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Conference napalm::commusic_v1

Title:* * Computer Music, MIDI, and Related Topics * *
Notice:Conference has been write-locked. Use new version.
Moderator:DYPSS1::SCHAFER
Created:Thu Feb 20 1986
Last Modified:Mon Aug 29 1994
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2852
Total number of notes:33157

2289.0. "Oberheim news update (post-buyout) from Usenet" by DDIF::EIRIKUR (Good tines, bad tines, you know....) Tue Mar 13 1990 23:41

Article        12251
From: mpmst1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (metlay)
Subject: Let the bells ring out! OBERHEIM LIVES! |->
Date: 13 Mar 90 18:43:11 GMT
Organization: Xpanders'n'Vectors R Us
 
 
Let the rumors and gossip cease; I've gotten a line in to Oberheim/Gibson
Labs, have spoken to their cutomer representative for about an hour, and 
have gotten the straight dope on the situation with Oberheim.
 
Oberheim lives. Boy, does it ever! |->
 
Don Fefie, the man with whom I spoke, is a six-year veteran of Oberheim
Electronics, Oberheim/ECC, and now of Oberheim/Gibson Labs. I've dealt with
him before, and while I wouldn't call him a friend, I do trust him as much
as I trust anyone in the business (make of that what you will). I'll stick
to the facts for the first part of this post; unofficial stuff will be 
tacked on at the end, and labelled as such.
 
FACT:
 
Oberheim/Gibson Labs is keeping a very low profile at the present time
because they're still picking up the pieces of the ECC buyout. There's
been a major shift in the direction of the company, and in keeping with 
this it is highly unlikely that there will be any loud fanfare in any
of the trade magazines in the near future. There are no big new products
in the offing, no "glorious new day" to be trumpeted from the rooftops;
just what is, in my opinion, the first really sensible decision they've
made since Tom Oberheim left: the Oberheim name will from now on only
be applied to high-end gear, and the emphasis will be on quality rather
than volume of sales.
 
The Xpander and Matrix-12 will be going back into production soon; they
have a considerable backlog of orders, and the new units will, as they always
have been, be manufactured and tested by hand in the same factory as
before, on what essentially amounts to a special-order basis. Don's quote
was, "Better 500 units of high quality than a factory full of junk. We can't
compete with Yamaha or Roland; it would be stupid to try." The Matrix-1000
will still be manufactured for the forseeable future, as the machinery and
testing facilities are in place for it here in the USA and its service
record to date has been excellent. However, no official word has been handed
down on the Perf/X machines or on any other gear in Oberheim's line, and the
future for them is highly doubtful. The first steps in Oberheim's return to 
the marketplace will be a carefully-restored support system for the Xpander
and the Matrix-12, and the launching of a new R&D team headed by Jim Letts,
the man who built the Xpander, to explore new directions in design. The issue
of financial viability has been resolved very neatly, in assigning Oberheim
the status of a division of Gibson Labs, Gibson's guitar electronics R&D
facility. The two divisions share factory and office space for efficiency.
Pricing structure for the Xpander and Matrix-12 is under discussion; they will
be as competitive as possible, but given the nature of their construction
and quality they will probably still be quite costly. A tape of 1000 patches
for them will be made available from Oberheim sometime next month.
The Matrix-6 and its ilk will not be returned to production, despite many
requests for them.
And for those of you idiots who absolutely cannot conceive of a company with
no glitzy new product line available REAL SOON NOW, there is talk of the
first new Oberheim/Gibson product being a keyboard in the $2000 range, 
which is as inexpensive as they're ever likely to get.
 
UNOFFICIAL:
 
The $2000 keyboard in question is the Eclipse, of which several exist and,
according to Don, sound and work wonderfully. However, Oberheim has taken
a hard look at Ensoniq's recent woes and decided that nothing will be
announced until it's built, bulletproofed (easier for analog gear than 
all-digital stuff) and in the warehouse ready to ship. The company has 
proponents both of the Eclipse and of wholly new designs; no decision 
has been made yet, and we won't know of anything concrete for a long while.
 
Much more importantly is that Don is trying to test the waters for the 
possibility of third-party subcontracting to do hardware and software
upgrades for the Xpander and Matrix-12: individual voice processor 
inputs, more memory, more pages of features.... There's nothing official
yet, as Gibson is still testing the waters, but some contacts have been 
made, and Don is (let's just say) waiting to hear from end users who'd
like to see upgrades to the Xpander and Matrix-12. Oh, just by coincidence,
I happen to have his number right here: it's 818-503-0122. Call 0730 to
1130 PST and ask for Don. |->
 
Also, Don is a Matrix-12 owner himself, and this will be the first time
that the Xpander Users' Group, which will kick back into gear this year,
will have a member on the staff of Oberheim itself, about which I'm
tickled pink.
 
So there it is; probably not the news everyone had hoped for ("WHAT? No
$795 analog/digital workstation?"), but for those of us who appreciate 
a committment to quality and understand the economics of scale (this is
a TINY firm we're talking about here, folx), it's the best possible news.
 
Metlay's happy. Oh, boy, is Metlay happy! |-> |->
-- 
metlay			      | "There's more to life than synthesizers, 
                              |  sex, and Traveller. What, I don't know."
mpmst1@unix.cis.pitt.edu (or) |
metlay@vms.cis.pitt.edu       |					    zrgynl

T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
DateLines
2289.1Great news!HPSTEK::RENEBabylon sisters, Shake It!!Wed Mar 14 1990 15:587
     Great news Eirikur. Thanks for posting that! I'm also very happy that a
    Japanese firm didn't buy them. Long live American synthesis!
    
       BTW,  Does anybody know what a Matrix-12 actually looks like? I
    don't think I've ever seen one. 
    
    Frank
2289.2m-12TALLIS::SEIGELSYNTH when?Wed Mar 14 1990 16:357
>       BTW,  Does anybody know what a Matrix-12 actually looks like? I
>    don't think I've ever seen one. 

It's like an Xpander in an OB8 chassis, sort of.  Two Xpanders, functionally,
I believe.

a
2289.4What a matrix-12 looks likeCTHULU::YERAZUNISI have become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.Wed Mar 28 1990 16:5320
    A Matrix-12 looks like a Xk controller superglued to the front of an
    Xpander and then run through a rolling mill so that it's not as thick
    as an Xpander.  It's about 18" from the front edge of the keyboard to
    the back edge of the case.  There are about two new buttons ("shift"
    keys) to get to voices 7 through 12 (an Xpander only has 6 voices).
    
    Architecturally, an Xpander voice and a Matrix-12 voice are identical;
    patch tapes done on one machine will give the same sounds on the other.
    (modulo analog non-repeatability, of course).  Both have 100 patches
    worth of RAM memory.
    
    Above the voice architecture, a Matrix-12 has 12 voices (Xpander has
    6),  and a Matrix-12 has an alternate page to look at the modulations
    directly instead of going through the device pages.  The Matrix-12 
    _has_ a pressure-sensing keyboard (the Xpander has no keyboard).  The
    Matrix-12 sends and recieves MIDI, while the Xpander talks both 
    incoming CV/Gate and MIDI in/out. (yes, you can buy an Xpander and use
    it as a CV-->Midi converter!)
    
    	-Bill