One morning, as I was waking up from anxious dreams, I discovered that in bed I had been changed into a monstrous version of James Murphy. Or was I rather Claudio Passavanti?
Anyhow, the IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro just arrived at my doorstep last week. Ordered it in February at some music store, took quite a while until it finally arrived. Bought it to replace my trusty old Novation Bass Station 2 (BS2) in a double role as main USB keyboard on my desktop, and go-to analog mono synth. Yes, the UNO also does great sounding 3 voice paraphonic pads, will maybe demonstrate those in future videos.
While the BS2 is a great synth at a bargain price, I always wanted something with VCOs (BS2 has DCOs), and 3 octaves. Bought a Moog Subsequent 25 last year, great sounding synth, but also only 2 octave keyboard, no aftertouch, very limited modulation flexibility, and quite large. UNO Synth Pro is only like 1 inch wider than the Moog, smaller in all other dimensions, and fits a full 3 octave Fatar keyboard with aftertouch in that package. At the price of much less dedicated knobs per function. Yet, it sounds almost as good as the Moog ... will probably do a comparison vid soon.
So, here’s a small demo of my brand new UNO - what I often do when getting a new synth and learning to use it, I try to recreate existing songs. So here’s a little cover version of the first minutes of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” (which has been aptly called “the best song about loss ever written”). Of course, I don’t own any copyrights for this, and the music is provided for educational purposes here, showing how close you can get to the original song with only the UNO Synth Pro. Well, actually, 8 UNO Synth Pros ... there’s 8 tracks of UNO in here, doing everything from drums to bass to lead, plus 2 tracks of glockenspiel.
While the sound engine of the UNO is fully analog, it also has 3 digital effects sections: modulation, delay and reverb. All effects here come from the UNO, no external effects have been added to the individual UNO tracks; only the glockenspiel tracks have been individually processed. Also, all sequencing (the 3 drum tracks and the arpeggiator track) comes from the UNO - Cubase 11 was only used like an old fashioned tape machine to record the 10 tracks, and mix them, using only volume and pan on the UNO tracks, plus compression, EQ and reverb (Valhalla Vintage) on the glockenspiels. Some slight EQ, compression and limiting added on the master.
While the UNO Synth Pro does sound great, and offers amazing flexibility with its two filters, it also still has quite a lot of bugs, and a lot of room for improvement firmware wise. Like, there’s audible oscillator bleed (you hear oscillators which should be at zero volume), routing aftertouch to filter cutoff sometimes results in crackling noises, filter tracking in paraphonic mode is buggy (after playing a high chord and releasing it, when you hit a low note, filter will still be at the high frequency, until you play a low chord). Also, you get a beautiful modulation matrix, but cannot modulate individual A/D/S/R values. Neither can you e.g. use the filter envelope to modulate the impact of LFO2 on filter 2 cutoff frequency - which you would want to do for creating trumpet-like lead sounds. And, very strange: No storeable preset volume (after overdrive, filter and everything).
Still, when you can live without dedicated knobs, the UNO Synth Pro offers a lot value for the money: 3 great sounding VCOs which can be played paraphonically, 2 ENVs, 2 LFOs, 2 filters which can be combined in various ways, analog overdrive, on-board digital effects, a 16 slot mod matrix, built-in polyphonic sequencer with parameter sequencing (parameter lock/mod lanes) and arpeggiator.
Original song © 2007 James Murphy/DFA
This version and video © 2021 TheGuacamoleXplosion
7 сен 2024
