9 Likes
Curious if youāve tried the Plogue VST and if you have, you thoughts vs the MegaFM.
1 Like
As long as weāre listing soundtracks, I want to shout out the 16bit Audiophile Project. Lots of great games there obsessively captured and presented for download in both lossless and compressed formats.
5 Likes
Not yet, but I really want to try them because Iāve heard they have the best emulations.
Wow. What a cool project. And I like that theyāre processing it with āThe Megascriptā. I wonder if it is blast processed? 
2 Likes
Yeah I should try it as well. I havenāt because I have a MegaFM, but I wonder if itāll make me realize I wasted money on hardware lol.
I have tried the SNES sampler they have and it sounds pretty damn authentic without being able to A/B any hardware (I do have a SNES and a SuperNT but itās harder to A/B something when I donāt have control of the sample engine on the SNES).
Plogue doesnāt just emulate the engine but the DAC as well. And this Liven device sounds, just based off their initial demo, like itās missing the crunchiness that I would expect something based off the Megadrive to sound. Also Iām not a fan of Sonicwares workflow for anything theyāve done. Very clunky.
1 Like
My first console was a sega master system, not sure which chip it used, but i think that the compositions they did were quiete good, given the limited capabilitys they had at that time.
From a sound perspective the mega FM demos sounded a bit better than this liven thing - but the overall package with the sequencer sounds a bit more complete to do full game sound tracks on it. I have no idea how much parameter lock would be possible on its sequencer.
2 Likes
Kid Chameleon kinda haunts me to this day. When I was little, I adored Kid Chameleon. I used to dress myself to look like the Kid- the leather jacket, the turned-up blue jeans, the trainersā¦ But that game, man was it tough. Not only the difficulty, which was sky-high, but something about that music, the visuals, the surreality. I couldnāt figure out if it was me or there really was something in that game that was trying to suck me in. And no matter how far I got, it felt like there were hundreds more levels. And those bossesā¦ Shishkaboss really freaked me out. In fact, just thinking about that opening level, Blue Lake Woods, gives me the chills. Something about the sound effects, the feeling of being lost in a vast and vicious world.
Anyway, hereās some soft jazz to lighten the mood, this from one of my favourites:
3 Likes
Just hearing this brought all my PTSD via playing that game. It was so awesome and absolutely destroyed my will to live with its brutal difficulty.
Anyone know if this is only gonna be sold via the liven site or will it be at retailers like perfect circuit and whatnot?
Chris showing it off a little more.
Seems like just preorders at the moment, but they will likely be at the sellers other Livens are available from eventually too.
1 Like
I like this a lotā¦not overcrowded arrangementā¦letting the sounds shine!
It sounds pretty nice to me. Itās definitely a bit darker (possibly low passed a bit to quiet some aliasing?) overall I think it looks like a fun box. I had the 8-Bit one (gave it to my som who uses it a lot in his productions)
I just played through Streets of Rage 2 in my hotel on my Analogue Pocket.
Sounds similar enough, though a bit more bright and crisp.
I donāt think it had the right effect though, because instead of ordering one of these like I was thinking I would, I ordered a Mega FM II. 
Just decided that I needed some 2151/2612/3438
6 Likes
I was reading through the manual on my lunch break, and I just wanted to share this.
Also, the ālegacyā settings sound like they could be fun as heck. I hope they really give it some dirty crunch, and make it sound terrible in a great way
11 Likes
I think the simple fact that Streets of Rage and Revenge of Shinobi are two of my favorite Genesis games, makes me want to pick one of these up. Probably more fun to play with this than my Yamaha FB-01 for crunchy old school FM. Have to wait for some sound comparisons and see once more people get their hands on this.
3 Likes
Just read through the manual. The FM synth seems decent. Didnāt realize you can sample straight into the device. This is a nice feature. Also controlling external midi devices is not covered in depth in the manual. Looks like sequencing notes for external midi is possible but not seeing anything on CCs or P-lock type midi sequencing. Looks like Cuckoo has one and will be dropping a video soon. Compact FM synth/sequencer, sampler, and midiā¦not sure I know of another device with this many features.
1 Like
A small Jamuary jam from Cuckoo; A detailed tutorial about the machine is coming soon.
2 Likes
Well itās here. I like it VERY MUCH.
Build quality is solid. Itās not as cheap and plasticy feeling a build as I thought I remembered other Livens being in the past, but Iām probably just too excited.
The main draw for me is the Megadrive sounding FM synthesis.
To me and my novice but nostalgic ears, they sound on point. Theyāre bassy, plucky, funky and fine like 4-op FM should be. You could even LP or HP filter them with the FX if you wanted.
I havenāt dug into editing yet besides the easy knobs up top, but I will say the sweep parameter is neat. Each voice is independent so if you play a chord slowly with long decay they could have some nice phasing as they overlap. Like a unison with wobble.
Iāve also been spending the evening going through the preset patterns and remixing the Koshiro tracks in a way with the stutter effect on drums.
It feels weird like Iāve got a piece of his diary or something. I donāt know. I got a little giddy when I realized Iām using a machine that lets me interact with some of his greatest hits.
Thereās some clever sequencing going on with a few of the preset patterns where a noise PSG track is layering snare and hat sounds on top of the drum track for more oompf. Similar to the snare layering technique I learned from fellow Elektronauts using the Syntakt. Theyāve also parameter locked the noise at different filter and release settings to let it be different percussive sounds. Nice.
Speaking of drums, I was surprised to find 808 and 909 kits among several live kits, along with several genre specific kits like trap, fusion and pop. Then there are many that sound sampled from popular Megadrive titles and a few other platforms like Gameboy and C64.
Theyāre a little dirty and low-fi, but any of them sound awesome with the bit crusher effect.
The sequencer can also be set to different lengths from 1 to 128 steps per track. It was easy to get a nice oddly timed ambient thing going until my brain started going mush as I started getting zoned out in the ambient bankās sounds through the delay.
Again, Iāve been mostly playing the presets and getting and a feel for the Liven sequencer again.
Iāve only touched it for a few hours, but I think itās going to make a lot of musicians and Megadrive fans very happy unless they donāt like some of the particularities of the Liven synths.
9 Likes
Demos or it didnāt happen 
J/K congrats and slightly jealous and stoked 
2 Likes
Iām just lucky I live close and ordered quick!
Iāll definitely record something this weekend.
2 Likes