At Musikmesse 2013, Future Music Magazine caught up with u-He’s Urs Heckmann for an update on his new Bazille synthesizer:
u-he founder, Urs Heckmann explains his new synth, Bazille. After four years in the alpha stage, the Modular FM, phase distortion and fractal resonance synth is now in beta testing and should be available in the summer priced at $149.
I’d rather spend the money on a Korg Volca than u-he’s overpriced and over-hyped synths.
The u-He ACE is the best $69 I’ve ever spent on a plugin. It’s deep, and totally huge sounding if you have the CPU power. To each his own, I guess.
Agreed. Even Zebra2 at $199 is still a decent price considering the possibilities with it. It’s one of those ‘take it to a desert island’ kind of synths that’s able to create a world of sounds and it does it very well.
We’ll be charitable and just assume rhat you didn’t hear about his last ‘overhyped’, ‘overpriced’ synth, which was actually a nice freebie:
https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2012/12/19/free-software-synth-from-u-he-podolski-for-mac-windows/
Overhyped & overpriced!???
I bought the Diva and its the best sounding soft synth I own (on par with Reasons Thor). Worth every penny.
u-he is my favorite synth designer and ace is one of my favorite synths. aside from the phase distortion, how different is bazille? i mean that as an honest inquiry and not as a challenge. ace can do fm, and quite a few techniques that are outside the realm of traditional subtractive synthesis. and while it’s not 4 strictly a 4 oscillator design, it can be configured that way.
Well it must sound great with all that talk, but i’ll never know…
yeah! it kills me everytime i see a tradeshow interview. i don’t care about the talking, show us the product, show us how it sounds, or don’t bother at all!
Bazille has actually been free to use for several years as he has worked on the design. It is the precursor to Ace but is free of any of the normalizations found in Ace. It has over twice the modules and everything runs at audio rate. The free version is missing a bunch of stuff but is amazing to patch. I think the release version will be very well received.
Urs should make a Bundle of his synths like NIs Komplete… this would be really great…
Good idea – make it affordable, though. Komplete costs too much for me and is too big – I wouldn’t get my money’s worth with it, because I don’t have time to learn 40 different instruments.
I hope they are already making an iPad synths.
I was a little confused as to why they didn’t ask him to play a few patches. It’s always nice to hear about the design and why it took so long, but it really comes down to “how does it sound”?
After seeing some very good and reasonably priced actual synthesizers at the recent trade show. I am amused to be fetched down to
earth and reminded of the ‘apps’ brigade. I saw the ‘synth’ image on a mobile device while travelling.When I looked in detail I realised it was not a synth but a soft synth for I pad . I can’t argue with the guys commitment to is I pad application , but I am one of those who would love to see these I pad programs in their own sections. Is this a nasty opinion worthy of censorship?
So why all the hollering? I’ve bought several Korgs and E-mus because they perform well. Urs-loyalty is no different than those or Moog loyalty. Its a matter of what gives you a voice you like. If I was a Zebra or Diva user, I’d be keen on this because it fills in the FM/additive gap. One plus is an accessible GUI for a rather detailed means of sound generation that’s otherwise known as a hair-puller. This layout feels really playable, which has not exactly been a prominent feature of other FM resources.
Urs comes from the same side-realms as Rob Papen or ReFX Nexus. You don’t go there for name recognition; you do it for the semi-quirky, boutique-like powers unique to each. Many people agitate for “new” regularly, but there’s a lot to be said for “old” when its refitted and polished into new life. I want to actually HEAR it, too, but I trust the guy’s record. It’ll sound great, as always.
Yeah, Phase Distortion + FM !
I’m glad someone else appreciates 80s digital synths, 😉
but the patchable nature is pretty cool as well.
WHat kills me with these plug-ins is that I can’t get any idea how broad they are in beta. I like ACE because it’s got a warmth and fatness that none of their others synths have. I didn’t particularly like Diva, though, it just seemed kind of run of the mill or was covered by other softsynths I already have. I admire greatly how URS produces his VSTs though – a total perfectionist.
Anyway, I like ACE, and there’s a new version of it out. If Bazille is an extension of it, then I will get it. If it sounds like THOR, I’m not interested, because I find that synth lifeless.