HackMe Electronics has announced that the Rockit synth – their DIY 8-bit synthesizer project – has shipped.
Rockit is an open source analog-digital hybrid synth, created by Matt Heins. Heins says that he’s shipped about 175 Rockits in some for (assembled, kits or PCBs). The Rockit is now available assembled for $229, or as a kit for $139.
Features:
- Two Mixable Oscillators with 16 Waveshapes/Sounds and Detune
- Analog Voltage-Controlled Amplifier with ADSR controls
- Digitally Controlled Analog Filter with Selectable Low/Band/High Pass and External Audio Input and Independent Envelope
- Two LFOs with 16 Waveshapes and 6 Destinations Each
- MIDI In and Out
- Open Source C Code with an AVR Microcontroller
- 16 Slots for Patch Save and Recall
If any Synthtopia readers are Rockit owners, please leave a comment and let us know what you think about this synth. If you’ve got audio or video demos, leave a link, too!
You can preview the sound of the Rockit synthesizer below:
The demos sound really cool. It’s a really nice first impression. There’s the grit of the 8 bit in the oscillators, the filters sound really good to me! Having LFOs and independent envelopes for amp & cutoff is cool.
I took a quick visit to the website and read a little. Sounds like a great developer who’s doing it for all the right reasons! I suspect this little synth will be flying off the shelves.
I couldn’t tell from what I read whether any parameters can be controlled externally via midi.
I was one of the first people to finish their Rockits from the kickstarter and lemme just say, its a great little synth. It has lots of awesome little features, and has lots of nice things coming in new software versions for it. I really dig the filter on this thing. It is one of the better DIY filters out there. It has 3 modes, HP, BP, LP and can sound really aggressive and squelchy or smooth and mellow. It is definitely a synthesizer with personality and sounds a bit better (to me) than the shruthi 1 does with the standard SMR-4 filter.
All the parameters can be controlled via midi, and it also makes for a nice midi control surface.
It’s a great synth with a hopeful future!