While at winter NAMM 2013 I had the opportunity to speak with the man behind the forthcoming SID synth, Alkex of Mode Machines. Alkex, is an up and coming designer with a few designs under his belt thus far. You may recall the Professor from a few years back which was Alkex’s hardware controller for the Prophet soft synth. Since then Alkex has been hard at work on one of the most anticipated desktop synths in recent memory, The Mode Machines SID.
For those that don’t know, the SID synth is based on the synthesis sound chip of the Commodore 64 console. These chips are super rare but they tend to pop up in batches. I always imagined some c64 marauder looting precious c64’s for chips. I don’t know… makes it fun to think about. But anyway, the “SID” chip is characterized by its 8 bit tonal greatness that, if harnessed properly, yields results like these.
The above clip is a sample / test demonstration performed by Alkex on his soon to come SID synth by Mode Machines. Let’s see what Alkex has to say about the new SID.