What do I think of this machine? Well I didn't know anything about granular synthesis until I got the Texture Lab. I couldn't get my head around FM synthesis until the Liven XFM. I don't know anything about Ambient music but I suspect once my pre-order of Ambient O arrives, it'll be such a fun learning curve. Totally not what I was expecting next from Sonicware (I'm still requesting a Liven drum synth). tbh, I still haven't taken my elz-1 Play and Lofi12 XT out their boxes for more than firmware updates thus far. Been too busy having fun with the Mega Synthesis.
I am stoked to get mine. Its perfect lil portable/affordable synth that will make some great sounds. I’ll probably make a 4 hour sleep track with it first then incorporate it into the rest of my studio. I travel a lot for work and the livens all run on batteries so that’s always been a bonus for me
You said it takes “triple A batteries” but it actually takes AA batteries. Other than that, great video but I’m not sure I’d get one. I have the Liven Lo-fi 12 and it’s fun, and I certainly appreciate the DAWless approach. But I just upgraded to Reason 13, as well as upgraded to Halion 7. I got several synths loaded and I have every effect known to man. These hardware devices like the EHX 45000 and the Sonicware stuff helped me realize I could do all this in a PC that cost me a lot of money to build. I’ve suffered from the insidious G.A.S. all these years and have way too much hardware. I could easily get these four types of sounds into Live clips and use all my Arturia effects. Yes, I suppose it sucks using a mouse. Perhaps that’s the chief appeal of these boxes. Every knob and button is right there. Sad that there’s no SD card, but I guess I could plug it into any cassette or digital multitrack.
I'm worried from what I've heard so far that and although initially for many this looks like an exciting new product, that the Ambient Ø will quickly become a cliched instrument only capable of doing one thing, providing a soundtrack for your next trip down to the local IKEA. Perhaps it may help assist in the quietening of one's kids who cannot sleep, but to be as well as my initial reaction, it's boring. Where's the punk in this thing? Demonstrate that, and then perhaps I'll be interested.
I've been on the fence about the 12bit, 8bit and texture lab but I think this is the one for me. with my setup I tend to stick with 3 things, an acid bass synth, a drum machine and a synth for drones which up till now has been a microfreak with an effects box on each, nts1, ms70, etc. already preordered the nts3 so along with this my setup might get some much needed upgrades.
This thing looks cool, but I wonder if it will start sounding samey after a while. I really wish Sonicware (Dr Endo) would make a higher quality piece of hardware capable of loading and running multiple engines based on this platform.
I own a SONICWARE SmplTrek and the original ELZ_1. I like them but all other SONICWARE gear leaves me disenchanted because of the no USB/SD card functionality. I'm trying to like Dr. Yu Endo's work and mission, but it's hard to do that when you have to transfer large amounts of data over MIDI SysEx. It's a terrible choice in contemporary times to leave out proper data connectivity in hardware synth gear. Might as well be a plugin instead.
