. We're going to have a couple of filters available. An SSM 2040 (Prophet) and a 24db transistor ladder (Moog.) (It's actually going to be a small circuit board with pins underneath (or ribbon cable,) to connect to a SID-using device. In enhanced mode there will be 4-8 "SIDs" available, so we'll be able to do 4-8 voice polyphony with a single chips, with 3 oscillators and two filters per voice. Since our design (and the original SID are half digital, we're going to have a wavetable mode that utilizes the DAs. (We haven't decided on the size and count for the wave tables yet. They will be 12 bit.) I'm designing the wave cycles for some of them. Anyway, that's about as much as I can comment on right now. I'll give an update when there's something intersting to show.

[J3RK]

Oh, and [/Hijack] Sorry, got off on a big tangent...

[zone_ahead]

 

Originally posted by Array http://www.stromkult.com/movie/revolution_promo.mov

 

 

my led doesn't flash like the one in the movie during playback - just the note-on led's flash in pattern mode. there was an addendum to the manual that said there were some changes made after the first 100 production units, but mine's serial #009 so i'm guessing that one is a prototype or something.