If you hate modern samplers with all their supposed fidelity, longing instead for the glitchy digital distortion of samplers past, a DIY project has brought you the sounds you love. “Where’s the Party At?” has been inspiring tingly sensations in digital lovers since I first wrote about it in September.
Now, the kit version is shipping. It’s a unique-looking combination of reliability and sonic unreliability, good open source design engineering and, as the creator puts it, a certain “crustiness.”
Apocryphal Feature List and General Horn-Tooting:
- 8-bit max sample depth, 1-bit minimum.
- 20kHz (or so, user adjustable) max sample rate, no minimum.
- 512k SRAM, about 26 seconds (minimum) or sample time.
- Big, versatile 6 button, 7 knob, 8 LED user interface. For Cavemen.
- Even more big and versatile full MIDI control in and out capability. Fully sequenceable. For people who use Live and general bespectacled electronic music nerds.
- Sample banking — multi-timbral recording, playback and audio processing across all banks.
- Sample multiplication, XOR, ABS, and all sorts of other weird sample processing and cross-modulation.
- Real time overdubbing.
- Preferences saved in permanent memory.
- Hackable analog clock source which can be syncronized to other synths.
- Non-Hackable crystal clock source which will always do Exactly What You Tell it.
- Programmable clock jitter, bit rate reduction, aliasing, and sample clock errors all adjustable in real time.
- All the normal backwards masking and half time and typical sampling features common to many commercial samplers.
- On-The-Fly Granular reconstruction of samples.
- Full pitch control of samples.
- Self test mode for debugging.
- 2.8Hz-357kHz frequency response (measured).
- Sub-audible noise floor.
- Looks nerdy and attracts people with stringy hair. Possibly bad skin.
Details on this kit, plus a video sampler version made for a specific party here in NYC, at creator Todd Bailey’s site:
Updated: Complete information on the kit itself, at US$75 – Some Assembly Required (read: you’d better have a soldering iron handy and know how to use it!)
Where’s the Party At, Hardware Version 1.01
I also love the bag of shiny hardware for aiding in making yours nice!
