"Xhun Audio is proud to present LittleOne, a faithful emulation of a new classic: the Moog Little Phatty analog synthesizer.
To produce the same rich and warm sound of the original hardware, LittleOne emulates every single component of the Little Phatty (oscillators, filter, envelopes, LFO …), preserving the original frequency responses and frequency ranges.
The result is an analog-sounding instrument - all in the digital domain.
But it’s not over.
In addition to the Little Phatty synthesizer emulation, LittleOne encloses a full rack with a 16-step MIDI sequencer, a 16-step trancegate effect and two master effects slots. Go to ‘Specs’ section for more details."
Why do companies concentrate on making emulations of hardware, especially hardware that is still being made, is affordable, and highly stable? Sure an emulation of a Prophet 5 is useful, instead of having to shell out a bunch of money to buy one and then shell out even more and wait a few years just to get it fixed, but I don’t see a need for a virtual Little Phatty when brand new ones are readily available. Why can’t we have more groundbreaking things like Reaktor? The LittleOne claims it uses physical modeling synthesis, so why not make the whole physical modeling synthesizer available and offer some Little Phatty-inspired presets? Physical modeling is really cool and very powerful, but there are barely any physical modeling synthesizers available.
just my 2 cents (just enough detuning to give some nice oscillator phasing sounds!)
er, maybe. Or that may just be marketing hype. Evidence (er, a discussion on KVR) suggests that LittleOne was made in SynthEdit using a number of free/third-party modules. I guess that doesn’t rule out physical modeling, but it does not sound like a lot of groundbreaking new work being done, either.
I’m going to be a little harsh here.
The user interface of the Little Phatty seems to have been designed for a price point. By only having four parameter knobs and a bank of buttons beneath them, it gets the guts of a Moog synth to customers at a relatively cheap price (cheap by Moog standards). If they had put a knob on the panel for every parameter the price would probably approach that of the Voyager.
So the user interface is a compromise. Don’t get me wrong, I like the way it works but let’s be honest, more knobs = better.
So why the hell would you copy the button-type interface on a software synth?!? That makes absolutely no sense at all. Plus, yeah, it sounds exactly like every other soft synth made with SynthEdit.
I admire anyone with the skill and determination to create a soft synth and attempt to make money with it. But the user interface has to be really good if I’m going to consider paying money for it.
I’ve only paid for one soft synth ever, and I don’t think I’ll ever buy one again. And I’m not implying the use of pirated software - what I mean is there are a LOT of completely FREE VST synths out there.
Here are a few of my absolute favorites:
I remember awhile back when Myosis made their MyosisFooger vst’s and some suggested it would help generate sales for MoogFoogers. I think the exact opposite.
Either way it was copyright infringement and Myosis was forced to change their entire concept. Looks like Xhun Audio got slapped down too since their link is now dead.
Xhun Audio had a fully functioning site as of yesterday afternoon, complete with littleone pitures and info. I’m guessing they were issued a legal warning about copyright infringement.
Seems a lot of people would like to capitalize on Moogs success these days.
In the guitar world the one company that seems to have really protected the design of their guitars is Rickenbacker. Their most famous guitars are protected by a Trademark - you don’t see a lot of Rickenbacker copies. If you go the Trademark route, the protection lasts as long as you continue to build the product. Of course, some would say that Rickenbacker abuses the Trademark rules.
Another way to protect the switch layout might be with a “design patent”, altough that eventually runs out.
