Travel back to creamware.de

[sunmachine]

Was the keyboard version of the NOAH actually manufactured?
I've never seen one on ebay.

[garyb]

no.

[Sounddesigner]

Well, I'll do the normal proofread of punctuation etc etc.

Other than that, other input welcome.

I suppose to me the real standout aspect of the Zimmer story is his multi Scope workstation / Gigasampler adventure.

Because I've been doing similar since the 90's, starting with building orchestral polyphony by syncing romplers with 8 track.

Nowadays you can do all in one box, but back then... it was an adventure rather than a given.

One of the stand-out quotes for me in the interview article is that Hans Zimmer used SCOPE in the 'Black Hawk Down' film soundtrack and even named one of the tracks on the album after a SCOPE synth- 'Synchrotone'. I think they're referring to "Synchrome" by Orbitone as that's the only synth I could find with similar name (someone correct me if there is or was another synth on SCOPE with that name). I had heard that SCOPE was used in Black Hawk Down but did not know a track on the soundtrack was named after a SCOPE synth.

Also Dante I think you might have mixed up SOS's words with Hans's words regarding Blackhawk down's soundtrack. I think these are SOS's words "Having listened to that soundtrack more than once, I had to find out the source of the great synth sounds used." END QUOTE

I think Hans's words start with where the quotation marks are in the interview "That's my secret weapon! That's Creamware stuff, which nobody seems to know about ".

I think the interview is suppose to read as followed if I'm not mistaken:

SOS: After Hannibal, Hans' next collaboration with Ridley Scott was Black Hawk Down. Having listened to that soundtrack more than once, I had to find out the source of the great synth sounds used.

Hans Zimmer: That's my secret weapon! That's Creamware stuff, which nobody seems to know about — they build brilliant synths that just sound really good. Actually, one of the tracks on the album is named after one of the synths: 'Synchrotone'.

Also Dante I think you gave me credit for Sunmachine's discovery. I posted a quote from that interview but Sunmachine posted the link to the whole interview wich contained a lot of juicey and revealing quotes from Hans about SCOPE.

[dante]

Yeah that makes much more sense that way - about the secret weapon. It had me puzzled - as did Synchrotone !! Text and credits adjusted...thanks again.

http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_26/zimmer.htm

[Sounddesigner]

I found another SCOPE synth that no longer exists that has a similar name to the SCOPE synth Han's used and named the song on the Black Hawk Down soundtrack after. Hans said the SCOPE synth he used and named the sountrack song after is 'Synchrotone'. I found this:

"From Amptown/Grenzfrequenz comes the monophonic Synchrotron Lead Synthesizer."

I found out about Amptown/Grenzfrequenz when I did a search for Orbitone Syn-chrome at Harmony Central. Below is a link to the article wich is about Creamware first starting to sell 3rd party developers devices on-line. It's from the year 2000:

http://www.harmonycentral.com/news/crea ... es-on-line

Amptown obviously are no longer SCOPE developers and it looks like that synth is gone. So in total I found 2 SCOPE synths with names similar to the one Hans used in Blawk Hawk Down soundtrack. Hans called it 'Synchrotone' and the two I found were syn-chrome from Orbitone and synchrotron from Amptown/Grenzfrequenz , with the later being almost an exact match. The only difference between Hans's 'Synchrotone' and 'Synchrotron' is the 'r' twards the end of Synchrotron and the 'e' at the end of 'Synchrotone' .

Addendum: Then again Hans's 'Synchrotone' could've been some creative mixture of Synchrome and Orbitone. Amptown's 'Synchrotron' seems more likely out of the current choices but who knows? You're the judge.

[sunmachine]

When I read the interview for the first time, I immediately thought of the Synchrotron from Grenzfrequenz. I didn't even notice the different spellings...lol...
So thanks for pointing that out! I'd still vote for the Synchrotron, though

Here's a video interview about the making of Gladiator where you can see Scope in the background sometimes. In part 3 it's most obvious, since you can clearly recognize miniscope.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JAlOTl84yc
Part 2: http://www.myvideo.de/watch/8340550
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGPoJvQhhKk

[Bud Weiser]

Amptown obviously are no longer SCOPE developers and it looks like that synth is gone.
...
Addendum: Then again Hans's 'Synchrotone' could've been some creative mixture of Synchrome and Orbitone. Amptown's 'Synchrotron' seems more likely out of the current choices but who knows? You're the judge.

