Ben Supper

Prioprietor

Supperware Ltd

About Me

Ben engineers synthesisers, loudspeakers, MIDI controllers, and other products for various companies, and sells spatial audio hardware via his own company, Supperware.

He likes solving problems that combine elements of acoustic design, hardware, firmware, DSP, and application development. The first half of his career was spent mostly at Focusrite and ROLI, running the latter's R&D team and realising that he prefers the lab to the boardroom, but doesn't get to choose.

Ben's been involved with ADC since it started in 2015. He's spoken about MIDI, spatial audio, the craft of making hardware, and on weathering a demanding and satisfying trade, the practitioners of which are often invisible.

Sessions

  • Finding OSCar
    00:00 - 00:00 UTC | Friday 31st October 2025 |
    Intermediate
    Advanced

    The OSCar synthesiser, designed by Chris Huggett in 1982, was launched in time to make an important contribution to the major wave of synthpop. But, 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. About five hundred or so are still around, preserved in working order. They change hands for about five times their inflation-corrected original retail price. This talk […]

  • 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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