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A commercial SID synth that look damn familiar (seen on MESSE)


stuartm
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Apart from the very unprofessional outside look (as Nils said, they didn´t even take the time to align the texts to the buttons), I would truly like to see the internals, and would not be surprised to find a cache of stolen intellectual property :-)

Edited by Hawkeye
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look at the adafruit forums who's providing free support for all the Shitforbrains x0xb0x'es that can be had for a few bucks less on ebay. as has been said already MM are teaming up with those genuine inventors so from my perspective i'd surely doubt the quality of anything they sell.

dimensions 0*0*0 haha maybe they rated their creativity by that. salesmen.

To be fair, MMM on the x0xb0x forums IS a Mode Machines employee and does provide support for everyone. In fact, he's probably the most qualified person to do so since Guest left so they (or he is) making an effort to rectify some of the animosity there.

That sid box is hideous though, curious whats inside and who did it. Wish them the best finding good SID chip sources..

Edited by Altitude
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To be fair, MMM on the x0xb0x forums IS a Mode Machines employee and does provide support for everyone. In fact, he's probably the most qualified person to do so since Guest left so they (or he is) making an effort to rectify some of the animosity there.

That sid box is hideous though, curious whats inside and who did it. Wish them the best finding good SID chip sources..

They bought some old C64's on ebay, took the SID out and sold the boards without SID's, long time ago ....

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guest left? ooooooooh shit! i still got a not working x0xb0x and it can't be much, but i haven't looked at it for a year. seems i'm too lazy. i always thought, oh well, no problem, guest will be able to tell what's wrong after 1st or second post.

He decided to focus on his Open Music Lab stuff. Plenty of knowledgeable ppl still there..

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello,

I designed this and it ain't a midibox. I have already made a couple of those in the past ( both were midibox SID of the week, search "alkex sid") and wanted to build something different.

This was initially a self-challenge to build a sid synth with more of a groove-box approach, focused around composing beats and patterns.

All the instrument patches are crafted in software.

Here's a video of the wavetable editor:

This machine is AVR based and coded from the ground up, datasheet in hand as a fun challenge.

I have a boatload of respect for TK and have always played by the midibox rules but I'm now grateful to have met Michael from Mode Machines in spite of the history with midi-box (which I was well aware of).

He, his team and other developers I've had the pleasure to meet via him are great creative people that I am proud to associate with.

Now you know :)

I love both my midibox sids and the groovebox, they each serve different purposes and live happily in harmony in the studio.

Best wishes from the dark side!

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Heya alkex, noone said you stole the source or anything, no worries. It's just that Michael is a XXXXXX XXXXX of XXXXX that XXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXX XXXXX. At least that's my impression from the few hours I spent on the phone with him. :flowers:

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  • 2 weeks later...

here is a new teaser that was posted on matrixsynth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_gu1rmtoaZ4

I would really love to have a little peek inside the case.

i dont like modemachines, all those threads on adafruit i have seen in the past years.. but still in respect to the designer (if he has not stolen anything), i gotta say i kinda like the design and the sounds in the video.

other than that i would personally never buy anything from modemachines, but this are just my 2 cents.

but i guess, looking at the ASID64 (which is a MB-6582 from the first sight), i dont think that they came up with something themselves for their Mode Machines SID.

Looking at the design it seems that they ripped the adafruit version of the x0xb0x sequencer and connected a SID module (and a fancy iPAD Mode which every real c64 lover would die for) to it.

the owner of mode machines also said in a video on youtube that the first 300 units come with a genuine sid chip (i wonder where those rare parts come from)

and the other units will be using an replica which is just as "good"

lets all just respect each other and dont make profit on others ideas :clover:

Edited by RyuX
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the owner of mode machines also said in a video on youtube that the first 300 units come with a genuine sid chip (i wonder where those rare parts come from)

and the other units will be using an replica which is just as "good"

The 300 SID's are most probably ripped from used 64's. Somebody posted a picture of their ebay auction where they offered ripped C64 boards, without SID's. But anyway, I would love to see the coding, of course all programmed from scratch :rolleyes:

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  • 1 year later...

Hello everyone, this is my first post here, and with good cause I'm not good enough to built these kind of machine on my own.

I just want to tell my  misfortune with mode machines, especially with their sid groovebox. I'm not a kind of guy who is yelling for nothing, but they are fooling me for nearly four months. Their behaviour is just a shame.

Before reading, I beg your pardon for my pretty bad english:

So, I bought last june a sid and there was different problems.


-The headphones output was useless, with a lot of noisy sparkles.
-The software was unstable, I couldn't do anything with it.
-With an external midi keyboard, the last note I played kept on sounding as if there was a "hold" function that doesn't exist both on the sid and my keyboard.

