The Hartmann Neuron was an electronic musical instrument designed and built by industry designer Axel Hartmann of the German company

Hartmann Music Prosoniq Products Software was a German software developer of audio and music tools, mostly known for their sonicWORX, OrangeVocoder, TimeFactory and Hartmann Neuron synthesizer products. It also licensed proprietary technologies in the aud ...

in the years 2001–2005. The Neuron synthesizer used an

Artificial Neural Network Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

to create a digital computer model from sampled sounds, implementing a new synthesis technology which was developed by

Stephan Bernsee Stephan Bernsee (born 1971) is a digital signal processing applications developer from Germany. Background Bernsee is the founder of the audio software company Prosoniq and the principal developer of the sound synthesis technology used in the ...

Prosoniq Prosoniq Products Software was a German software developer of audio and music tools, mostly known for their sonicWORX, OrangeVocoder, TimeFactory and Hartmann Neuron synthesizer products. It also licensed proprietary technologies in the audi ...

. This computer model could then be used to resynthesize a new sound, giving the player control over "musical" aspects such as instrument body size, material and other acoustic properties. This parametric approach is very different from the more mathematical approaches of other synthesizers. The Hartmann Neuron VS, a Mac/Windows compatible VST software version of the instrument, was released in 2005.

Critique

Even though the instrument was awarded numerous prizes for innovation it was difficult to operate due to its limited display capabilities, which made adjusting the tonal qualities of a sound a tedious trial and error process. Given the very high price of the instrument (around 5000

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

) many people felt that manipulating a wireframe model of a sound only by ear did not allow for the amount of control necessary for such a complex operation. However, combined with a sample editor, the included Modelmaker software &

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

control via sequencing, this difficulty can be somewhat rectified, albeit without the aid of the 3D image of the model. Hartmann Music had to fight a couple of technical problems which were never remedied before the company finally filed for

insolvency In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet ...

, after a dispute with their distributor, in 2005. Although Hartmann Music went out of business, the Neuron synthesizer is still a sought after, hard-to-find instrument with unique sound. It is still being used today, mainly in the production of film music, for example by artists like

Hans Zimmer Hans Florian Zimmer (; born 12 September 1957) is a German film score composer and music producer. He has won two Oscars and four Grammys, and has been nominated for two Emmys and a Tony. Zimmer was also named on the list of Top 100 Living G ...

and electronic musicians such as BT.

Technology

The Neuron synthesizer's hardware was based around a standard PC mainboard running an early version of the Gentoo Linux operating system. A custom application ran the sound synthesis algorithm, and the instrument used custom front panel displays and a custom sound card. The front panel and the casing of the synthesizer were designed by Axel Hartmann. It featured 3 orange stick controllers which allowed simultaneous manipulation of 2 assignable parameters (X/Y direction). There were 2 oscillators per

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...

(called "Resynators") which were split in two parameter groupings: "Scape" would refer to the generation properties of a sound (such as the excitation source in a real instrument), "Sphere" would contain all parameters referring to the properties of the resonating "instrument" body. The two Resynators could be combined and put through a "Blender", which allowed different

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to be applied in the combination. The Neuron synthesizer also had an effects unit with EQ,

delay Delay (from Latin: dilatio) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Delay 1968'', a 1981 album by German experimental rock band Can * ''The Delay'', a 2012 Uruguayan film People * B. H. DeLay (1891–1923), American aviator and acto ...

, modulation,

distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signa ...

ring modulation In electronics, ring modulation is a signal processing function, an implementation of frequency mixing, in which two signals are combined to yield an output signal. One signal, called the carrier, is typically a sine wave or another simple ...

reverb Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abs ...

and spectral warping effects, a

digital filter In signal processing, a digital filter is a system that performs mathematical operations on a sampled, discrete-time signal to reduce or enhance certain aspects of that signal. This is in contrast to the other major type of electronic filter, t ...

with variable

cutoff frequency In physics and electrical engineering, a cutoff frequency, corner frequency, or break frequency is a boundary in a system's frequency response at which energy flowing through the system begins to be reduced ( attenuated or reflected) rather tha ...

resonance Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied Periodic function, periodic force (or a Fourier analysis, Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system ...

and selectable characteristics, and assignable control wheels.

Construction

Internally, the motherboard is a Shuttle MV25(N)

Socket 370 Socket 370 (also known as the PGA370 socket) is a CPU socket first used by Intel for Pentium III and Celeron processors to first complement and later replace the older Slot 1 CPU interface on personal computers. The "370" refers to the number of ...

, VIA Apollo

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the mo ...

with an

Intel Celeron Celeron is Intel's brand name for low-end IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor models targeted at low-cost personal computers. Celeron processors are compatible with IA-32 software. They typically offer less performance per clock speed comp ...

CPU, heatsink & fan. The motherboard can accept up to 2x 512MB of non- ECC

PC133 Synchronous dynamic random-access memory (synchronous dynamic RAM or SDRAM) is any DRAM where the operation of its external pin interface is coordinated by an externally supplied clock signal. DRAM integrated circuits (ICs) produced from the ea ...

SDRAM, although the system comes with 256MB as standard. The hard disk is a PC standard 20GB IDE unit. The audio & data PCI i/o board is a custom Hartmann design & on-ribbon includes; MIDI,

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

& the first 5.1

surround sound Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener (surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to s ...

hardware to be incorporated into a hardware synthesiser. The PSU is a non-

ATX ATX (Advanced Technology eXtended) is a motherboard and power supply configuration specification developed by Intel in 1995 to improve on previous de facto standards like the AT design. It was the first major change in desktop computer enclo ...

design, although the exhaust fan is a standard PC part. The exhaust fan, however, is noisy in operation and may not be acceptable in the confines of a soundproofed mixing room. Externally, the casing is extremely solid, heavy-duty aluminium chassis with a wooden end panel. The one drawback are the four delicate plastic joysticks. However, these can be removed for transport.

Prominent musicians

* Peter Gabriel *

Michael Cretu Michael Cretu ( ro, Mihai Crețu, ; born 18 May 1957) is a Romanian-German musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He gained worldwide fame as the founder and musician behind the musical project Enigma, which he formed in 1990. Cret ...

* Brian Transeau * Life In Balance (Steven Sciulli) *

Manfred Mann Manfred Mann were an English rock band, formed in London and active between 1962 and 1969. The group were named after their keyboardist Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The band had two diffe ...

Robert Scott Thompson Robert Scott Thompson (born 1959, California) is a composer of ambient, instrumental and electroacoustic music. He earned the B.Mus. degree from the University of Oregon and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, San Diego. ...

* Luis Resto

Critique

Technology

Construction

Prominent musicians

References

Further reading

External links