street priceIn the 70s Tom Oberheim became famous as a talented inventor of guitar effects. Its ring modulator and phase shifter, produced under the Maestro brand, were real bestsellers. At the same time, Tom was the official dealer of ARP synthesizers in Los Angeles. And at some point, with the support of Dave Rossum (the founder of E-mu Systems), he decided to try himself in the synthesis engineering. The result of this successful attempt was SEM, which was demonstrated at the Los Angeles Convention of Audio Engineers in May 1974.
The module was positioned as an auxiliary monophonic synthesizer for operating with a sequencer or with a monophonic synthesizer for layering and sound enrichment.
It is built on the basis of two voltage controlled oscillators that produce a sawtooth and square waveform (duty cycle can be adjusted).
For each, the tuning, FM and PW modulation is provided. The modulation source can be an envelope generator, LFO or an external signal.
The LFO has a frequency controller and produces only a triangular wave.
Two envelope generators have time adjusters for attack, decay and sustain.
Unlike modern synthesizers with four-stage VCF, SEM has a two-step voltage controlled filter with a slope of 12 dB per octave. There were many fans of this particular filter. Although it does not sound as bright as the four-stage filters, it has four modes of operation: lower, upper, band and notch.
Country of origin / production: USA
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| Usage area | |
|---|---|
| Sound Module/ Tone Generator | |
| Archetype | |
| Analogue (A) | |
| Polyphony | |
| Monophonic | |
| Tone Generator / Sound Synthesis | |
| Oscillator Type | VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) |
| Oscillators per voice | 2 |
| Waveform/ Spectral form (main generator) | Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) |
| Waveform/ Spectral form (main generator) | Saw |
| Filter | |
| High-pass Filter (HPF) | |
| Low-pass Filter (LPF) | |
| Band-pass Filter (BPF) | |
| Band-reject Filter (BRF/ BEF) | |
| Envelope Generator (EG) | |
| Attack | |
| Decay | |
| Sustain | |
| Audio out | |
| Mono | |
| Analogue: 1/4" (6.35mm) | 1 |
| Audio in | |
| Analog 1/4" | 1 |
| Power | |
| Voltage | 110V |
| Voltage | 60Hz |
| Power Supply | Built-in, internal |
| Case/ body | |
| Metal | |
| Color | |
| White | |
| Production start | 1974 |
| Production end | 1979 |
| Production ended | |
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