Fred's lab - Manatee - Multitimbral MPE Synthesizer

I think it’ll be a sleeper hit.

Great option to pair with a midicake arp.

Edit/ did anybody catch in the Kickstarter video that the 2 sets of stereo outs can be used to send out separate parts?! Didn’t clarify if it was 4 mono outs for each part or not.

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Is it black or dark blue?

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Really loving this digital renaissance.

Hydrasynth, the Korg Wavestate (and family), MicroMonsta 2, Mega FM and Blast Beats.

And some of these aren’t afraid to embrace the aliasing which I really love.

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Definitely looks navy to me.

Based on the phrasing it seems like you can send the four voices to their own mono-out. I’m assuming but that seems to be the way it was worded.

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At 2:45 in the Kickstarter video, you can see it next to an Arturia Keystep, where it looks like it might have been intentionally sized to be only a few ounces of superglue away from a Manatee Keys edition.

Now that you mention it… Mmmaybe. I spend many hours in front of the screen and I have it dimmed and a bit red saturated on purpose. There is a Press Photos folder here… Anyway, nobody is perfect. (I mean the synth) :wink:

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Based on the Fred’s forum on MW Fred seems like a really nice guy.

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Looks like we’re fully funded!

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For the curious German speakers, he is also active (and a really nice guy too) on the Sequencer.de forum.

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manatee Reddit topic
He does confirm that you can use the outputs as 4 mono outs for each part or a mix of different routing combos on the Reddit post.

@Chreeb

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Was looking at this earlier today then got home from work to look again and the early bird sold out. I think it would make a nice partner to my digitone.

I just cancelled my order so there’s one early bird available right now if you act fast.

Money problems :confused:

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A two-hour live intro and Q&A today.

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Looks great. Easy to back as I love my Töörö. I think this is the next genius coming up.

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Link to 1h35:30, when a few minutes of uninterrupted music demo start.

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already thinking ahead, if the 4 parts can output individual mono signal through each the stereo and aux outputs, then it’s a perfect use case for my mono guitar pedals which often get overlooked when I’m in synth mode

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Crowdfunding, less than 24h to go.

Today there was a project update that includes a link to this kanban board (link):

I hope it is updated in a way that it is useful to bakers and others wondering “is it done yet?” :slight_smile: Anyway, I wish more crowdfunding projects would follow this example.

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Another hardware MPE synth without a USB host port… Frustrating.

  1. MPE needs a controller…
  2. Controllers need a host port for connection and power…
  3. MPE needs USB for speed and bandwidth…

:confused:

Cheers!

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I’m probably overreading into your use of “need”. And the only MPE controller I have is the Linnstrument. So grains of salt on both accounts. But the full-sized Linnsturment can be powered over DC wall wart or USB. And the USB doesn’t have to be special, as far as power goes. It can come right from a phone charger.

For everything else, it’s more than happy to transmit over 5-pin DIN MIDI. That usually peaks at around 8ish channels’-worth of 3–5 CC streams (plus note on/off which are a rounding error. And one channel of more sparse global messages) but I haven’t had anything fall down under the pressure, yet. I mean, I can generate that much traffic with normal MIDI and a Pyramid without being too ambitious.

Certainly it’s way, way more convenient to run everything over a single wire, so I love it when a synth supports a host port. And we’ll soon be at the point where we want to sequence multiple MPE instruments from a single device, and we’ll need way more bandwidth than a single MIDI port allows for then.

But for now, connecting a controller an instrument, it doesn’t feel like a need. Just a nice-to-have.

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