Digital Synthesiser from Erica Synths

With the Steampipe, Erica Synths presents a digital synthesiser that makes use of physical modelling synthesis and does without classic oscillators. The Physical Modelling synthesis is able to simulate the physical behaviour of wind instruments, whistles, signal horns, string instruments, but also wood, glass or metal. In addition to variants of string and plucked instruments, percussive sounds and new ambient sounds are also no problem for this sound generator. PM synthesis has basically been around since 1971, but it was only in the 1990s that it was made tangible in synthesisers such as the Korg Prophecy and Yamaha VL1. Both synthesisers sounded excellent even back then, but their operation was largely based on menu-typing. Not so with Steampipe, because all relevant parameters have their own knob. Only for a few actions such as assigning the LFO destinations or the modulation matrix, you have to access the menu, everything else can be touched directly. The 8-voice polyphonic synthesiser is optimised for use with MIDI wind controllers and works with any MIDI keyboard or sequencer. The generated overtones sound extremely organic and rich.

A sound primarily consists of the elements steam, pipe and delay. The STEAM section(generator) can be compared to the lungs and mouth of a musician. The generator produces the airflow or "steam", the envelope curve in this section determines the force with which it is blown out.

DC/Noise is the sound you get when blowing out, the latter can be replaced by any other audio signal via the external audio input. The PIPE section(feedback) is comparable to a flute. The melody is formed in the "pipe" and Push (in the feedback) lets the steam bounce off like in a flute and produces the sound. The delay box changes the tuning and shape of the flute. The last element in the signal path is the reverberator, which adds volume and atmosphere to the sound. The reverb tail ranges from a tiled bathroom to the Grand Canyon. The Reverb effect sounds simply outstanding and can be adjusted in detail. The fact that Erica Synths and 112dB.com Reverb can work together has already been impressively proven with the products Nightverb and Black Stereo Reverb.

Thanks to the many modulation options, even livelier sounds can be achieved. Five LFOs, which can be synchronised to Clock and have an adjustable transient phase, as well as a modulation matrix with several entries, ensure subtle to extreme changes in the sound. There are a total of 256 memory locations for sounds. The complete MIDI implementation should be of particular interest to User users who want to control Steampipe via a master sequencer.