Gforce MAP

[fisherKing]

Yes, but she serves as an example of how you can express your individuality with tattoos and hair style in a manner that conforms with a stereotype. Plugins are a lifestyle item.

did your grandmother write this post?

[dayjob]

he mention of Serge in the marketing is interesting. the most interesting thing about serge.. well, there's a lot that's interesting.. the filters, the wilson analog delay, the phase/timbre mod, wave multiplier etc.. just look at the Random Source serge eurorack modules or any 4U serge panels..

anyway, the thing that is really interesting is you can patch CV and Audio freely into each other and it'll all become audio at some point. it's a unique approach to patching in a modular system even by modular standards. it's more than "any cable anywhere".. it's more than just a standard complex oscillator based system. there's so many techniques and tricks for making sounds.

seems strange to name drop Serge then not have a fully modular system that embraces that philosophy of sound design and patching.

[dayjob]

She was playing some filtered saw chords? Also, from the video I see that she was far from being a keyboard player.

if you know anything about buchla and serge, the synths name checked in the marketing, people don't traditionally play those w/a keyboard at all.. not in a traditional way. it's strange marketing really. i don't know why they gave those synths a shout out in the marketing.. other than for marketing reasons. i haven't tried the demo so can't speak to it much i guess.

[Examigan]

It makes me think of Pigments especially the modulation section

That’s also what I thought.

[Danilo Villanova]

Yes, but she serves as an example of how you can express your individuality with tattoos and hair style in a manner that conforms with a stereotype. Plugins are a lifestyle item.

did your grandmother write this post?

so, having tattoos is 'hip' and 'young', huh? Peak boomer

Regarding the synth, I guess they tried to expand their lineup beyond mere analog emulations, which is cool, I guess. The thing is that it does seems a bit lazy... No LPG is crazy, for what they're trying to emulate, and the fact that it looks suspiciously like any other WT synth kinda shows not much thinking went into it.

Why not be honest and just sell it as 'our take on the modern WT synth genre' or whatever? Why the BS about 70's whatever and the tattooed influencer who clearly has no musical talent? Everything about the industry, and culture in general, is getting kinda tiresome.

[foosnark]

seems strange to name drop Serge then not have a fully modular system that embraces that philosophy of sound design and patching.

I've never used an actual Serge, and don't know of any software emulations of it, which is really a shame. But I always think of the SSG, DUSG (which Make Noise Maths is basically a clone of), VCFQ, wave multipliers, the programmer/sequencers... a "patch programmability" approach in general.

This doesn't have anything like any of those and isn't patchable.

And when I think of Buchla, I think of the 208 (top part of the Easel) and the 259, as well as the stereotypical "Buchla bongos," LPGs in general, the wicked cool 252e sequencer and the Thunder controller. (I know Buchla went beyond that, and did in fact have some keyboard synths even if that's not what they're primarily associated with... but the 200 series is the classic thing they are remembered and loved for.)

I guess GForce's train of thought went from "mod osc that does exponential FM" to "Buchla" to "West Coast" to "let's namedrop Serge too"...?

[justin3am]

I guess GForce's train of thought went from "mod osc that does exponential FM" to "Buchla" to "West Coast" to "let's namedrop Serge too"...?

lol, if you can't at very least ping the filter or use slopes as an oscillator or waveshaper, I think that connection is tenuous.

[pekbro]

No low pass gate? Weird that the best lpg in software I can get, is from a free port of one
of the mutable designs.

[zerocrossing]

Heh.

This is literally a bog-standard, fixed architecture, 3-osc wavetable synth with not very many wavetables, two filters, 3 ADSRs, 3 shapeable LFOs. They just called the third oscillator "MOD OSC" and have knobs to use it to modulate the other two oscillators. It's far less flexible than Serum. The "inspiration" from Serge or Buchla is tenuous at best; it might as well claim inspiration from Minimoog and PPG. And there's nothing at all modular about it.

The interface is frankly horrible -- to choose a wavetable you have to click through the options, you can't even pop up a list. And sometimes when you click once it steps through two shapes. I assume this is broken rather than intentional...

"MAP isn't about presets, it's about exploration" but it comes with 300 presets and the default one is a fancy pad heavy with FX. Even the Init patch isn't a sine, it's a two-oscillator sawtooth.

I guess if I had to find something positive to say, it's that I do like that style of wavetable where it's literally just a coherent timbral sweep between two points, rather than lots of random shapes that don't sound good when you modulate the table index more than a tiny bit.

I guess you don’t want the unknown, then.

[db3]

Good to see G-Force trying different things. No matter the limitations, it sounds great to me. I'd describe it as a forward hi-fi kind of sound — which along with the interesting effects offers something different to my other synths.

[MrJubbly]

Yes, but she serves as an example of how you can express your individuality with tattoos and hair style in a manner that conforms with a stereotype. Plugins are a lifestyle item.

did your grandmother write this post?

No ageism, please!

[kraster]

I think it's really interesting.

I'm not seeing the comparisons to Serum. Serum is first and foremost a wavetable synth (Serum 2 obviously expanded on that but I'm really not seeing the comparison). This isn't anything like a wavetable synth

Map is much more like Newfangled Audio's generate than anything else I can think of but Generate is closer to the Buchla style.

I don't think that Map is supposed to be a Buchla or Serge Clone in the same way that Halogen is not supposed to be a fully fledged FM synth.

I think this line of Gforce synths are supposed to have elements of different synthesis while having a more familiar spin.

I'm having great fun with it. It's got a kind of dusty gritty sound that I like.

Very quick to use (I'm just hiding the FX panel unless I need it) and I'm always drawn towards things that don't offer 10 million options.

[dune_rave]

I don't get it - why is this not a too simple, nearly average sounding synth? The gui is not my cup of tea, maybe later download the demo...

[kraster]

I think the noise LFO can get you closer to some of the random function generators of the west coast style. I'm using that to modulate the mod oscillator and then FMing oscillator from that. Some nice chaotic timbres to be found there.

[akira2]

how can they (and cherry audio) release so much synths when brands like u-he, tal, xfer... need years ...
(for example repro ...I'm not talking about z3 because it's a huge project=decade)
I've an idea and if it's the case i'll not use them