The sampleslicer will be your long awaited ultimate realtime sampler for your modular system... oh wait! No it is not a sample player!
It is a realtime sampler for in your modular eurorack system. Huh? You say again "sampler"? Sort of...
Yes the sampleslicer will sample the incoming sound... but the sampleslicer will not just play your sound after it sampled it!
What does it do?
The sampleslicer is a realtime monophonic sampler with a 16 step voltage controlled sequencer.
The incoming sound is chopped automaticly in 16 parts by the incoming clock signal and spread over 16 steps in the internal sequencer.
How long can it sample?
The length of the recorded sample is predetermined by a clockdivider so the recording time is always linked to the incoming clock.
You can choose between 2, 11/2, 1, 3/4, 1/2, 1/4.
If the divider is set to 1 the sample time is equal to 16 incoming clockpulses.
If set to 1/2 the sample length is equal to 8 incoming clockpulses spread over 16 slices (so twice as short).
And it makes even more glitching fun when set to 3/4 as it wil spread 12 steps over 16 slices.
The maximum sample time is about 30seconds and the minimum sample time is a fraction of a second for granular noises.
How does the sequencer work?
Inside the sampleslicer there is a 16 step voltage controlled sequencer to play back the sound. Every step is dedicated to a 16th part of the recorded sound in the memory.
After the 16 steps are full the sequencer starts playing from the choosen startpoint till the choosen amount of steps are played. This can be in one shot mode or in loopmode for infinite looping.
The startpoint and play length is determined by potentiometers or CV input.
Last but not least the individual slices can be played back as notes via CV from a sequencer or keyboard by setting the start point in V/oct mode and play length to 1.
How does the pitch work?
There is a pitch control to pitch down or pitch up the slices. The pitch control affect the overal pitch of all recorded material.
It can be controlled via CV.
What only realtime sampling?
Our vision on the modular world is that you get most fun out of realtime created sounds... We choose to make this module without a memorycard reader out of principles.
But if we reach our goal we will most probably make an add-on for using memorycards. These add-ons will be compatible with the sampleslicers via a header on the back.
What about the soundquality?
The sample rate is 12bit just like the good old sampling madness days... A lovely sound with some slightly raw character but not gritty. For comparison: cd digital sound quality is 16bit, gameboys are 8bit, The E-mu Emulator is 8bit, E-mu Emax is 12bit, the MPC60 is 12 bit, the AKAI S612 is 12bit, the AKAI S900 is 12bit, Oberheim DPX1 is 12bit, and the EMU sp-1200 is 12bit too...
So no it is not 24bit as we know in the mastering studio's but reminds of the good old "Hip hop" sounds from the 80's and it's lovely! And in the end it's not a mastering tool but an instrument on itself.
What do we need the money for?
As there are some parts which are only available in SMD we need to contract a factory for assembling the core part of the sampleslicer. It is not possible to make a small batch. That will simply make the module a lot more expensive than we will ever sell them for. Therefor we can only make a bigger batch and we take the risk to sell them.
We need to collect all parts to make the sampleslicers, this cost money. Next to the SMD story we use high quality parts like Alps potentiometers, I really hate wobbly interfaces!
The frontpanels will be made in the Netherlands and will be 2mm anodized aluminium panels. These are not screenprinted but the graphics are part of the anodized layer. This cost more money but it is worth it as it will have a very high quality.
And we have spent a lot of time making this possible...
Last but not least! If we reach the goal, it opens a way to develop more nice modules and we will create an add-on module to use pre-recorded samples from a memorycard.
Count me in 
