G-Force / OB-E (Oberheim emulation)

[Piet De Ridder]

From GForce: "We are thrilled to introduce OB-E, our take on the legendary Oberheim 8-Voice. More than just an emulation, OB-E offers a unique musical experience. Sounding HUGE, it takes the iconic Synthesiser Expander Module (SEM®) based 8-Voice (a.k.a EVS) into new sonic territory via a raft of enhancements and additions.

The original instrument is a physical monster, yet the concept of the 8-Voice is actually very simple; based around a single Synthesiser Expander Module containing two VCOs with Pulse and Sawtooth waveforms, two ADS Envelope Generators, one LFO, and a magical Multi-Mode Filter. In isolation a SEM is monophonic, but in the 8-Voice, because there are eight SEMs triggered by a polyphonic keyboard, you have a superb eight note polyphonic synthesizer.

We’ve painstakingly emulated every section of the synth to create an authentic sounding instrument with the convenience of software control over those eight SEM modules. Mono, Poly, Unison, Split, it’s all yours now. We’ve complemented our instrument with 600+ factory Patches designed by Dave Spiers and a roster of brilliant sound designers. Even better, each patch has been tagged, categorised and is quickly accessible from the OB-E’s librarian (arrow navigation friendly).

To our knowledge OB-E is also the first commercial virtual instrument with complete per-voice 'octaphonic' control to create truly huge sounds. Yet OB-E is a breeze to program thanks to the re-sizable User Interface, Zoom view, and Group & Offset edit modes.

All new from the ground up, OB-E has only been built for Mac at present, but we will guage demand for a PC version."





OB-E Features:

- Unique 8-Voice Octaphonic architecture
- An authentic sounding emulation of the Oberheim® 8-Voice
- Zero delay feedback filters
- 600 factory Patches designed to fit in a mix, all tagged and categorised
- Librarian for easy access to the presets (Arrow Keys Navigation)
- Continuous, round-robin mode where each note use a new voice
- ZOOM enlarges a single SEM with front & rear panels side by side
- Group mode to edit all Modules at once
- Individual Synthesiser Expander Module Copy, Paste and Save
- LFO, 3rd VCO doubling as a second LFO
- Multiple triggering modes; Polyphonic, Monophonic, Mono Legato, & Unison
- Fully featured analogues style MIDI Sequencer & Stereo Delay
- Upper/Low sections can be Split across the keyboard
- Extensive Velocity & Aftertouch modulation
- Polyphonic Aftertouch and MPE ready

Introduction price (until March 9th): £129,99, after that £149,99.





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[Guy Rowland]

Thank the stars its Mac-only, so I don't have to go through the endless should-I-shouldn't-I routine again. Odd move on their part, mind - I've always assumed PC is the bigger market for softsynths, but what do I know.

[Muziksculp]

Mac Only Sucks.

[wst3]

I heard back from the nice folks at g-force... the Mac only thing was a business decision, and they are not entirely certain it was a good business decision. Their impression was that there are still more Macs in studios than PCs. And they may be correct, but that my not be the population that buys soft-synths. We'll all learn a little bit from this! Maybe?

I kind of agree with Guy that this Mac only thing allows me to skip over it for now.

It does sound lovely, I like the way the enhanced the original feature set, and I own MTron Pro, Oddity2, ImpOSCAR2, and minimonsta - they are all outstanding software synths, with just the right balance (for me) of emulation and extension. If/when the Ob-E is ported I'll likely be towards the front of the line.

For now I can do a lot of the tricks the OB-E does with multiple instances of the brainworx bx_oberhausen - I think?

It is a cool sounding, and cool looking synth!

[EvilDragon]

It was a daft decision. Studios might use Macs more prevalently, but also studios are not the biggest buyers anymore. Home-based production is taking over, lots of hobbyists and "bedroom producers" (I hate that term) are becoming more and more a buying power. And in home-based scenario, PC is way more common than Mac, on the whole.

I've said my peace to Graeme at GForce support, he was empathical. But since they really painted themselves in the corner by using Mac-only APIs for pretty much everything (their preset browser only uses .aupreset format, for example!), that means any semblance of Windows version is at least half a year away if not more.

This is how you lose customers.

For now I can do a lot of the tricks the OB-E does with multiple instances of the brainworx bx_oberhausen - I think?

