Eric Barbour's Tube Synth

[Robert Edgar]

I've been playing with Eric's tube synth for a couple of weeks now, as time
permits, and I thought I'd give a brief report to the group.

I've found it a VERY full sounding instrument.  I played it next to a solid
state analog synth, both belting out sawtooth waves, and the fatness of
Eric's synth is pretty obvious to me.  In the near future (as soon as we
fix a server problem we're having), I'll put up a very short mono sample
from Eric's synth (44.1, 16-bit IFF) and a slightly longer stereo sample
allowing you to compare Eric's synth with the solid-state synth, playing
similar lines.  For the purposes of the comparison, I've just laid down a
couple of measures of bass lines, with no modulation and minimal filtering.


Of course, for comparison, I'd suggest you duplicate eric's synth's sound
on your own; your evaluation of its sound should be against whatever it
takes you to duplicate it.  Sorry I can't do 24-bit samples, but you
wouldn't want to download them anyway.

The sound isn't clean (take a look at the files, you can see spikes as the
keyboard releases etc.), but that is part of what charms me about it.  The
tubes produce slight timbre and pitch artifacts as voltages quickly build
and drop, these give the sound a bouncy, meaty feel. I get the feeling,
playing on it, of the voltages being shaped like clay, a very physical
experience.  And I guess if I reach around to the back of the panels I'd
really get that sense of the volts and amps...

Eric has written about this synth before, so I won't go into it at this
point.  You can reach him at svetengr at mail.earthlink.net.  My interest in
having the synth is to make some music, so I'll get back to doing that now.


Robert Edgar
lull at iconceptual.com