Underwaterbob

I've finished all the games more than once on various hardware, but the collection only became playable on Steam Deck relatively recently. They're so much better there!

Any lovers of Metroidvanias or platformers in general owe it to themselves to check it out. Since they were originally GBA games, they scale to the Steam Deck's screen very well and don't hurt my old-man's eyes at all.

Great experience! Can't wait to check out the Dominus collection when I'm done with these. I've played through those a few times on OG hardware as well. I bet they're so much better on Deck! I really hope they've removed the awful touch screen boss capture mechanic in Dawn of Sorrow. I imagine they must have given these are playable on PC, and doing them with a mouse would be just short of impossible.

Anyone else see this thing? Personally, I think TE is out of their mind if they think it's worth $2300. I see the sentiment being repeated a lot.

The disappointing part is, you know it'll sell like crazy, anyway. Screw them for this ridiculous price gouging. Screw people for supporting their price gouging. I'm not usually a vindictive person, but I hope sales are awful so they don't inspire anyone else to try this approach.

Seriously, anyone considering this thing, go buy a Digitakt or an Oxi One and use it with your phone and take a nice trip to Thailand or something with your leftover money.

All the synthtubers are gushing. I'd gush too if TE forwarded me one early for free.

My latest Oxi One - Beetlecrab Audio Tempera - Erica Synths/Sonic Potions LXR-02 jam. I'm not usually one to jam and instead plan stuff out pretty meticulously, but this set up is just so fun to mess around with.

Did anyone else see this? It's in pretty early development, but exciting! I'd love to see the Steam Deck become a M8 competitor. Not because I think Valve needs any more money, but because a M8 is so hard to buy and this would be a decent placeholder.

Or more! It's obviously got a lot more processing power than a M8. Hopefully it gets some decent synth emulations (Mutable's open source ones?) Analog sticks open up some interesting performance options, too.

The biggest drawback would be the need for some kind of external interface if you wanted to use it as a sequencer. M8's got it beat there. Mechanical keys are also nicer than the SD's buttons.

I have been using my tempera relentlessly. I have in fact started finally populating my YouTube channel almost exclusively with tempera videos. I do still have Doctor Doctor lying around. Haha!

I'm the sole mod of our (I use the term loosely) synthesizer community. There's so little engagement, why not just spam it?

I'm waiting for a refund I told myself I'd wait for before buying an Oxi One. I paid for a car repair last year, and it turned out the part was faulty on all those vehicles, so they're giving me my money back. It wasn't a cheap repair, either. It will almost cover the cost of an Oxi One entirely. The refund should be here any day, now.

I've watched the number of Oxi One's on their website drop from undefined, to 8 left in stock, to 2 left in stock. Needless to say, it's a bit of a nail biter. Will my bank's sloth prevent my purchase and save me a bunch of money I'll probably just blow on something else? Who can tell? 4 of 3-to-5 business days have passed. I'm literally shaking. Haha!

I don't actually need the refund. I have the money now, anyway. It's more fun this way!

I've all but blown my tax refund on an Oxi One at this point, but I though I'd ask (if there's anyone around..) I've looked at the major contenders, and I'm pretty sure the One is the one for me. Korg SQ64 and Arturia Beatstep/Keystep Pro seem a bit too simplistic for my purposes, Hapax a little too expensive, and Cirklon, well, I'm not waiting 4 years or spending that much.

The only thing the One has against it is that I'm not really a modular guy, and it has a lot of modular functionality. The Hapax is probably a better choice since I work mainly with MIDI, BUT, I also don't have much space left and the battery powered, smaller One really appeals. I also don't really have that big of a set up, so the four sequencers of the One are definitely enough. Especially since I shall mostly be using it with a DAW and if I really need more sequencing power, it's there. The Hapax is likely quite overpowered for my purposes.

Am I missing any obvious choices? I saw a fairly cheap Toraiz Squid, but I'm not sure about that one at all.

I ordered one some time back, and it showed up two-and-a-half weeks ago. I've been making patches almost daily. Well, to be fair, I generated a fair number of samples before I even got it. Some of them worked out, others did not. I've been on the Discord with the creators, and they actually implemented a couple of firmware changes I suggested. Damn! It's an amazing creative tool with a great community behind it.

I'd write a full review, but that would take time away from continuing to use it. So much potential, so many ideas. I can't wait to absolutely slather my next album in it.

You can see some examples on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3hZED_SAmcAeUGli_1Elew

So, my work machine was getting long in the tooth. Occasionally not booting and requiring me to jiggle memory sticks or tighten CPU cooler screws. It was a DDR3 machine with a Xeon E3 1230V2 with 8gb of RAM (and oddly enough an RTX 2060.) The fans were getting pretty loud, too.

I had a Ryzen 2600x and 16gb of DD4 from my home PC lying around, so I bought a cheap mainboard, tore the old one out of the case, attached all the hardware to the new mainboard - including the SSD with Mint installed - and BOOM! It booted first try without issue. Even going from Intel to AMD, DDR3 to DDR4. My mind is blown!

I can't imagine how borked my machine would have been if I'd tried that with Windows.

Now, what do I do with a still-working Xeon and mainboard?!?

If you don't know what it is, it's two Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) sound chips (Yamaha 2612 in V1, and uhh, some other number in V2) in a small aluminium box with a boatload of faders to control every aspect of each operator, some LFOs to modulate them, and an arpeggiator/sequencer (I never use).

You might think it sounds like a Sega Genesis game all the time, but it does not. The LFOs really open up the 2612. It does some amazing performance tricks you certainly don't hear in Sonic the Hedgehog. But, it does those, too. Channel your inner Yuzo Koshiro, then make it sound like something entirely else.

A while back, Twisted Electrons saw fit to make the firmware open source, and it's wonderful how much functionality they've added. Looping envelopes that can loop from different points in the six-stage envelopes, new voicing options, a MIDI tool to change settings from your PC, heck, a couple weeks ago they added the ability to change the scaling of the envelopes. It came out four years ago, and the updates keep on coming.

Just so I don't sound too much like a fanboy, I will qualify that it is a bit of a janky box. Voice stealing is weird sometimes, and these chips are noisy and scummy sounding. It's probably the most analog sounding digital thing I've ever heard. I guess there are still a few minor bugs with the firmware, but none that I personally notice.

Still, it's only 450 Euros and eminently worth it.

Recently I've been on a hardware granular synthesis search (we're in a renaissance) and I love seeing how each box (1010music - Lemon Drop, Tasty Chips - GR-1 and GR-MEGA, Oddment Audio - groc, and the plinky and Tempera) implements their particular version of granular synthesis because I can steal their ideas!

I watch a tutorial or demo video, and they explain how the hardware works. I can then go and open up Notepad++ and code up my own version of their instruments in Csound. For free. I don't even have to subscribe to their silly hardware limitations, either.

It doesn't exactly stop me GASing over some of them (man, the groc looks sexy, though it's a bit early to tell how good it is), but it does at least prevent me from making too many impulse purchases.

This turned into a bit more of a CSound rave than I intended again. Seriously though, if you're interested in sound synthesis and are even mildly technologically inclined, I really advise learning either Csound or one of the other languages like Supercollider or ChucK. The only problem is that every piece of hardware after that is going to be a disappointment.