At the heart of BlastBeats is a vintage FM chip called YMF-262 also known as the OPL3 chip & previously found in computer sound cards of the early 90s. These chips were notoriously hard to program and were rarely used to their full potential. However, they can produce surprisingly rich beautiful and utterly dirty sounds with a bit of exploring. By putting so many parameters within easy reach BlastBeasts makes it fun and easy to master the signature sound of the DOS era!
BlastBeats is a 10 voice groove box offering 6 drum voices and 4 synth instruments. The many faders offer full control over the parameters of the instruments and can be automated and modulated per step. Beats and melodies are a pleasure to program thanks to the high quality illuminated buttons
Features:
- OPL3 (YMF262) FM chip featured in vintage sound blaster cards of the MS-DOS era
- Quad audio outputs with custom instrument routing
- High fidelity audio amplification with low noise floor
- mix (mono) and phones (dual mono) out each with volume control
- 6 drum tracks (bass drum, snare drum, tom, closed & open hat, cymbal) that can also be used for melodic parts.
- 4 synth tracks: two monophonic (2x2op or 1x4op) & two duo-phonic (4x2op or 2x4op)
- 100 kits
- 160 songs x 16 patterns x 64 steps
- patterns of of arbitrary step lengths
- Kits and patterns stored on included SD card for convenient management and sharing.
- 56 faders with per step automation and modulation
- 32 high quality illuminated switches
- MIDI input and output on DIN5 ports
- customisable MIDI input channels
- Analog sync in and out on 3.5mm jacks
- All Audio on 6.35mm jacks
- Premium sandblasted anodised aluminum chassis
- All instruments can be sequenced internally or played via MIDI allowing BlastBeats to be used as a 4-operator 8-waveform polytimbral MIDI synthesizer
- Probability per instrument
- Swing
- Kit and pattern randomiser
- Fader wiggling (randomiser with adjustable depth) per step
- 3 tricks ( pitch bend aka spin down, freeze and stutter with step sequencing of all tricks.
- Synth pitch vibrato and tremolo with adjustable speed and depth
- Several waveforms and algorithms yielding infinite sound textures.
- Dimensions: 29.5cm x 16.5cm x 4.5cm (11.6″ x 6.5″ x 1.8″)
- Weight 944 g ( 2 lb)
- 9V DC power supply included