XSynth - Controller / Synth from ESI

Nice video about it, one of the latest on U :test_tube:

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I can’t find such price any where… No less than $349… Was it $100 raise in 9 days !!!

I think it was miss priced on Juno, they corrected it a few days after the post…

I think I got one of the first batch from Juno. It sold out quickly. Maybe they did price it wrong. Guess I got a good deal. I have received it but not had much time to play with it. Aftertouch seems a bit hit or miss. Maybe because of the short travel of the keys. I have tried tweak the AT curves but still hit or miss. Built in patches are ok. Most seem to have reverb or delay to make them sound better. Need more time to dig into it some more.

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I did order it first from here, but they re-calculate shipping charge and cancelled my order dropping me an explanation that because of high tariffs they don’t ship to US. The Thomann store still ships OK.

P.S.: Still it is some waiting period (2-4 weeks)…

P.P.S.: Gave up for now…

Amazona does a good fairly complete review of the Xsynth.

( Yes you can run this through Google Translate. )

A few things to mention about this article.

They discuss plus and minus for three competitive products to consider along side the Xsynyh :

  • Arturia MicroFreak
  • Roland JD-Xi
  • Korg Monologue

Not sure how they missed the Hydrasynth Explorer ?

They talk about some of the basics of operation, considering things like workflow, sound design, the editor, menus, effects, and that sort of level of thing.

They include a selection of some reduced sound samples that illustrate some of the basics, in particular the effects.

Productive read if you are considering the Xsynth.

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Or the Modal Cobalt 5s

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Sounds like FSOL :space_invader:

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That’s no bad thing… lifeforms baby :+1:

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I’ve just been reading the manual, it looks perfect for me.

One thing: Does it respond to MIDI program change messages?

ie. Can I change the current patch using my Digitakt?

The manual’s “MIDI implementation” section doesn’t inspire confidence.

Does anybody have one to try this?

To answer my own question: I wrote to ESI and they replied quite quickly…

thanks for the heads-up. This page has been reworked.
Xsynth can receive, transmit and react to the following MIDI messages on all channels:
• Note On/Off
• Velocity
• Aftertouch (Polyphonic or Channel)
• Pitch bend
• Control Change (CC)
• Footswitch/Damper
• Program change, Bank change
• System Exclusive (SysEx)
• RPN, NRPN
• MIDI Clock (only received, not sent)
• Aux Messages (All Notes Off)

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I just ordered one… :grinning:

It didn’t arrive yet but I installed the PC editor for the synth and took some screenshots.

(you don’t need the editor - it has a full onboard editor with very Syntakt-like workflow - but it’s all I have until Wednesday)

Observations: Each oscillator has one special ability. OSC 1 can do PWM, OSC 3 has pitch drift. OSC2 has “StartMod” (whatever that is).

It has a unison mode with selectable number of voices and detune.

Interestingly, when you change things in the editor it shows the MIDI sysex data for that change at the bottom. No secrets here!

It’s a wavetable synth, here are all the available waves. They’re the same waves on every channel:

Even if most of them aren’t very useful it seems you still get a 10 voice polyphonic, 3 oscillator subtractive synth with 3 LFOs, and lots of FX. Just that would be worth the money.


More screenshots…

3 stage effects chain, looks like you can’t have chorus+delay together. I would have put chorus/flanger/etc., on FX 2, I wonder if they could change that? :thinking:

Having reverb before chorus might be interesting though… :man_shrugging:

Mod matrix:

Global:

“Advanced”:

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My Xsynth arrived, I tried it for a week, and I sent it back today. I just wasn’t for me.

I don’t want to tell anybody here not to buy one, this is just my personal view.

Here’s why:

I was hoping to be able to use it as a “3-oscillator VA synth”, and it fails at that task.

First a niggle: The basic waveforms are all wobbly and jaggy. You can actually see it in the PC editor. These are the “square” and “saw” shapes and that’s exactly the waveform you’ll see on an oscilloscope.

This type of wave sounds gritty and dirty, which is fine, many people want that and many old analog synths were like this, but it makes it impossible to create really “clean” or “pure” sounds with an Xsynth. There’s three “square wave” options in the menu and I don’t see why there couldn’t be a single clean one. The raw sounds got the relationship off to a bad start.

Next, a problem: I don’t know exactly what the thing labelled “PWM” does (it’s hard to see exactly because of the dirty waveforms), but it’s not PWM.

At best it’s a PWM-a-like. You can use it to modify the sound but trying to modulate it was a disaster. I couldn’t find any combination of settings that made it sound “PWM”.

Finally, the deal breaker: I’m really into making sounds from scratch, I hardly ever go through the list of presets except maybe the first day to see what the thing can do.

The UI on the Xsynth simply isn’t up to the job of making complete sounds from scratch. There’s just far too many parameters, too few encoders, and too many pages to flip through to make it work.

It gave me flashbacks to my MC101.

It could probably be improved by reorganizing parameters by “usage” instead of “location in the sound engine” (eg. Make the first page OSC1 shape, OSC2 shape, OSC2 course, OSC2 fine).

It would probably help if there were two dedicated knobs on the device for filter cutoff/resonance so you didn’t have to press buttons to get there.

Right now? It’s a chore to make sounds, no fun at all.

You might argue that the Syntakt’s sound editing system is similar but the Syntakt has eight encoders and that makes a huge difference, eg. All the major parameters for a machine fit on a single screen. The Xsynth’s four encoders mean there’s exponentially more page flipping.

Note: The PC editor makes sound creation a lot more accessible if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t mind using a mouse to turn round knobs on a screen. I don’t enjoy that, and I feel that if I have to attach a PC to make the thing work then I might as well be using software synthesizer plugins - it’s much cheaper and more flexible than hardware.


Problems:

I found a technical problem, too. The output over USB had constant, regular clicks. One click per second or so, a constant beat over all the sounds that made it impossible to use.

I installed their special ASIO driver, etc., but it made no difference.

The clicking wasn’t there on the line out jack, only over USB. I assume it’s a firmware/driver issue that will be fixed in the future.


So who’s this synth for?

If you’re into presets and a bit of preset tweaking then this might be the synth for you. Wavetable synths can make a wide variety of sounds and the Xsynth delivers that.

The Xsynth’s a real winner in size and form factor. It takes up little space on a desk, it’s lightweight, and would easily fit in a backpack with your laptop if you’re the traveling type. I’d probably want something to protect the knobs though.

Other:

The keyboard feels like a laptop chiclet keyboard but with bigger keys and longer travel. You can tweak every single parameter of the key response. I could live with it.

The buttons are those awful transparent-grey-on-black rubber buttons that are impossible to read in a dim room. Any device which uses these should light them dimly at all times using the LED underneath them. The Xsynth doesn’t.

(…and neither does my Aira S1 - I’m looking at YOU, Roland)

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Thanks for the review. At around 350€, given the issues you mentioned, I’m not sure it’s really worth it as a subtractive synthesizer, though I’m looking at the current offering in retail and there actually not much competition at that price, aside from the Mininova which is slightly more expansive, or the circuit tracks (but not really standalone for programming).

I can’t believe we still don’t have a cheap 6-8 voices, knobby VA keyboard synthesizer like the KStation was 20 years ago … It would sell like hotcakes, do plugins really killed that market? hard to believe with all the “DAWLESS” folks in social media…

The Reface CS would be the closest thing today (although in terms of functions, it’s way inferior to the KStation), but you can’t even save patched on the device itself…

Anyway…

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@Bignill

Yes, there’s no denying it can make a lot of nice sounds.

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Please let’s stay on topic