Sounds like a fun sort of feature, using various sorts of images.
ADDED : Since this has an onboard sequencer, applying the terrain feature to notes in a sequence ( probably quantized for the terrain and path selected ) just seem natural. Add some NDLR sort of action to that amd you have a generative synth.
Some good shorts from Conductive* showing various terrains and sounds.
Here’s one showing the controls.
It is subjective, and ultimately the sound is the important thing, but i think this synth looks really great, and so far the controls do seem sensibly laid out ( though that would take some time to know and experience ).
Kickstarter in a week, that’s sooner than i expected. We’ll see what sort of schedule they propose.
Last December I was contacted by Steve from Conductive Labs about a Vector Synth (Beetlecrab) I was selling at the time. He was interested in comparing the Vector to a new synth they had in development. Presumably this is it!
From the videos it does seem like it shares some concepts with the Vector!
From the latest Sonic Talk. There is always a bit of jibber-jabber there, but Gaz actually got to sit down with the hardware a few weeks back so it’s at least informed jibber-jabber.
Specific news from this, Jim Heywood was covering Knobcon for Sonic State so we can expect videos from the show coming up, and on the Terrain synth. Heywood often does a playing video as well on big synth releases that are well along on development, fingers crossed.
Also interesting was the fact that the original idea for terrains for audio waves, as credited by Steve, goes way, way back. Gaz says 1979, but whatever it predates the reference given above in this thread.
Gaz also says the display is “really fast”, and also “this is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in a long time.”
Like you Jeanne, i backed another certain KS project, and so i’m keeping the money in my pocket for now. I recall the MRCC had a short Covid delay. Terrain is scheduled for availabilty around Superbooth next year. Conductive Labs has released quite a bit of detail on the current status, and what is left to do, which is good.
They chose to use the Raspberry Pi CM5 module from testing it against other systems.
I agree. It’s a complicated business, with so many separate skills that one needs to master.
At the same time though you can see corporate growth from them too. Recall that NDLR for a period of time was, i don’t know if the word is dropped exactly, but that product did take a back seat. Covid was a challenge for every manufacturer.
The Terrain is definitely a step up in complexity ( though the MRCC had it’s own sort of complexities too ). And yet Conductive Labs was able to develop this one while simultaneously dealing with MRCC and NDLR production.
I think of another company Tasty Chips, who have self funded ( with pre-orders ) the GR-MEGA production, and have faced challenges meeting demand. The GR-MEGA and the Terrain are similar sorts of products to my simple mind.
Hello Conductive Labs forum member. Some of you may have noticed the Conductive Labs forums are getting a lot of spam posts. We haven’t found a way to stop them, and frankly we’re getting tired of managing them.
We have decided to make the move to a Discord server. It’s what all the cool kids are doing after all. It may not be optimally setup yet, but we’re getting there.
So without further ado here is the invite to our new Discord server: Conductive Labs
We intend to leave the old forum available for reading, but new registrations are now disabled. For security, all usernames and email addresses will be purged from the forum membership database at a later date.
Thank you for your patience during this transition.
Since I complained about lack of support above, I feel duty bound to report that after the move to the new Discord server I’ve had good luck getting in touch with the Conductive Lab support team. Glad they’ve got things sorted and are back to doing a good job supporting their very useful devices!
Final hours on the Kickstarter pledging. Right now they are way over the minimum goal of $35,000 USD, as they are aprox. at $88,500.
Going to put up a couple of short videos showing a close up of the display.
The first shows various terrains and the resultant waveform variations.
The second is more about the variations of color on the display.
The display is fun to look at all by itself, without the sound generation functionality even being considered.
I am sure that there will be expansion to the sound and variation as this product evolves and gets more into sound design ( A typical progression in the design and development of a synth. )
I will probably take a serious look at this synth when it comes out. I am a sucker for any interesting intersection of sound and visuals, which is one reason I came close to buying a vector synth from Beetlecrab. I wonder how the finished version of this might compare to the just released new VST Kontrast by Dawesome music–similar ideas anyway (creating new sound capabilities with multi-axial progression of whole new scaning shapes over wavetables, including images). I bought Kontrast as soon as it was released for this reason, visuals and sound coming together in interesting ways, which is also why I own all the other products from Dawesome.
