Gforce Oberheim OB-X

[plexuss]

Gforce OB-X through AudioThing's latest Lines is pretty nice. The sound of the two are well matched in a musical sense. for me, Lines adds a new sense of texture to the OB-X without sounding like an added effect, they create a cohesive sound, patch dependent of course. But I mean when you dial them in together. For example OBX/Golden Shores and Lines/Soft Phaser are well suited. Add some Lines distortion, just a touch, and slowly modulate the Freq Shift on the lowest setting with some 50Hz jitter and Mix to taste.

[mholloway]

I never used any of the old OB synths so I'm just curious; was OB-X's cross-mod ever useful in a musical context or was it just pure chaos no matter how you cut it?

Both oscillators can be set to Triangle waves (by disengaging the SAW and SQUARE buttons), and the crossmod, when used on Triangle waves, has much more musical results. You can get FM-like bell sounds, for one thing, and also a wide range of percussive sounds. I think it's very useful, personally. When used on saw/square waves, it does tend to be pretty chaotic pretty quickly.

[JamminFool]

Like their OB-E, I find this rather disappointing. Sounds nowhere as fat as the original in the sound demos I've heard from it. I'd even go as far as to say that it sounds like the typical soft synth sounded 10 to 15 years ago.

Tom Oberheim doesn't seem to agree and guess whose opinion most of us will be going with?

[MrJubbly]

I own MiniMonsta 2, Imposcar 2, Oddity 2, OB-E and SEM and they have offered me a whole extra 5 quid off.

This can't be right. Log in to see the correctly discounted price in the cart.

That's what I did and it went down from 59.99 to 54.99.

To be honest, I don't fully understand exactly how GForce's discounts work, since the reasons for the discount are not explicitly stated at the checkout.

Whether they factor in all plugins owned, or only certain relevant 'qualifying' products? Or whether the purchase thereof matters and/or whether previous products were purchased full price, or also at discounted.

Either way, I was offered OB-X at £39.99 which came to £47.99 after VAT.

GForce OB-X Discount.png

I am still (just about) within a calendar year from when I purchased the previous Oberheim Bundle (sans OB-X). Whether that makes any difference or not?

Also, for clarity, my other owned Gforce products:

impOSCar2
Minimonsta2
M-Tron Pro IV- Complete (All Expansion Packs)
Oberheim - The Bundle
Oberheim OB-E
Oberheim OB-X
Oberheim SEM
Oddity3
Virtual String Machine

Since I was an existing Oberheim Bundle licence holder and the newly released OB-X has been added to said bundle, I thought the common sense thing to do, would be to simply 'upgrade' that bundle. But when I initially tried to on GForce's website, the checkout only showed the full price (no discount). So I cancelled that order and purchased OB-X individually instead, which is when I got the discount described above.

Doesn't completely make sense to me, but hey!

[Lbdunequest]

I have never had an oberheim or played with it, but i have red on this forum how people are praising it. I downloaded the demo and im not impressed at all. Where's the magic people talk about?

[jules99]

It's in the X

[DrGonzo]

I have never had an oberheim or played with it, but i have red on this forum how people are praising it. I downloaded the demo and im not impressed at all. Where's the magic people talk about?

It's about personal preference. Some people love the Oberheim sound. Some people don't. Nothing magic about that.

[Aloysius]

I have never had an oberheim or played with it, but i have red on this forum how people are praising it. I downloaded the demo and im not impressed at all. Where's the magic people talk about?

You could look up a list of famous songs that have used the Oberheim OB-X. If you are of a certain age you might already love the sounds that it can create.

A Moog probably sounds boring too. But hearing what people have done with a Moog can be inspiring.

Here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberheim_OB-X

Look for: Albums and songs featuring OB-X

[Dartelec]

Gforce OB-X through AudioThing's latest Lines is pretty nice. The sound of the two are well matched in a musical sense. for me, Lines adds a new sense of texture to the OB-X without sounding like an added effect, they create a cohesive sound, patch dependent of course. But I mean when you dial them in together. For example OBX/Golden Shores and Lines/Soft Phaser are well suited. Add some Lines distortion, just a touch, and slowly modulate the Freq Shift on the lowest setting with some 50Hz jitter and Mix to taste.

Indeed! I tested and bought Lines to support OB-X, very natural, realistic sound!

[gentleclockdivider]

I never used any of the old OB synths so I'm just curious; was OB-X's cross-mod ever useful in a musical context or was it just pure chaos no matter how you cut it?

This all depends , the oberheim just like the Jupiter 8 has the crossmod (which is basically fm) implemented in a not so usefull way when sync is also enabled fo osc 2
I never understood why some manufacturers went for that .
When osc 1 is crossmodded , it's frequency is modulated by osc 2 , but when Sync is also activated for osc 2 , mayhem and instability occurs pretty quicky , because the osc (1) that is providing master sync to osc 2 is now also modulated by the slave osc (2 ) ,a bit like a snake biting it's own tail .
The prophet 5-jupiter 6 has the much more usefull impementation where osc 1 is crossmodding osc 2 , so it's t both the crossmod and sync master .
As for software emulations , dat sounds dicos dsp has it reversed ,so it's not true to the original but mch more usefull ( as explained above )
Tal jupiter 8 , has the option to choose the sync slave( just like on the jupiter 6 )

[Lbdunequest]

I have never had an oberheim or played with it, but i have red on this forum how people are praising it. I downloaded the demo and im not impressed at all. Where's the magic people talk about?

You could look up a list of famous songs that have used the Oberheim OB-X. If you are of a certain age you might already love the sounds that it can create.

A Moog probably sounds boring too. But hearing what people have done with a Moog can be inspiring.

Here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberheim_OB-X

Look for: Albums and songs featuring OB-X

I produce music myself and i care about the initial sound, what it brings to the table. I know some songs from that list and they are great, but i have no associations with the synthesizer and the songs i have no nostalgia factor

[Mr Arkadin]

And it's got unison detune, so should keep BONES happy.

Maybe if I didn't already own Obsession, the Arturia stuff (never used 'em) and OB-Xtreme but I do own those so I see little point in spending another $100 for something that doesn't appeal to me as much as Obsession or OB-Xtreme.

I knew making you happy was a long shot. I demoed Obsession at the time of release, didn't do much for me. I like the digital Arturia stuff (SQ-80, Synclavier etc.), but don't really like their analogue stuff. I like Aly James but with no demo I never tried it, although it's not a strict emulation so I would probably treat it as a separate sound source to any OB-X/Xa clone anyway.

[4damind]

I thought Obsession sounded very good, but the user interface wasn't my cup of tea either. Unfortunately my demo has already expired, it only runs for 6 hours or so and I couldn't really decide. At some point I forgot that I still had the project open and then the demo time was already expired
The opinions don't seem to be that clear, even on Gearspace nobody seems to have compared the plugin with other emulations or the hardware yet?

[perpetual3]

Dope synth.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I thought Obsession sounded very good, but the user interface wasn't my cup of tea either. Unfortunately my demo has already expired, it only runs for 6 hours or so and I couldn't really decide. At some point I forgot that I still had the project open and then the demo time was already expired
The opinions don't seem to be that clear, even on Gearspace nobody seems to have compared the plugin with other emulations or the hardware yet?

I did the same thing. A few people on Gearspace did the same thing.

This whole "6 hours total" demo limatation doesn't factor in that we all have ADD, start something, then walk away for hours before returning to it. I'm assuming I can try again on my Macbook.