I have emailed mode machines, not only for repair but also for upgrade, because I owned a real c64's chipset and I wanted them to replace the original swinsid.

At the begining (mid july) Michael Thorpe told me that there was just an "smt part to change on the circuit board", and it would be repaired and upgrade in two weeks. But then he spoke about a new os version, wich obviously doesn't work yet...

Now, He answers to my emails from time to time, just to tell me that the os is almost ready or ready, it depends of his mood. I've tried to be refund twice, but each time he passes over the question.

It means they are selling a product which is not operational, and they are not abble to fix the many bugs it has...

At this time, I don't know if someday I'll get the sid (and the chipstet) or my money back. It's just a nonsense.
 

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Hi Boom Shakthi,

 

that is bad enough to hear. If possible, you should consult a lawyer and let him/her write a letter to them on your behalf, in which he tells, that you want your money back, asap... maybe this helps - you have rights as a customer...

 

Anyways, I´d highly suggest you look into the MIDIbox line of SID synths. The best SID synths you can get on this planet! :)

 

Many greets!

Peter

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Hi Boom Shakthi,

 

that is bad enough to hear. If possible, you should consult a lawyer and let him/her write a letter to them on your behalf, in which he tells, that you want your money back, asap... maybe this helps - you have rights as a customer...

Hello Peter,

You're right! Unfortunately this is where I'm heading to. The fact they keep on selling it on different stores is just crazy.

 

Anyways, I´d highly suggest you look into the MIDIbox line of SID synths. The best SID synths you can get on this planet! :smile:

If I get my money back, I'll try to get  a REAL one ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I finaly get it back two days ago. They gave me a tshirt, a flight case and another c64 chipset for apologies. So I could say they have been pretty commercial. The os version I have is 2.2. All is working well except the software... I use a simple usb midi cable, maybe this is the reason why, I will try later with a sound card.

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  • 1 year later...

So it seems these are listed as "discontinued" on ModeMachines

 

Possibly because of poor build quality and lack of reliable software

 

Here is a photoset if you ever wanted to see inside

 

Btw, doesn't their new sequencer thingee look pretty damn familiar to the 16x16+X BLM??

 

 

EDIT: seems I can't count, it only has 12 rows going down.

Edited by latigid on
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You don't have to apologize. This product is a fail and I don't recommend it to anyone, except at a little price (300€ max).

 

In my version (2.2), defaults have been fixed, except the software wich is working bad both on mac an pc. Hopefully, most of the parameters can be assigned by control change.

 

Enjoy your MB-6582, it's so much better.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello guys, I´m Julian (Aka Inspektor gadjet) and I´d like to share some light about Mode Machines products.
I´ve been working for a bit more than a year with Mode Machines as graphic and webdesigner, doing some demo of products and giving some suport online in english and spanish. My personal experience with the company is fantastic.

 

I´m personally a DIY guy that makes music too and have found in them a chance to release some of my inventions... for me would be simply impossible and not affordable, the same than many other projects in the company.

I understand that their concep might lead to confusion, specially with open source designs, I personally decided to do my project (USB to MIDI converter) open source and based on Arduino so people can hack and create new firmwares. If you want to see more of this project check my website:
http://www.inspektorgadjet.com/cerebelusb/

 

Now to help those owners of a SID, here are links to the version V2.3b3 of the Software:
application.windows32.zip

application.windows64.zip

application.macosx.zip

 

Regarding the sequencer SEQ12, it doesnt look similar to the 16x 16 BLM ... it looks like this RPE SEQ 12. Designed by a guy from Berlin which works with Mode Machines, not just with the sequencer but other new products in development. Again a project that one guy alone might not have the possibility to get in to the market.

 

Hera a link to a youtube demo from this MusikMesse 2015, I´m the guy in the video :)

 

Hope you like it and Im happy to help with any questions/links with the products.
Cheers,
Julian

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  • 1 year later...

Sorry to heat this up more than a year later

I don't know and do not care about MM's internal politics and marketing,

and there are some people in the e-m scene that .. out of a lack of solderingskills love to buy finished stuff you normaly only get as DIY (instead of buying other projects from Korg or Roland or DSI or ...  ) buuuuuuuuut .... 

  • A SID like Wilba's
  • A Synthlab like from Dirk Lindhof
  • A Wasp in a suitecase with Midi  ....  like the Pixie from Elby ?????

Well I would reconcider my marketing strategy ...

 

@InspektorGadjet ... your Midi-converter .. looks good and teensy plus hackable .. thumbs-up .. thats the spirit ;)

 

Edited by Ungleichklang
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