Superbooth 22: U-he previewed 2 new module prototypes: an advanced 3-channel envelope generator & a multimode filter with adjustable core sound.
This year there wasn’t enough time for a video with Urs Heckmann at the U-he booth. Sorry, but for a chat about new products. There was a software prototype that cannot be reported on yet.
The big focus this year was on Eurorack modules, so on hardware. There were two interesting prototypes: an advanced multi-channel envelope and a unique filter.
Tri-Channel Envelope
The first Superbooth U-he prototype is a new advanced multi-channel envelope generator. The concept here is refreshing: each envelope has a different characteristic and functionality. Envelope 1 is a Korg Poly 800/Roland Juno-inspired ADBSSR envelope. It has an extra stage that gives you a break-point and slope between the decay and sustain phase. It can work in normal, one-shot, or loop mode. Unlike the other two, it has a polyphonic mode.
Then, you have envelope 2 with an AD characteristic featuring a hold phase with a fixed duration. This envelope only runs in one-shot or loop mode. So you can also use it as an LFO generator. The third and last envelope offers switchable A/R or ADSR mode with two selectable fixed sustain levels (50% or 100%). You can also trigger it via envelope 2.
Connection side, you have an additional output 2/3 with an OR operation that puts out the maximum of envelopes 2 and 3. The unnamed module has CV control over all faders and velocity on all three envelope levels.
Cascade Filter
The second unnamed prototype is a unique multimode cascade filter module that uses 2x SSI2164 chips by Sound Semiconductor. It gives you 12dB/18dB/24dB options. Eye-catching is a unique core temperature functionality that shapes the character of the core. It infuses some drive and distortion to the timbre. There is also a bass compensation functionality and the developers promise unusual resonance timbres.
Connections, the first two inputs have level control with input 1 having its own VCA and pre-filter gain while input 3 is fixed. It has three control inputs: the first CV controls the cutoff with amount control + VCA, the second also a cutoff, and the last the resonance. The module benefits from a post-filter VCA and from a post-filter mix in available via the Aux In.
The SSI2164 chips have additional VCAs onboard which have been made available at the bottom.
Interesting new modules from U-he. The filter protoype sounds already super tempting.
New U-he modules for Superbooth 22 availability and price TBA.
More information here: U-he
U-He might be the most overrated software company in the musical sphere and now they are peddling this nonsense in an already overcrowded modular world. Get lost!
U-he makes the best sounding plugins on computers , looking forward on how it will sound on eurorack!
That is subjective and actually not even remotely true. Have to agree with the other post, overrated, overpriced, and god awful interfaces!
Get lost? Why should U-he get lost?
This is a model small software company that has a few hardware modules. Why should they not make whatever they want? They do their own work, pay their employees, treat their customers with respect and honesty, and, as a result, they enjoy a devoted following. If this is a bad company, we need many more such bad companies.
Selling things cheap is fine. U-he built an audience by giving away software. At some point, however, an honest developer needs to charge a sustainable price for its work. Making cheap products by exploiting employees, cutting corners, stealing the work of others, selling customer data, and so forth can be done, if people want to pay money – any money – to support such ventures.
I’ll happily pay for good work from responsible people so far as I can afford to do it. I have been happy with everything I have bought from U-he.
I suspect complaints about the “overrated” software come from people with little experience with it. They certainly have no experience with the hardware discussed above. People should buy musical tools from responsible developers where those tools seem useful and the price suits one’s budget. Whatever “rating” one imagines to be over or under some personal sense of an appropriate level matters little.
U-he purchasers and users tend to be a happy lot. Complaining that a company is well-liked seems a bit bizarre.
If Urs’s prices are high, either save your Euros until you can pay or move on to something else. This too is a strange basis for a complaint.
Modular is a crowded field? So what? Don’t buy everything. Choice is not a bad thing.
Now, if the company were run by a madman with no sense of decency who makes his business by appropriating every level of the work of others, cuts every corner imaginable, has a terrible record as an employer on top of leaving his own country to find cheaper labor, and who uses a team of lawyers to intimidate people who complain into silence, THAT would be a company I could see complaining about under a new-product article. U-he is not such a company.