Except those multiple SEM edit modes which are extremely handy. Third oscillator, second LFO, noise generator, MPE and poly AT support. I don't get why Brainworx loves to shove their mid-side gimmick to each and every thing they do, especially in a synth that is essentially mono audio path all the way through.

[Geoff Grace]

Man, this puts a lot of pressure on us Mac users to pick up the slack! G-Force bet the bank on our adoption of this future classic.

I'm not going to bite for the time being though. Perhaps down the road a bit. Right now, I'm more inclined to get better acquainted with the gear I already have, especially as I already have more soft synths that I can remember (and one of those is bx_oberhausen).

Best,

Geoff

[kpc]

I don't know their business, obviously. BUT, if they don't intend to be a huge business, and cater to a small user base, this makes sense. Maybe they are not interested in selling tons of copies, but only need to sell a couple a month to keep the lights on? Similar to TSB, the goal (I don't think) was ever to be as big as other forums on the net. And the main reason I love this place.

G-Force will save a lot in support time by focusing on a smaller user group, only having to support one platform. If they leave out the bedroom studios, maybe that's a good thing for them. Maybe they sell less copies, but enough to keep them happy, I say more power to them. Bigger and More is usually not better in my experience. Especially these days.

[wst3]

I agree completely with everyone's assesment of their business plan (ED said it best.. daft!) And as Kayle points out, we don't know their business plans.

BUT, the tone of the email I received yesterday suggests, to me, that they have already figured out this wasn't a great plan<G>... no promises, of course, but we will see

[Geoff Grace]

Speaking of questionable choices, does anyone else here think that they detuned the oscillators a bit too much for their demos?

My ears were protesting the whole time. I hope that's not the default state.

Best,

Geoff

[EvilDragon]

I don't know their business, obviously. BUT, if they don't intend to be a huge business, and cater to a small user base, this makes sense. Maybe they are not interested in selling tons of copies, but only need to sell a couple a month to keep the lights on? Similar to TSB, the goal (I don't think) was ever to be as big as other forums on the net. And the main reason I love this place.

G-Force will save a lot in support time by focusing on a smaller user group, only having to support one platform. If they leave out the bedroom studios, maybe that's a good thing for them. Maybe they sell less copies, but enough to keep them happy, I say more power to them. Bigger and More is usually not better in my experience. Especially these days.

Yeeeeah, supporting Mac has become a problem because every 12 months a new OS update breaks things and devs need to scramble. Anyways, they got the message, Windows version will happen, but no firm timeline.

https://www.gforcesoftware.com/blog/ob- ... c-version/

[EvilDragon]

Speaking of questionable choices, does anyone else here think that they detuned the oscillators a bit too much for their demos?

My ears were protesting the whole time. I hope that's not the default state.

You try keeping 8 individual SEMs in tune!


(You can detune and tune as much or as little as you like in the plugin, of course.)

[Lawrence]

Somewhat OT but not completely-

I loved my OBX-a. It was one of the most career supporting pieces of kit I ever owned, got me in a lot of doors. I got the sample based free emulation from (IK?) and it was extremely disappointing, but well worth the price.

I bought the gforce M-Tron on CD ROM at a NAMM show many, many moons ago and got a lot of use out of it. The license got lost in translation somewhere down the road, but I replaced it with Sampletron, again from IK, and it's sort of remarkable in that it has samples from ALL the tape based units (Chamberlin, Mellotron, Orchestron, etc) and many vintage 2-4 bar rhythm section loops that are just awesome. I was surprised that they never updated it to 64 bit and took it off the market but they did come up with a way to use it via a free version of SampleTank. I jumped through some hoops but now can use it.

ALL of that said-I recently bought Re-Pro and have barely delved into it except to see if it matched the hype, and it does-sounds great. The fact that it's in such light use though indicates that spending close to $200 on the OB-E is a bit of a stretch, much as I'd like to support GForce. So odd, because I spent well north of $2,000 for the OBX-a in 1979 dollars. Wonderful times we live in as electronic musicians.

[Stakk]

I was dominantly Mac in 90's, but moved on to Windows after OSX. Losing compatibility every major update bothered me (though there were a few notable compatibility issues throughout the classic era, that mostly came from low-level operations and Apple weren't deliberately killing backward compatibilities back then). It is not like we are still living in late 80's-90's where Windows audio was laggy and we wanted that Mac/Amiga precise low latency.

