Motor Synth MKII free sample pack and mini-review

Dear Free-tier Patreon members!

Gamechanger Audio is a company known for doing things differently, and they certainly did that with Motor Synth MKII - a synth that uses eight drone motors as oscillators.

They kindly sent me a unit - I won't be publishing a review on the channel because Gamechanger have an excellent set of tutorials on their youtube channel, so I felt like I didn't have much to add in that respect.

I will, however, share a summary of my thoughts and pros and cons here, as well as a sample pack based on your Patreon tier.

So, on the pros side, Motor Synth is a uniquely sounding instrument in the synth space. Gamechanger has succeeded in making something different with its own distinct sound. Whether it's better is a matter of personal opinion of course. If you're looking for clean, lush synth sounds, you won't find many of those here: it's aggressive-sounding, distorted and raw, with plenty of massive sub-harmonics. So, in my personal opinion, it's different in a good way, but it may not be your cup of tea.

Further on the pros side, Gamechanger didn't just give you oscillators, Motor Synth has plenty of sound design features to explore on top, including analog filters, distortion and interesting modulation options.

Finally, for the pros, its build is excellent, the 8-button tunable onboard keyboard is fun to play, and dare I say, it's lovely to look at with the spinning motors and blinking LEDs.

However, on the cons side, one major thing stands out so much I won't mention it on the same level as the others - the higher the pitch of the notes you play, the faster the drone motors need to spin, and the louder they whine. In that respect, it's not for the faint of heart! I used an app to measure it - the ambient noise in my room came in at 25db; when I turned on the motor synth and played the lowest pitch notes possible, the app measured 36db (besides the 8 motors, the synth also has an internal fan), and as I progressively played higher pitches, levels went up to 76db (!). I've attached a recording of a mic next to the synth while I'm playing progressively higher pitches on its keys - you can hear how things start with a gentle whirr alongside the clacking keys, and things get louder from there. It's acceptable at bass pitches, but gets quite hectic from there on!

Then, besides that, on the cons side, despite the recent price drop, it's still not cheap at $2000, and it has quite a learning curve if you really want to make the most of all its features, though it has plenty of hands-on controls to mess with the presets.

So, those were my thoughts, here are some sounds!

I'm sharing 5 multi-sampled instruments on the free Patreon tier; if you'd like to upgrade to the Modulator tier at only $1, you'll get 5 more, and you'll get all 30 instruments (and my book and much more) at the $4 WaveShaper tier.

I've made them all polyphonic, but you can change that in the MPC program settings (or whichever other multisample player you choose to use) for lead/bass performances.

I've attached a guide for using these multisamples within the free MPC Beats software, and you can also use free software called ConvertWithMoss to convert them into a multisample format of your choice for use with a wide range of other hardware/software platforms.

I hope you enjoy them!

All my best,

Ziv / Loopop