"2) Also for EW Pro owners I would ask how the size of the pitch field looks for his Clair de Lune performance? It may be the camera angle, but it looks fairly small and compressed to me given the range of notes in that piece." - pitts8r
He's playing rather close, but the pitches he's playing are rather high. If you notice around 2:00 his pitch hand withdraw doesn't match the pitch you hear, and they seem to be going out of their way not to show his pitch hand, all of which might just be video editing convenience, but who knows?
"4) I especially like one particular feature of the wood cabinet. They broke away from the traditional sharp-cornered box with the large-radius rounded corners. It looks like they have thick top and bottom walnut pieces to allow all of the radius to be cut in the end grain. Very nice, I think, and easy to manufacture too."
I thought of doing this a couple of months ago, but with acoustic guitar side type bent wood. Might make for a featherweight Theremin - that cracks open like an egg when you stumble over the mic stand!
"5) Don't know what to think of the fabric panels, but I give credit for the creative thinking and following through on a somewhat controversial idea. It looks like a fairly sturdy speaker grill fabric to me. Given the color one might think about staining from use, but then I don't know if the panel ever really gets touched that much. It's not like you're going to get rings around the controls, although avoiding any contact with the panels at all even during assembly or moving might be difficult."
I think these are gonna look pretty bad on the used market. It's just asking for a cat to sharpen its claws on it (or worse!). Control panels need to be durable and at least somewhat cleanable. Maybe you can remove it and throw it in the wash? I can imagine the itchy laundry tag sewn into the back...
"7) What is "Quantize"? Is this similar to a Theremini function, and why does it have a "set root" button? Any decent pitch correction needs more knobs than this to specify the correction window, strength, speed, etc., so what could it do? Going back and re-reading the website it suggests that this is something to aid learning, so I'm guessing it's a Theremini derivation and not something to get excited abut."
I'm certain that it's simple Theremini note quantization, which is more of an effect than a playing aid IMO (some would say gimmick / selling aid).
"9) Did I see or did someone suggest that this uses new oscillators? And new compared to what - the EW Pro or the standard Etherwaves (or the Theremini)."
I think that reference is to the DSP audio oscillator, which gives you sine / triangle / saw / wavetable.
"10) The first thing I thought of when I saw the built-in bucket brigade delay was how noisy they can be. Added noise isn't necessarily a problem for a theremin, and is in fact desirable for many voices, but I'm wondering if this was a choice based on simplicity or a nod to the retro feel. Maybe the audio chain is all analog and they wanted to keep it that way?"
Moog Inc: "And an on-board analog BBD (bucket brigade) delay adds warmth and depth." Nothing says "analog" like clock bleed-through and aliasing. This is 100% retro appeal IMO, which I've always found incredibly annoying. A tube glowing in there somewhere will give you warmth alright...
"Anyway, these are morning musings while trying to decide what to do. I sometimes wonder why product descriptions (not being specific to Moog here) are so often sketchy and short on information but heavy on giant images, a trait that seems to be more common now that many websites are trending toward mobile-only formats instead of responsive designs serving both mobile and desktop devices. After hanging on the phone for many hours over the years asking sales and tech-support questions about products that could have been more effectively answered up front in the descriptions you would think that companies would make every effort to put as much information as possible on the websites."
It's corporate secrecy overspill. No one they'll let you talk to has the authority to tell you anything meaningful, including the web designer and the PR guys. And why they announce these things before a manual is available, or even the specs are set in stone, is beyond me. I have to assume we're not the target audience, but these are really geeky devices, so who is?
Moog Inc: "This is a statement piece -- A limited edition tribute to the origins of electronic music, but also to Clara Rockmore..." - I wonder if they are really planning on not making many of these, or if that's just sales pressure talk (buy one now before they're all gone!)? I mean, why expend the NRE on a dead end product? I suppose they didn't want to resurrect the EWPro (that thing must be a PITA to manufacture) but Theremins are kind of their thing, so maybe this is a short-term answer to a pent-up demand?