[Geoff Grace]

Speaking of questionable choices, does anyone else here think that they detuned the oscillators a bit too much for their demos?

My ears were protesting the whole time. I hope that's not the default state.

You try keeping 8 individual SEMs in tune!

LOL! True. Somehow, I never thought of oscillator drift as a feature. Silly me.

(You can detune and tune as much or as little as you like in the plugin, of course.)

Mais bien sûr.

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

ALL of that said-I recently bought Re-Pro and have barely delved into it except to see if it matched the hype, and it does-sounds great. The fact that it's in such light use though indicates that spending close to $200 on the OB-E is a bit of a stretch, much as I'd like to support GForce. So odd, because I spent well north of $2,000 for the OBX-a in 1979 dollars. Wonderful times we live in as electronic musicians.

"Well north" sounds right to me, as I recall spending $3,200 in 1982 or 1983 (over $8,000 in today's dollars) for an OB-8. It's amazing what we get for our money these days!

Best,

Geoff

[Lawrence]

ALL of that said-I recently bought Re-Pro and have barely delved into it except to see if it matched the hype, and it does-sounds great. The fact that it's in such light use though indicates that spending close to $200 on the OB-E is a bit of a stretch, much as I'd like to support GForce. So odd, because I spent well north of $2,000 for the OBX-a in 1979 dollars. Wonderful times we live in as electronic musicians.

"Well north" sounds right to me, as I recall spending $3,200 in 1982 or 1983 (over $8,000 in today's dollars) for an OB-8. It's amazing what we get for our money these days!

Best,

Geoff

Researching-had to be late ‘80 or ‘81 as the OBX-a wasn’t released til then...and I think you’re right-it was over $3000 as well. Of my two huge purchases back in the day, the Polymoog was an often broken mess but the OBX-a held up after having some pan pots replaced.

Were they still making the OB-8 after 1980?

[EvilDragon]

OB-8 was the last one (it went OB-X, OB-Xa, OB-8).

OB-X produced between 1979 and 1981.
OB-Xa produced between 1981 and 1982.
OB-8 produced between 1983 and 1985.

[Lawrence]

OB-8 was the last one (it went OB-X, OB-Xa, OB-8).

OB-X produced between 1979 and 1981.
OB-Xa produced between 1981 and 1982.
OB-8 produced between 1983 and 1985.

Ah, right. I got it confused with the OB-X.

My X-a was part of “The System”- a hardware drum machine and sequencer, connected by two wide multi pin cords. Sync to the outside world could be achieved by fsk- a protocol I assume is long gone. No MIDI in any of it.

[Geoff Grace]

I remember that I had to get my OB-8 retrofitted to add MIDI. I believe it came out just months before the release of the MIDI spec; or at the very least, it must have been designed before then.

Best,

Geoff

[The Saxer]

For my taste the OB-E is the best of the Oberheim plugins. I really love the Oberheim sound and so I got the Arturias, Diva, and Synapse. Different modeled models though... just my fun factor experience of a few hours.

[Piet De Ridder]

The OB-E is on sale for two weeks only: £99.00 instead of the regular £149.99.



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[Piet De Ridder]

The OB-E has been updated and v2 is now also available for Windows.

Other changes: "The enhanced OB-E v2 is a pin-sharp emulation of the Oberheim® 8-Voice thanks to the new Vintage control and a highly refined Detune parameter. OB-E v2 also features a new reverb, 100+ new Patches (bringing the total to over 700), a new Zoom function for the sequencer along with a crazy new Drum Mode enabling each SEM to be triggered by a dedicated key."

The new version was developed in collaboration with, and is now full endorsed by Tom Oberheim and original Oberheim-engineer Marcus Ryle.



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[Ashermusic]

Pretty damned impressive. I don’t need it, but now I sure want it.

[Muziksculp]

Finally for Windows.

Do I need another virtual synth ? (Scratches head).. ... ... .... ... .... (Thinking) ... ... ... (Not Sure). .. (a Bit tempted) ... (Maybe I need it ?) ... ? ?

[Piet De Ridder]

Just imagine it's a strings library, Sculp.

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