MATRIXSYNTH: Technos Acxel Resynthesizer


Friday, December 23, 2005

Technos Acxel Resynthesizer


Technos Acxel Resynthesizer up on the bay. Title link takes you to the shots and I grabbed the text below, before it goes to *bay limbo. In via reader Rasmus. Thanks Rasmus!

"Only 39 Axcels [sic] were ever made - and those who own an Acxel (ACoustic + X + ELement) hold on to them - proved by the fact that it is very, very rare that an Acxel is for sale. The last, and probably the only, time an Acxel was offered on Ebay were 2003. If I remember correctly, the starting bid was USD10,000 that time.

Imagine drawing waveforms, 128-stage envelopes, base pitches and amplitudes (the user interface allows editing of 32 base pitches/amplitudes at the same time, like an 32 track pitch and audio mixer, with a discreet “page” for each group of 32 oscillators, or ISC’s – Intelligent Synthesis Cells, as they are called in the Technos terminology), and other sound parameters with your finger - and have 256 intelligent, digital oscillators follow your every creative move in real-time. Imagine creating a monophonic sound with 256 oscillators, 8 multitibral voices with 32 oscillators each or any combination in sections of 32 oscillators.

Imagine creating complex sounds with the touch of your fingers - and have complete control of the harmonic content of every sound you create.

Imagine having an audio engine - powered by a massive number of parallel processors with a combined processing power still unequalled in the sound design world - doing powerful harmonic (with fingertip control of every harmonic) and time (compressing/expanding) editing/processing completely in real time.

Imagine "sampling" a sound and having an very complex synthesis engine try to emulate the recording, which it does sometimes rather well (it will never sound the same as the recording, but sometimes it resembles the original in a synthetic way) and other times not well at all, but with very interesting results.

Basically you have a very complex and powerful synth - programming itself to sound like something that you have recorded! For everyone who have ever understood the limitations of sampling, resynthesis is a revolution! Because through resynthesis (the process of analysing, using FFT, a sound - and after emulating it, or trying to emulate it in the case of the Acxel) we can do things that is impossible with sampling.

The benefit of it all is that this sampling/resynthesis process makes it possible to start with a very complex sound - and change it, in real time, in many creative ways - using the most intuitive and exciting user interface ever made for an synth/sound design workstation.

But it is also possible to start from scratch - and use the Acxel as a very, very powerful additive synth - but with some unique features.

For example, it is worth mentioning that each ISC can have its own, user-drawn waveform (can be drawn in real time using your finger), so you can do a lot more than if it was limited to only sine waves.

Many of these unique features work very well both in the resynthesis scenario - and in the more traditional synth programming scenario, for instance the time companding/expanding feature, which can take a slow moving sound and make it percussive - or take a fast-moving sound and make it very slow.. All in real time.

This time companding/expanding feature can be controlled by MIDI, which most other parameters can be as well. It is, for example possible, to independently control the base/static pitches and amplitudes of all ISC's with key velocity - meaning that the velocity of the keys completely control not only the pitch of the sound - but its timbre!! So, using key velocity, every sound can be truly dynamic - with incredible changes of the sound.

A LITTLE ABOUT ME, THE AXCEL AND THE GENIOUS BEHIND THE AXCEL: PIERRE GUILMETTE

Because of my passion of new audio/synthesis technologies in the 80’s and 90’s (as a 17-year-old Fairlight wrote about me in their company newsletter – after I had spent two months at the Fairlight factory in Sydney, Australia, trying to understand everything there was to understand about the Fairlight Series III! They were really nice guys, so they even let me have my own key to their studio so I could spend 16+ hours per day in there!!), I was one of the first clients of Technos. My first system was delivered to me at the AES convention in New York 1989 – a beast with 1024 oscillator and a price tag of USD40,000. I think it is safe to say that I have a deep understanding of the Axcel, in fact, Technos, before the company went bankrupt, offered me to become their Product Specialist in LA. I have always been fascinated with the creation of sound – and the Acxel was, and still is (together with the Kyma Workstation), the most exciting sound design tool for creating sounds that have never been heard before in an intuitive way.

Pierre Guilmette, the genius behind the Acxel, was (and I am sure, still is) a great guy in every sense – and I hope that he will find success with his technical wizardry. In fact, Pierre and I were interested in starting a company together in 1994 – based on his latest parallel processor design. Unfortunately things didn’t work out in the end, but I still wished we had gone through with our ideas. His latest processor design was truly amazing and I think that we together would have ended up with a very interesting product offering for musicians and sound designers alike at a great price, but unfortunately I had problems finding a good way to finance our endeavour."

2 comments:

  1. that was pleasant to read those nice comments about the Acxel and me as its inventor. I guess that the author's name is MB.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am searching for Pierre Guillemette or M. Nil Parent .
      Question is There on our world a digital version and program or a Y adaptation of acxel on laptop and used as or .IST if acxel méthodology of Work ..and New version of the acxel .
      I wass the beta tester if Acxel and sound créatif assistant and audio design sound (Jyst tester not programmer ) . M'y Name Camil Imbeau
      Beta testeur 1986 1987 for Technos Lévis in Québec . Hope that someone respound me soon.

      Delete

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