Bastian Schumacher was audio plugin designer for Amptown/Grenzfrequenz.
He´s from Hamburg/germany.

Amptown, originally, was one of the 1st big music shops in Hamburg and I doubt they were ever software developers themself.
They shipped gear from UK 1st, later from everywhere to germany in the 70s.
I played an Oberheim 2-Voice there for the 1st time in my life.
One of the owners was Peter Matthes who later founded the C-Lab company w/ Burkhard Buergerhoff,- partially financiating the developement of C-Lab Creator and Notator they also ditributed.
In fact they had a partnership w/ Lengeling/Adams.

Amptown became the biggest shop in the area and they were involved in many other projects too.
There was also a separate Amptown PA and lights company as well as Amptown Cases, the 1st company offering standard ATA flightcases in germany.
Amptown Cases expanded manufacturing studio furniture too.

C-Lab not only distributed the C-Lab software and were involved in many progressive technical stuff ´til late 80s IIRC.
When C-Lab and Lengeling/Adams split, Emagic was born and C-Lab started distributing and selling all kind of media like harddrives etc. as also Steinberg software bundled w/ their Atari Falcon MX and C-Lab Falcon mkII MIDI machines.
Here´s some "SOS" footprint ... http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_ar ... notes.html

Anyway,- today, the former Amptown music shop is "Just Music".
There were buyed by the Berlin company "Sound & Drumland" many years ago and "Just Music" now is one of the 3 biggest online sellers in germany together w/ Thomann and Music Store.
They have 3 large shops,.- in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

Amptown Cases still exists ... http://www.amptown-cases.de/?dir=home&lang=en
Amptown System Company is still existing too ... http://www.amptown-system.com/en/about/history.html
C-Lab Media Service is also existing ... http://www.c-lab.org/index.php?id=37&L=1

You find Bastian Schumacher at XING when you create an account.
https://www.xing.com/profile/Bastian_Schumacher4

Bud

[sunmachine]

To close the circle, the rack where my Xite-1 lives in, is from Rockline Cases, which is another label from Amptown... So Amptown and Scope still go together well

[sunmachine]

Here are two shots from a german documentary report from 2010.
The first one is from the past:

hz-scope-old.jpg (99.26 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

And the second one is probably from 2010:

hzroom-scope5.jpg (69.08 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9d8zr4c64w


And another one from a different interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r65HJU3A_Ng):

hz.jpg (49.27 KiB) Viewed 4857 times

Not Scope related, but very cool: The making of The Weatherman soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9wsaot ... B2&index=9
I guess, I turned into a great fan of Hans Zimmer lately These videos are quite inspiring.

[sunmachine]

This was Creamware's product page of the Profit-5:
http://web.archive.org/web/200710292208 ... t5&lang=en

This little demo song was done using three Profit-5 plus the EDS-8i analog drum synth.
http://web.archive.org/web/200711071510 ... /Song1.MP3

Single voices:
Bass1: http://web.archive.org/web/200711071511 ... /Bass1.MP3
Bass2: http://web.archive.org/web/200711071512 ... /Bass2.MP3
Pad1: http://web.archive.org/web/200711071513 ... r/Pad1.MP3
Pad2: http://web.archive.org/web/200711071511 ... r/Pad2.MP3
Pad3: http://web.archive.org/web/200711071512 ... /Pads3.MP3

[Sounddesigner]

Amptown obviously are no longer SCOPE developers and it looks like that synth is gone.
...
Addendum: Then again Hans's 'Synchrotone' could've been some creative mixture of Synchrome and Orbitone. Amptown's 'Synchrotron' seems more likely out of the current choices but who knows? You're the judge.

