Ben Supper

Prioprietor

Supperware Ltd

About Me

Since 2018, Ben has been a freelance developer, helping other people to deliver music technology. PWM borrowed him to complete the hardware and firmware design for their first two synths. This, and an on-off history of working with Chris Huggett that extended over more than a decade, is why he's speaking about OSCar this year. Ben also developed and sells the Supperware head tracker, which adds motion capture to headphones. This small product became the standard way for immersive audio producers to work and share their music away from large loudspeaker arrays.

Before 2018, Ben was responsible for the electronic and firmware designs of several products, including Novation Impulse, Launchpad, the sensor DSP for the ROLI Seaboard, and large chunks of the Novation Mininova firmware. As Head of R&D at ROLI for three years, he was responsible for making sure that its team shipped their first few products.

Ben enjoys working in areas that bridge specialisms, which is why he's a hardware person at a software conference. His background incorporates acoustic design (he has a PhD in spatial psychoacoustics), hardware and firmware development, DSP, and writing apps when he must.

He has been involved with ADC since it started in 2015, and has talked about all of these subjects.

Sessions

  • Finding OSCar

    The Secrets of a Classic British Synth
    00:00 - 00:00 UTC | Friday 31st October 2025 |
    Intermediate
    Advanced

    The OSCar synthesiser, designed by Chris Huggett in 1982, made an important contribution to decades of music. As a hybrid monosynth, it also arrived just as Roland and Yamaha were releasing affordable polyphonic digital synths running on custom chips. Consequently, it sold modestly. But its architecture and versatility afforded it a unique palette of sounds that has seldom been imitated. Today, OSCar is a classic instrument. It features heavily in music by Stevie Wonder, Ultravox, Jean-Michel Jarre, Orbital, Underworld, and many others. Several hundred units are still around, preserved in working order. They change hands for about five times their […]

  • Inheriting Mantis from Chris Huggett
    09:00 - 09:50 UTC | Wednesday 13th November 2024 | Bristol 2
    Beginner
    Intermediate

    Chris Huggett founded the Oxford Synthesiser Company in the 1970s. He spent his career designing what became classic instruments: the EDP Wasp and OSCar synthesisers, most of Akai's samplers in the 1990s, and pretty much all of Novation's musical products. In 2019, Chris took on a commission for a new company. Given creative free rein, he started developing a hybrid synth that revisited some of his earliest work, but improved it with modern features. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with cancer at around the same time, and didn't survive the first lockdown. Having worked with Chris for a while at Novation, […]

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