The Schippman ebbe und flute is a hight quality analog signal processor with two very fat precises VFC’s with 12 different function as its core. A very effective automatic soft knee compressor controllable with only one knob and a very good adjustment properties is part of the device as well as a really musical distortion unit.

meet the MacBeth M5, 32 kilos in weight analog power!

If this would have been presented one week ago, we would have laughed on the concept of the CG-8 Visual Synthesizer. But it isn’t an April Fools hoax. This ‘thing’ is for real!


Edirol have announced a unique and innovative product. According to Edirol:

Introducing a new way to interact with visual performance

Just as synthesis in music prompted new waves of musical creativity so the CG-8 is set to do the same for the visual artist. A sampling synthesizer takes audio in or regenerates it from a wave generator and then modulates it with filters and amplifiers before outputting the sound. In a similar fashion the CG-8 can take in still images, create motion pictures from these and then modulate them with Modifiers and Fade Controller. It’s easiness to grasp, and user-friendliness allow artists to concentrate on making stunning visual displays without getting caught up in complicated operations. Starting with picture files (JPEG’s) as the prime source, stamps (PNG) used for overlays and built in Computer Graphics, all stored on the internal hard drive, the CG-8 can add any of more than 200 Photo effects and then from more than 60 Overlay effects before finally passing the output to the image modifiers which let you add further motion along X/Y/Z axes and control background color/hue shifting. This final modulation can control rate, depth and waveform just like the LFO in an audio synth.

Update
Thank god it is only once a year April Fools Day. As some of you might have understood, … there is no real ION Rack version from Alesis. Like many ‘websites’ we wanted to join into the FUN. So our art director tried his best to fabricate this Rack version of the Alesis Ion. Many of you thought it was a great idea that Alesis was looking into this Rack/Module market, but then again they don’t (yet). Maybe we gave them an idea for the future!

To give you an idea of how this image of the Rack Ion came along we posted the picture below. Starting point was the official ION image. From here we created all the knobs, red lines, red text, grey text, aluminium front, and all shadows from scratch. The rack ears we borrowed from the Roland V-Synth!

Compliments go out to some members of the Harmony Central forums who in the end saw that the dimensions weren’t totally on par. But as it was a rush job, image was created in 12 hours over two days, this was the only real fault in the image that could give us away as being a April Fools Hoax.