lol. Good point. I came here to whinge about not being able to enter, but yeah, I wouldn’t give up our free health care for all the synths in the world. I also got a DFAM, Monopoly and a Polyend Tracker with my numerous stimulus payments. My mate in Melbourne got one of these Pulsar 23’s too. So, I guess I can forgive you for your sponsor not accepting global entries. This time…
“I had a lot of fun” For me this is the essential ingredient of Soma’s gear (and all gear in general). The same with the Lyra, when I start to play, it becomes a dialogue and it’s good not to be always controlling what emerge from it.
Best noise generator in the World. Vlad Kreimer is a crazy genius. There is so much flexibility. The Pipe and Ether are awsome Tools to find realy unique sounds. Soma love! ❤️✌️
You deserve the biggest synth channel on RU-vid. Your videos often go further to inform and entertain than channels with a million subs. Especially loving the science content lately and how you respect the audiences inteligence enough not to stop for the minutiae. Keep killing it!
Great video. People rightly focus a lot on the weird functionality of this synth, but the SOUND is just incredible to me. When you start getting a beat going around 7 minutes into the video, it’s just so rich and fat and full of character.
The jam sessions are massive. When I think back how Stimming struggled to get anything useful out of the Pulsar... this is a way better showcase of its possibilities. Great job!
aaawww I was secretly hoping for this to happen for so long! My thoughts were "this machine - not exactly my cup of tea but it'd probably really shine in the hands of an experienced IDM artist like Benn..." - and oh boy you delivered!
Dude that is so sweet, it's like I'm at a rave on the beach and some rich kids are partying. Now throw at catch phrase in that loop like "stars in my jar" or release the dark scare crow.
Great video Benn. FYI: the jacks on the back of the unit are bidirectional they are both inputs and outputs, the pin adapters on the front panel complete the circuit. Amazing machine!
"If modular is getting too easy for you, why don't you level up and try the Pulsar 23" - Best of luck to those allowed to enter the contest. I guess this is just for US based folks...
this is the best synth I ever heard...right up my alley cuz I grew up listening to Aphex Twin and am very much into dark minimal dnb these days. I need this! or at least a VST for Fruity that would be so sick!!!!!
that you wont see, because its against Vlad's ( soma labs ) phillosphy. get the real thing. i swear you wont regert a single dime!!! from the moment you unbox it and put your fingers on this unblievable device, you are gonna fall in love forever. i will take mine into grave....no joke!!!
When you said you hired a tik tok influencer to narrated the layout, I laughed and thought you were kidding, then when she came in I wheezed so hard I couldn't breathe for most of the narration. She did a genuinely great job though, much respect for her, it was just so fucking funny.
I loved the P-23 at first. But I was constantly trying ways to not make it sound like the P-23. I was using Eurorack oscillators and stuff and getting good results but eventually I sold as I thought I can make much more personal drum sounds without it. But as a machine and interface it’s great. Don’t miss it.
I ordered my Pulsar the day it was announced, so I have it for quite a while now - and it is NOT my favourite piece of equipment. It certainly is a unique piece of equipment, but on its own it is neither as flexible nor cool sounding as it appears in the demos. It has its own sound, very distinct, but also way more limited than it seems. Every voice has 8 or 10 knobs to shape the sound (and yes some switches as well), but considering that two are to control the single very simple envelope, one is for volume and one is for fx send level, it shows that there is not too much else to control for each voice. The parameters for every voice are somewhat limited in my opinion, especially the hihat rarely works for me, somehow it doesn't have a sweetspot where it just sounds great. The clap filter is a very nice and colourful sounding filter, but at the same time it makes it hard to get a nice snappy and punchy sound. The Pulsar became way more usable for me when I paired it up with my modular. The envelopes on the Pulsar 23 are not the greatest for drums imo, so if I really want to use it for drums I take some snappy (& flexible) envelopes from my modular instead of using the internal ones. To use it in a production you might want to record everything individually, otherwise it might be rather hard to mix it with other instruments. It rumbles, makes noise, sounds dirty and industrial and brutal if you like, but still it's not very punchy - it takes work to shape the drum sounds in the mix, unless you are going for the pure Soma sound. The one thing I absolutely hate about this machine is the sequencer, I wish I could rip it out. How can a sequencer not be in sync with itself (even quantized it plays far from tight)? The workflow is a mess in my opinion - I thought it might be perfect for me as a skilled instrumentalist, but it is quite the opposite of inspirational to me, it kills my inspiration because I never end up with what I recorded and that is simply frustrating. But sequenced via Midi it is nice to work with. All in all, if I didn't like the machine I would not have kept it. The Pulsar is quirky as hell, seems very well built and despite all the issues I have with it I still love it very much. It is more like a rhythmic noise generator to me, which is fine because I have other options to get the drum sounds I'm looking for. It has its very own unique sound and is a fantastic experimental synthesizer, I wouldn't want to miss it!
great video. Fantastic run through that conveyed a huge amount of information despite just being presented as having a jam. Then pure awesomeness. Love this machine. Not sure I'm quite good enough for one.
That Acid Patch is well caustic, you caught the vibe. Reminds me of downloading tiny snippets of Polygon Window by modem in early internet days to try to mail order Acid vinyl from the UK.
This machine can produce a lot of cool sounds, however, I feel like it is for the advanced user. I would rather invest in a different piece of hardware but I could see the modular or hardware enthusiasts loving this one. Loved your darkwave track.
Lucky owner of black #27. I laughed pretty hard at the "That's not complicated at all" comment. This thing bends space/time, I swear--and yeah, you can't help but make something unique on it, because god help you if you try to duplicate a patch--even when you photograph it, you can't duplicate settings. Trust me. I've tried.
Hey Benn, this was awesome, just wish you had done a few more example patches, was really getting into it ! The Tik-Tok voiceover was very reminiscent of Valley Girl by Frank Zappa, loved it! Congrats on the 100k!
There is a show on HBO max that is called Raised By Wolves. In it the protagonist is a robot that has a weapon in the form of a scream. Would you make a video on fact vs fiction or if you think something like this could really be built and how deadly could we actually make it? Great content by the way, thanks.
Super cool video, only Benn can make it as fun as this. Bu tthe Rabbit Hole is even deeper. The six outputs are also six inputs depending on your connection.
I understood less than 10% of the things being said in this video but I couldn't stop watching. I don't even know how I got here, but it made me sub anyways. You're a wizard, or something I guess.
Good luck to all participants! It would be fun for those who can't join the contest (because of outside the US) to participate in a 'samples/loops by way of the Pulsar 23' giveaway. Just a thought. 😉
hahahaha did you really fricken hire an instagram influencer for that presentation? like for realz? hahahahahhahahaha - and yeah i thought i wanted the erica synths "perkons" when it comes out, but i reckon i want this x)
Hey. I don't know where to start and certainly not where to end, but how many of these products do you think the world needs? Like guitar stomp boxes, do we really need 3000 choices that disappear and are replaced with 3000 new choices the next year? I want a timely product, a classic to be passed down through rummage sales. I guess I'm done now.