From: Georg Mueller <georg@nlp.physik.th-darmstadt.de>
Sender: "Electronic music \"gearhead\" list" <SYNTH-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list SYNTH-L <SYNTH-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Subject:      Frankfurt Musik Messe 94
Date:         Tue, 22 Mar 1994 15:30:24 +0100

This is my anual Frankfurt Musik Messe posting, giving a subjective
and incomplete view of the new gear, showed at the fair. Have fun.

        Georg.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
** HARDWARE **

Quasimidi
---------
Quasar          synth expander  DM 1998,-

That's a nice sounding digital box, 64 Mb ROM, more than 1000 sounds in ROM
PCM+Filter(24dB /w res), FM, additive synthesis. One big BLACK knob,
4 editing knobs. Programmable, yes, but only relative to existing sounds.
Analog synth samples, drums, pigs, whales and jodlers. Check it out. Ooops,
it's only distributed mailorder from the company in Germany.

Photon

They showed a mockup under glass. That's the keyboard version of the
Quasar. Funny design. Seems to be a nice of German manufacturers, to
do funny product design, see Waldorf and Hohner. Well, 3 LCDs, 12
dials and lots of clear buttons.



Marion Systems
--------------
MSR-2 Modular-Synthesizer

Tom Oberheim was in Frankfurt. I talked to him, nice guy. The marion is
based on custom Curtis chips named MS 1215 and uses CEMs as amps and s/h for
the CVs only. The next module will probably be a sample playback thingy.
They plan to release the spec of the bus in the Mainframe to 3rd parties.
Stay tuned. Soundwise it's close to the Matrix 6/1000 stuff, but
multitimbral. Lame demo, too much non analog sounds too cover those
sweeps.

TSI
---
novation BassStation

nice sounding analog bass synth, the knobs are way too small, same for
switches, bummer, env 1 and 2 share same 4 pots, select with a switch.

Waldorf MicroWave, Wave

They showed the ugly green mean machine, a limited uWave edition (99) with
V2.0 software. They had a Wave up and running, you could twiddle the knobs,
but no speaker there.

Charlie Lab Digitar

6 short guitar strings for strumming on a belt, chords are received via midi

Controll Synthesis
------------------
Deep Bass Nine

They had one there, but no demo. Fewer but better knobs than BassStation,
rack mounted, can be used as one channel MIDI to CV convertor, external
audio input for the filter.

Doepfer
-------
They showed 2 new masterkeyboards. MK68 with hammer action or wooden
keys. TMK2 a two manual masterkeyboard. Then again a funny thing,
great for live performance, the DIMITRI, a MIDI trigger sequencer. Now
hold your breath. 8 tracks with 16 buttons and LEDs, in total 184 LEDs
and 200 buttons. 9 HE 19" rack. Fits nice (optical) with the MAQ16/3.
Price DM 1.298,- (kit) DM 1.998,- (assembled). The prices are for the
beta machine, so you have to play beta tester. Later the price will
be 10-20% higher.

E-MU
----
If you read KEYBOARD, you know the new products allready

Korg
----
They re-released the Stagepiano SG-1 DN and showed their Physical Modeling
Drum. I missed the demo :-(

Yamaha
------
VL-1 was there, but no hype, I don't know, if they demoed it.
Same for the VP1 prototype.

Hohner
------
ADAM Advanced Digital/Analog Musical-Instrument

Designed together with Waldorf (optics Axel Hartman, code Stefan Stenzel)
lots of buttons and sliders, more the organ type I think.

Generalmusic
------------
S2/S3 Turbo

Lots of sounds, nice display, sliders for twiddling, good sounding resonant
filters. Better controll over Oscs with Turbo kit.

Voce
----
SPIN                    Rotating Speaker Simulator
B3                      Organ Expander
electric piano          model based additive synthesis

Alesis
------
QuadraSynth                             I hate the display, no filter res

Akai
----
S3200, S3000, S2800 Midi Stereo Digital Sampler
They now sell sample editing software for Atari and MAC, called Sample Tools

Roland
------
S-760 Sampler
JV-90, JV-50, JV-35                     well, who cares

SDX-330 Dimensional Expander            16 chorus, flanger, pan, rotary fx
SRV-330 Dimensional Space Reverb
SDE-330 Dimensional Space Delay

GR-09 Guitar Synthesizer                1k buck range

Kawai
-----
KC20            GM sound keyboard       looks like a Spectra
MDK-61 II       Masterkeyboard          same for that
DATACAT         Mini-Masterkeyboard     funny, a tonebank without tones :-)

GB Guitar       with ROM cards          ice on stick


** SOFTWARE **

Sound Quest
-----------
MIDI QUEST for Windows  DM 498,-        Modular Editor (has uWave editor)
SOLO QUEST              DM 198,-        one module

MIDI QUEST for MAC      DM 498,-

Emagic
------
Sound Diver

The new modular editor for MAC and Atari, recomended for the MicroWave fan,
allready contains V2.0 support, and graphical UPAW editing. WOW. Similar to
PolyFrame, still no support for Casio gear, but comunicates with Logic.
DM 600,-


** MISC **

Touched by Sound
----------------
The smallest booth, but the highest analog/vintage per m^2 index. They
refurbish, hunt and sell used gear, analog and digital synths. They showed
on the fair, and you could play them, guys, JP 8, Chroma, DX7 Programmer,
Fairlight II, Polyfusion Modular, MemoryMoog, EDP Wasp and Gnat, MKS70 and
much much much more.

IRIS (research institute of FARFISA)
------------------------------------
They showed MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) a powerfull DSP
development tool, user interface running on Atari TT. There was a small
room, in which they held talks on the subject. LPC, Vocoder, FFT, PM ...

Galitzendoerfer
---------------
He was there, and this year his hardware looked the same as last year,
but I missed him. Sorry
