Soundmachines NS1nanosynth

• Fabricant : Soundmachines
• Modèle : NS1nanosynth
• Catégorie : Synthétiseurs analogiques en rack
• Fiche créée le : 06/11/2017

We at soundmachines thought about a simple and cheap platform that will transport the main characteristic of a modular analog synthesizer in a small and friendly format, to be well recognised by musicians,  makers and tinkerers worldwide. A small, but  loyal to its roots, instruments of sound creation. With a digital platform added as a bonus.

The soundmachines NS1nanosynth is born.

Let’s talk now about dimensions. Because size does matter. Absolutely. We created something that you can extract from your bag, or a big pocket, and start patching, manipulating and definitely and positively playing. On the train? On a plane back home? At your sister’s wedding? Maybe, after all, also on a stage.

The entire platform, that is a complete, albeit simple, analog modular synthesizer, is the same height and a little wider than ONE standard 5U synthesizer module. One single module. But on board the soundmachines nanomodular you have a saw core thermally stabilized v/oct VCO, a 12db lowpass and bandpass VCF, two LFOs, one loopable ADSR envelope, a standard VCA, two twistable attenuators, two pot controllers and a plethora (more than a dozen!) of  “micro” modules like mixers, multiples, sample and hold, sum/sub blocks, inverters, logic or, and, nand, analog dividers, clock dividers, fixed voltage generators and several ‘sensor blocks’.

But, remember? There is more on board…….

We talked about a ‘digital platform’. The soundmachines nanomodular hosts the most famous of them all: an Arduino Leonardo compatible circuitry. Now, the Arduino Leonardo is a particular flavour of the original Arduino with the very welcome addition of a native USB connectivity. Native means that we can do SPP, we can do HID, and most importantly, through a third party library called arcore, we can do MIDI over USB!

But not only this.

We can also do sound generation and effect implementation using the MOZZI library!

You can, of course, get rid of everything and write whatever you want on a perfectly formed standard Arduino platform. It’s up to you to use your standard or custom libraries and do modulations, connect to wireless stuff, use the on board dual DAC and quad digital potentiometer etc…

The soundmachines NS1nanosynth is a complex and open environment to test each and every potential of contamination between the good old modular analog blocks and the modern digital approach to development and interfacing.