Trend price : 250€
A special drumsynth based on virtual synthesis aimed to emulate percussive sounds, especially the electro ones from analog drum machines.
Company: Waldorf
Model: Rack Attack
Dates: 2003
Price: 250€
Class: Sound Module
Weight: 1,7 kg
Dimensions: 483 (w) x 92 (h) x 89 (d) mm
Synthesis: PCM + VA
Polyphony: 24 voices
Oscillator: 2
FM: yes
N.waves: 3 PCM
Filter: Digital 6 modes
LFO: 2 modulators
Envelope: 2 EGs
Sequencer: 128 step
Sync: Midi clock
Effect: 4 engines
Memory: 50 programs
Demo: 1
Video: 1
Review: 1
DOWNLOAD: user manual - factory sounds patches - FREE! samples set by polynominal -
Overview
RACK 2 units.The main panel features a 20 x 2 display, 15 buttons, 6 knobs and a data encoder.
Rear pannel terminal connectors:
- Midi interface
- audio input for external line processing
- 2 main outputs + 4 aux
Sound
Motorola core handles 24 digital voices assignable to a single sound or kits programs. Each voice is composed by 2 digital oscillators that can be set to either:
-
PCM waves
- virtual analog modeling synthesis.
Wavetable
section contains 3 different samples: hihat (2) + crash
Virtual analog
synthesis genereates 6 waveforms: triangle, sine, square, saw, sample-hold and noise.Waveforms start phase can be manually adjusted or assigned to a random value when the note is retriggered.
FM
The oscillators can be ringmodulated and OSC1 is able to modulate the OSC2 by FM frequency modulation, then the relative frequency amount is set by either LFO or EG.
Filter
6 kinds of resonant filter for each sound.
Envelope
each sound has 2 freely assignable EG (a 4- segments ADSR each) + special SHAPE that switches DECAY and RELEASE values to exponential or linear mode. Most common EG routings are :
-
oscillators pitches
-
amplitude
-
filter cutoff
LFO
each sound features 2 independent digital modulators freely assignable (typical routings: pitch, filter, amplitude and pan) triggered by velocity, wheel or breath controller. The LFO structure offers 6 waveforms (sine, triangle, square, saw, noise and chaos) and frequency can be synched to clock at different time dividers.
Effect
section offers up to 4 fully editable engines each of these handles a single effect between: phaser, flanger, reverb, chorus, overdrive, delay (with divider tempo sync) and the LOFI a mix of bit reduction decimator and overdrive saturation.
Memory
-
1200 kits (programs) each contains 24 assigned sounds
-
50 programs performances to manage the kits in different configurations.
Review
OK: concept / analog bleeps-blam-psshhh
NOT : interface / Midi / plugin is similar
"A strange rare machine: interface is ugly and the rack attack philosophy is not so obvious. Very particular synth for hardcore programmers (tip: before buying give a try to the VST, which is basically the same)"
Text , review, special demos copyright polynominal.com / Eric Pochesci
