Poly AT Keyboard Discussion

Glen Darcey worked at Akai, on some of the classic MPCs, before moving to Arturia (and then to ASM). Daniel Troberg knows a thing or two about samplers; I’m not sure how much, if any, engineering he performs, but that’s one hell of a beta tester in house. One of the key features of the ASR (and other Ensoniq sampler/synthesizers) was its poly aftertouch keyboard, which they already have. A lot of the work is already done, in many ways, if you leave the Hydrasynth intact after the filters and replace the oscillators and their mutants with samplers and new mutants which reflect the specific needs of samples (e.g. a granular mutant, a time-stretch mutant, etc.).

2 Likes

Thank you for the explanation (as usual! :)) – that’s a pretty sick team and it sounds like the stars have aligned on a lot of the core components. And also timing – market is begging for a sampler like that!

Or at least I am. :laughing:

2 Likes

Hydrakey MIDI 2.0 controller. :crossed_fingers:

1 Like

This is also from the ASM Technology page. I like the friendly tone of this. Sounds like they’ll talk to anyone, smaller companies included.

If you are a brand or manufacturer of keyboard instruments, that is looking for a Polyphonic Aftertouch solution for your keyboard product, we are able to offer licensing of our Polytouch® technology. Please use the contact link below.

Cre8audio NiftyKEYZ Poly
Elektron Digitone Keys MkII

ADDED : Actually the Analog Keys Poly-Aftertouch would work very nicely for me.

1 Like

Actually given Glen’s connections with AKAI the rumored MPC Key 37 is an outside possibility. ( post ) If so look for the 61 to follow soon after.

A Digitone Keys MKII with PolyTouch would be a drop everything and buy RIGHT NOW proposition for me.

4 Likes

Me too! That’s actually the ONLY thing that I think could make the original better (aside from maybe double the voices or something. :smiley: ) I do think that they’d sell more of them if they put the UI above the keys in a more traditional way. Personally, I like the side keys, but I know it puts a LOT of people off.

I got bored during a meeting.

I went through a few iterations, trying to maintain as much of the original DN muscle memory as possible, also taking a few cues from Analog Keys. I also ended up swapping the trig keys out for full-width 'Takt versions since there was room.

16 Likes

Perfect!

Elektron! Make it so!

2 Likes

May I suggest another exercise?

Move mod wheels with transpose to the left of keyboard, extend keyboard to five octaves. Then add diamond like cut at front left corner - they are Swedish after all. 🫠

1 Like

Would buy it before the announcement was even over.

1 Like

Looks real nice. But you need someplace to put your hands when twisting the knobs, maybe the lower knobs should go to the top?

I would buy one if it was called Analog Digitone Keys

1 Like

This discussion came up in the Moog Mirror thread about the possibility of Moog upgrading existing Moog One owners to poly-aftertouch.

Fatar could well have been selling this upgrade path option to all their OEM customers for years. I would have if it was my decision. You can bring in future upgrade sales, and stave off competition. The engineering for the physical communications connection may likely have been built in to some of their old keybeds already, and may have cost almost nothing up front.

Possible you could see this upgrade happening for several existing Fatar keybed users going forward, Moog and maybe others. The economics of this matter though, so it might not fit in the case of the Modal systems, but …

Image of the keybed upgrade :

Who else has a Fatar keybed ?

1 Like

I think if Moog is going to do that it would have to be soon, as the current batch of Moog Ones is also the final batch. Unless they were going to release an upgrade like that after the synth is discontinued.

1 Like

What do you think of that @Nikarga ?

Also new to the game and under the radar at SB, the prototype of a small portable synth with poly AT from ESI. We need more robust poly AT options below the HS Explorer price point, not sure if this is where it’ll land.

3 Likes

I think the hardware is already aftertouch poly, it just hasn’t been enabled in the firmware. Maybe there’s quite a bit of programming required to add it as an additional modulation source given the complexity of the synth.

I am told there a firmware update later this year that will unlock this feature amongst others.

Notice the keybed in the Moog One is not the same as any of their other synths. Its far higher quality too.

1 Like

A bunch of the sequential stuff responds to poly aftertouch…
That would be amazing if they offered a upgrade keyboard. What do you do with the old one though? Seems like a big waste to just throw them all away.

1 Like

rklem is “speculating” that Dreadbox is about to unveil a Poly AT keyboard product.

Seems to me the actual model is kind of open ended. November 2nd is coming right up so maybe another teaser on this soon.

Well, I don’t know if that’s “speculating”. :slight_smile:
“…probably the best keybed you can find” must be Poly AT, right?

"We are currently working on a new synth that is probably going to be released in 2024. And for the first time, it will have keys and it’s not going to be a desktop synth. So far we haven’t used keys mostly because of the manufacturing process and secondly, because it’s not that easy to find actually good keys. We’re now planning to use a Fatar keybed which has probably the best keybed you can find. But they do make a ton of difference when you play them so I decided to have the best possible keybed for our first synth with keys .

Here is the full interview:

2 Likes