Horst Mayer is the founder of Mayer Electronics with 35 years of experience in industrial automation and communication electronics focused on embedded Systems. in 2019 at Superbooth 19 he showed his latest VA system for Eurorack M800 Polyphonic Virtual Analog Synthesizer with a touch screen.

M800 is a multitimbral polyphonic synthesizer in the Eurorack format with several expanders to control functions such as M840-ENV Envelope Control module, M847-LFO Control Module, M813-OSCILLATOR Control Module, M808-MULTIMODE FILTER Control Module.

production has been underway since 2020 and the M800 synthesizer will soon have its premiere.

I talked for the first time with (Horst) about what prompted him to create a VA in eurorack format, about his almost 40 years passion for synthesizers, signal processing, programming and inspiration.

Drive to bring the power of software based synths in the Eurorack, the focus is polyphonic into the Eurorack, a good integration into MIDI world, as well sequencer & arpeggiator and roundup this with infrastructure modules. 

Can you say a few words about Mayer Electronics at the beginning? 

In the moment it is a one person company with strong partners and support by friends as well my son manuel (sound design) 

Your company was born in 2019 or earlier before you showed the first demo modules on SB19?

can you approximate the emergence of the first idea? I personally like the “Analog Synths”, so the idea was to use a mix of real analog, software/firmware and FPGA based technologies, to get the behavior of the analog world. 

And for sure bring the advantages of Digital based systems into it. Give good control over MIDI/USB/LAN to it. As well you able to store all your creative work in presets. 

You have almost 40 years of passion for synthesizers, why are you just introducing this project now? 

I was the founder of my former company and that consume a lot of energy. After selling my company, I have quit now after 3 year of integration my job.

This was the starting point for this project.

Do you think this is a good time for VA in modules?

Yes because it is very common with the modular world. A lot of People can handle it easily. But in the virtual domain we may do thinks that are not able in the classic world.

You also like analog synthesizers but why you chose VA instead of analog solutions?

 It is more a consequence to overcome the drawbacks of the analog world. So I will not stuck on the VA approach, I move now in the further development to a mix of FPGA based Oscillators and real analog filters, also a hybrid design. The FPGA bring the most analog behavior into it.

You used the Wavetable oscillator, do you think that wavetable is the widest spectrum of sound that is missing in Eurorack?

Yes I think I will still focus the on WT Oscillators and improve their possibilities.

You get rich higher harmonic content and the user are able to create their one wavetables. So they sound very unique. 

But can you also generate classic waveforms for rich analog sounds?

Yes in the M800 I have 2 Classic waveform oscillators (Saw, Tri, Pulse, Sin) they are Sync able OSC1->OSC2 

Your M800 module is the main module, currently the whole synthesizer layout is shown on the website.

Do you have Voice structure, effect sections, Wavetable VCO, Arpergiator / sequencer, then is it necessary to use expanders?

No, it is no need for the control modules, that just improve the workflow. In other word you able to control every think directly with the M800. As well you can control parameters over MIDI CC. 

Filter is MULTIMODE FILTER emulates some classical analog filter types such as filters with 12db or 24db filter depth LP, BP, HP, NS.

so here we have a lot of new characters when one filter is based on SEM: multimode state variable filter (Curtis chip emulation) and another Diode ladder filter (Steiner Parker) 12db and another on MOOG_LD23: Transistor ladder (moog style) 24db. this allows us to have more influence on our preset / patch from the selected filter.

Can you say something more about the use of these filters in the M800 path? 

The filter is for sure very important for the classic subtractive structure, I like the SEM Filter emulation it sounds pretty cool. For the WT I guess the Filter may support the wavetable in a good way, but as already mentioned I like to by side route of the WT as well.

So this is also a brilliant approach because we get Wavetable with many filters, are the filters the heart of the M800 here?

 I think M800 has two Heart the filter and the wavetable oscillators.

Also the strong section attracts effects section basically the whole chain like reverb, delay chorus etc ...

Can you say something more about this section? 

This is a stackable effect section where you may define function & order. To point out is the Tube overdrive it is pretty nice & the reverb (internally consists of 14 parameters this was in the reverb preset) to main of them you able to tweak. 

What inspired you to create one synthesizer for so long?

I have start it as a spare time project. My first cool stuff was to create a Hammond B3 emulation (this Organ will be show on the Superbooth) my love to subtractive synthesis and wavetable oscillators took me to start some implementations on STM32 & raspberry and FPGAs, I have create some prototypes to deal with the User Interface (TFT. Led ring rotary encoders) make designs concepts and so on.

I spent long time to create an efficient DSP library, learn and study papers of my virtual teachers get inspired by all of the great people & synth companies out in the world.   

You are now outside of programming, is all your work now producing modules?

Yes and no the production I involved more in assembling & testing. The parts are preproduced by my partners. That are a handful companies. So the other is doing the commercial things (Advertisement, Company founding, etc) in the night I do further development. 

You also used the touch screen.

Why did you choose this solution? The relatively big capacitive touch screen is needed to create a usable GUI for the complex functions of the M800. For sequencers and arpeggiators and drum track, it is a cool interface to change velocity or control per drag of the screen. 

Can you say something more about this?

Peter is one of my best and longest (>40 years) friend and partner. He is an enthusiast in music and as well synths, like me, He do electronic production since a long time. He is mostly working on the hardware side (PCB Layout, pic and place soldering, assembling …)