Behringer MonoPoly

wonder how long til they get sued for that name…

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Cool, love the MonoPoly, but feel like the Analog Keys is basically it’s cooler, spiritual successor.

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of course it is

all that recent territory can be achieved with two Neutrons and a Crave…:face_with_monocle:

Now that I think about it, “monopoly” is probably too generic a name to get trademarked.

Actualy Behringer owns the trademark on that.

They have for a while. See here.

Good to look at the other names they grabbed – you ready for the Polivoks?

But if they used this image they’d be sunk,

Behringer Monopoly

with no “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

someone asked something similar and Behringer said you can cycle the OSCs with the arp. No idea if that’s what you mean.

oh man. the recent controversy was the nail in the coffin for me with Behringer but this one is going to be hard to resist.

hah, they left out the forward slash

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Politics aside…this looks well done!

Looks and sounds like a cheap knockoff.
Then again, YouTube just makes some synths sound cheap anyway.

you could cycle the OSC’s on the original too (that was one of the coolest things it could do, in fact) but you couldn’t actually sequence it externally and do that. when you fed it cv/gate, it was always in unison mode (all four OSC’s at once). or you could do the arp mode (cycling OSC’s) and feed it a clock, but you had to then trigger the notes for the arp manually. the Tubbutec mod upgrades all of this so you can just send arp notes over midi and it will run thru these with the arp or in round-robin fashion. likewise, Tubbutec mod effectively enables it to be a “poly” synth via midi, which you also can’t sequence on the original (though you can play on the keys).

in short: the original did some stuff via the keys that wasn’t possible via the cv/gate standard of the time. Tubbutec mod gives it midi and allows everything you can do directly with the synth via midi. I would hope that Behringer would know this shortcoming and make up for it (though I have my doubts).

***and to be clear. I will never buy a Behringer product. I said this 20 years ago, I still mean it now. but I still have opinions about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. if you’re to go through the trouble of cloning something, hopefully you at least do it well.

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You can do that with the Analog Four!

oh I’m well aware! and it’s awesome! A4 wasn’t my thing though. I love Elektron stuff dearly but it was just too much menu depth for me. I have the Vermona Perfourmer though. even better than the Mono/Poly because you have a dedicated envelope, amp, filter and lfo per voice when you’re doing the cycling through voices thing. and can still do a four-voice poly synth with every voice just slightly different.

the A4 version of this is incredible though. it’s even more than the Perfourmer does (albeit with a less straightforward interface). A4 can cycle the voices and you have SO much control and options for each voice (Perfourmer is a much simpler signal path).

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Ooooh yes, i love the Perfourmer! The sound quality from the Osc are just awesome! The one knob per funktion interface is great, but sometimes also the disadvantage, because to get all four voices straight equal, you need to dial in everything four times, which sometimes can be annoying. It also eats up a lot of real estate, i wish it would be smaller. Also the very limited midi control (just Midi Note on/off + plus for Filter) screams for a MKIII. That´s why the A4 is indeed a great alternative on steroids with full control.

It’ll be interesting getting this alongside my ageing PolySix and doing some comparisons

At the suggested price it is competing with a lot of quite well featured synths, it will be interesting to see how well it sells.

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I’m guessing CoolAudio have cloned the SSM oscillator and filter chips of the original? I’d seen mention that they’d redone the BA662. If they’re now producing SSM clones that could indicate future direction?

I wonder what filter they’ve used in the Cat? The SRM had a SSM vcf.

as you’ve dived deep into synth history and the technical approaches like I do there’s another market for those who say the OG Microkorg is an Analog Synth, because it doesn’t need to be attached to something.
that early synth noob fact. :face_with_monocle:

there’s a difference between a technical aspect and people that want just a proper synth without any technical understanding of how different gear works.

the Monopoly will sell like a Monster, the part 1 trailer has reached nearly 200000 views in a few days. that’s the thing with those copycats as they grab the old synth enthusiasts and the new ones lusting for a classic synth. :upside_down_face:

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