Bastian Schumacher was audio plugin designer for Amptown/Grenzfrequenz.
He´s from Hamburg/germany.

Amptown, originally, was one of the 1st big music shops in Hamburg and I doubt they were ever software developers themself.
They shipped gear from UK 1st, later from everywhere to germany in the 70s.
I played an Oberheim 2-Voice there for the 1st time in my life.
One of the owners was Peter Matthes who later founded the C-Lab company w/ Burkhard Buergerhoff,- partially financiating the developement of C-Lab Creator and Notator they also ditributed.
In fact they had a partnership w/ Lengeling/Adams.

Amptown became the biggest shop in the area and they were involved in many other projects too.
There was also a separate Amptown PA and lights company as well as Amptown Cases, the 1st company offering standard ATA flightcases in germany.
Amptown Cases expanded manufacturing studio furniture too.

C-Lab not only distributed the C-Lab software and were involved in many progressive technical stuff ´til late 80s IIRC.
When C-Lab and Lengeling/Adams split, Emagic was born and C-Lab started distributing and selling all kind of media like harddrives etc. as also Steinberg software bundled w/ their Atari Falcon MX and C-Lab Falcon mkII MIDI machines.
Here´s some "SOS" footprint ... http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_ar ... notes.html

Anyway,- today, the former Amptown music shop is "Just Music".
There were buyed by the Berlin company "Sound & Drumland" many years ago and "Just Music" now is one of the 3 biggest online sellers in germany together w/ Thomann and Music Store.
They have 3 large shops,.- in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

Amptown Cases still exists ... http://www.amptown-cases.de/?dir=home&lang=en
Amptown System Company is still existing too ... http://www.amptown-system.com/en/about/history.html
C-Lab Media Service is also existing ... http://www.c-lab.org/index.php?id=37&L=1

You find Bastian Schumacher at XING when you create an account.
https://www.xing.com/profile/Bastian_Schumacher4

Bud

Wow, didn't know that. Seems Amptown has quite a long and distinguished history in Audio. I wonder if Bastian is still coding Audio software. Thanks for the info.

[Sounddesigner]

Wow, thanks Sounddesigner!
It's interesting to learn about all the things I missed in the past, although I bought Pulsar in 1999 or so...

Never realized that SCOPE is an acronym...

MusikMesse 1998 marked the first public display of CreamWare's SCOPE (SCalable Object Processing Environment) platform, capable of creating a virtually limitless number of synthesis and audio processing systems - emulations of "classic" synthesizers and those that have not been invented yet....

I thought the acronym of SCOPE meant 'Sonic Core's Otherworldly Platform Endures' ; but I guess "SCalable Object Processing Enviroment" will do.

[hubird]

Here's a picture of the impressive Stockert Radio Telescope from 1956, Westphalia, Germany.
Working until 1979 and educationally still active until 1997.

Owned by Creamware from 1997 to 2004.

'Scalable Object Processing Environment'?
My ass

[roy thinnes]

Craziness.. they actually possessed a real Telescope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockert_Radio_Telescope
Ok, I know that in their heydays a lot of cash came in, but..

We see Scope was always a bit out of the world.

[Sounddesigner]

Seems like Creamware/Frank Hund loved the final frontier. Not only did Creamware possess a telescope but also named SCOPE cards after space objects (Pulsar, Lunar, Rocket booster). It seems they truly were sending a message to the industry that they had a out-of-this-world/otherworldly platform with SCOPE (SCOPE might even can be alternatively seen as short for teleSCOPE as well, wich is appropriate to if you seen SCOPE back then as a platform that was showing the future).

[ronnie]

Scale-able hardware via DSP. What a concept! Thank you Creamware. Over and out from Planet Z.

[sunmachine]

There was a time when Creamware had full page ads each month in german music tech magazines.
Here's one featuring their telescope.

[Suzie Cue]

Heres the same pic but photoshopped for the STS sample CD

telescope

sts_cd1.jpg (27.72 KiB) Viewed 4550 times

[tgstgs]

back in 99

[tgstgs]

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