Round Robin: Crazy Cycling 4-Voice Synthesizer by Simon the Magpie

July 4, 2024

Simon the Magpie – Round robin tournament ·

Source: Simon the Magpie

YouTuber Simon the Magpie’s new synth is the Round Robin, a sweet digital desktop device with cyclic voices, wild arpeggiator modes, and a touch strip!

Simon the Magpie – Round Vintage

As you may know Simon the Magpie. The wild man from SynthTube has already released several instruments and effect pedals. His latest is Round robin tournamentManufactured in collaboration with Analog weapon And DDCit is a cute and quirky digital desktop synthesizer that does things its own way.

Four voices on cycling

The first thing you will notice is the name. “Round Robin” may conjure up the image of a Samplerwhere each note triggers a different version of a similar audio file. This Round robin tournament is not a sampler, although it DigitalIt is actually a Four-voice synthesizer and every keystroke triggers another oscillator voice toIn this respect, it is more like a Korg Mono/Poly, a kind of four-voice mono that can also be played in polyphonic mode.

Simon the Magpie – Round Vintage — Simon the Magpie – Round robin tournament · Source: Simon the Magpie

The other thing you’ll notice about Round Robin is its design. Like a Chompi or a Critter & Guitari, it’s a desktop device with controls on top and music buttons in the form of buttons below. It’s covered in cute pictures and designs (similar to Simon himself) and the OLED screen covered with a magnifying glass reminiscent of a design by Love Hultén.

All around

Before I go into detail, you should know that not all information has been released yet. This article is based on the (I’m not going to lie, pretty messy) demo video (below) and the “Pre-Release User Guide”.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content of Youtube. To access the actual content, click on the button below. Please note that this involves sharing data with third parties.

More information

Round Robin has four “instruments” These include Basic, Organ, Eerie and Allin. Each behaves a little differently, but all use the four individual voice controls plus the Main waveform selector. For example, basic starts with four basic waveforms next to each other and turning a Voice knob changes the individual waveform assigned to it. organ behaves like an organ, with each voice control contributing straight harmonics additive.

Further to the right there is a simple cover section with two controls, Attack and Release. Below are the horizontal filter slideswhere cutoff and resonance are unusually arranged so that the cutoff is to the right of the resonance.

Modes and Holds

Round Robin can be played in three different Modes, Poly (up to four simultaneous voices – each different, of course), Mono (with a Unison mode) And Arp.

The Arpeggiator is particularly Complexwith a variety of possible Music commissions And Times. In addition, it has Pattern sequencing where arpeggiator timing and note patterns can be sequenced.

As you would expect from a musician who built a drone synth, Round Robin has a Hold mode. Actually, there are two of them: a normal hold mode and one called “momentary hold” that lets you play along to held notes (polyphony permitting).

Effects and the rest

Round Robin is a surprisingly full-featured instrument for such a small device. Since it is completely digital (even the filter is digital), it is no surprise that it also Effectswith tremolo, vibrato, bitcrushing and a wave folder on board. You control the effects with the Touch stripwhatever Pitch bendingWaveform scrolling and voice customization. You can also Record button (and slider) Movement for parameter loops. It also has a variety of Scale including microtonal.