At Knobcon 2022, Artisan Electronics was previewing Iliad – a new polyphonic synthesizer, based on their Nucleus monophonic synthesizer voice.
Iliad is a boutique polysynth design that builds on Artisan Electronic’s Nucleus voice card. Iliad is designed to be built-to-order, and can be customized to have from four to 16 voices.
The Nucleus voice is a hybrid analog + digital design, featuring two analog oscillators and a digital one, to allow for a wide range of sonic options. Wavefolding and a sub-oscillator offer additional sonic flexibility. An 8-pole multimode filter, 4 LFOs and 4 envelope generators – along with extensive modulation options – make the Nucleus synth voice very powerful.
These are packaged together into a knobtacular 49-note keyboard, making the Iliad immediate and easy to program. The Iliad also offers a digital effects section with reverb, delay and more.
Pricing and Availability
Details are still to come at the Artisan Electronics site.
It would have been nice to have heard what it sounds like. Also, I didn’t catch (if it was mentioned) whose keybed they were using, but I assume Fatar. A four voice with a 61-key keybed for about $3600 would be reasonable, depending on how it sounds. At that price with a custom build, I might seriously consider this synth. It kind of makes the OB-X8 sound a little silly, price wise (even if doubling the voices brings it into the $4200 price range), given the features and the programmability.
He did mention Fatar – specifically that he’d like to have access to their poly-AT keyboard. From that one would assume it’s built on a Fatar keyed. Also he played a few notes on it, probably just to show that it actually makes sound, but spent more time talking about the philosophy of the instrument.
I do like the “spend a little more and get something customized” concept, making Artisan like a luthier of synthesizers. For example the synth has 4 envelope generators, but I’d never get along with the panel layout where each envelope’s controls are in a column. For me ADSR controls should be left-to-right rather than top-to-bottom, and it sounds like that’s the kind of customization he would be happy to do.
I hope he is successful with this business model.
Each additional Iliad voice is $400, so an eight voice would cost $5,200, equal to the OB=X8. Sixteen voices is $8,400, or Moog One 16 altitude. From Demo 1 video, the sound is about comparable to software synths that I have installed. Pass.
Promising synthesizer. Looking forward for a demo.
Looks like a beauty. Looking forward to hearing it.
The wealthy are getting catered for .Thank goodness for the budget end of the market.