John Bowen Synth Design

After having seen a great sounding demo of a Pro-One plugin for Scope/Sonic Core systems, I became somewhat curious whether anybody else finds some CEM chip models interesting - namely CEM3320 VCF, CEM3340 VCO, CEM 3372 VCF/VCA and CEM 3374 VCO (the last two being used in Matrix-12/Xpander)?

Note: "Interesting" ≈ "GOTTAHAVEIT!"

There’s absolutely NO NEED to apologize!!! And you are not a ‘loudmouth’! I appreciate very much everyone’s input - and I hope my responses are never taken as if I’m perturbed about posts, or whatever!

Of course, there’s no way to know all of the communication and so on over the years. No matter if one’s points are ‘repeats’, it’s not a problem for me. Probably what I should do is post a topic that provides a single cohesive list of all the features that have been discussed, and probably another one with all the bugs as well. that would be more convenient than looking through all the separate posts.

1. The pitch quantizer function as you describe sounds fun, and very useful musically! Let’s add it to the requested features list, and I’ll see if we can get it done.
It would probably have to be a new module, and then added to the Mod Source list. If it was ONLY desired to work on pitch (oscillator frequencies), then instead it could be ‘hard-wired’ as the Vibrato LFO is. Any others want to offer their ideas?

6. This would require a separate effect, rather than replacing or modifying the current chorus. Let’s add it to the requested features list.

8. Well....if I understand correctly, you want to just be triggering voices without regards to any pitch control, etc., so...you can use the step sequencer and just go to Seq A to set the timing (SeqA controls the timing for all 4 sequencer rows). For each step that you want to be a pause, you turn the value fully clockwise until you see ‘Rest’ in the display.
What you won’t get doing it this way, however, is a way to created ‘tied’ notes, since the rest just doesn’t trigger for that step. A more sophisticated way would be to add another value (called ’tied’), or even a percentage of a tied amount, or some other way of notating to indicate tied values to keep the sustain portion of an envelope across several steps.

Again, I’m glad you are ‘on board’ with the Solaris, and I look forward to more input as we go!

john b.

Heh, a smiley in there... number eight, that is.

I have been browsing thru the forums and indeed some of the topics were covered by other users. Pardon me for being an echo unit and a loudmouth.

1. Ok, great - someone else has probably needed one, too. I once did some testing with a NI Reaktor 5 patch that accepted a mod wheel or Doepfer USB ribbon input and it produced a polyphonic pitch movement when needed. For example, I held down a C major chord (c3-e3-g3), moved a controller up and out came pitches that contained the pitches I had pre-determined. For the lowest note they'd be c3-e3-g3-c4-e4-g4-c5-e5-g5... middle one did e3-g3-c4-e4-g4... and the last one continued the same series. However, I did try yet another thing and implemented a very rough table that allowed pentatonic scales (or whatever) - and quite quickly I was doing harp glissandi for five hours. It was a nice tool for adding some harmonic movement. Unfortunately, I never finished the messy cabling and the patch itself as a deadline was resting heavily on my shoulders. I recently tried to find the patch, but... ah well.

5. Ah. Noticed this as I write this. I should've kept my mouth shut until I'd gotten to the core. I was probably a bit baffled with the SHIFT's switching increase/decrease function. It makes sense, though, but requires a certain knowledge of the machine itself.

6. Solina/VP330 chorus/ensemble effects can be reproduced by using three BBD delay lines with three-phase LFO generators, with phase differences of 120°. Every manufacturer has their own tech secrets, but for Solina the aforementioned specs probably apply. How they electronically did it - don't know, I'm not much help with electronics. The sound of the circuitry is not depending on the phase difference only, but probably more due to the electronic restrictions. Korg Polysix also utilised a similar multiphase ensemble effect, but the sound of it was much coherent. A bit too clinical and clean.

8. I was thinking about a quick-n-dirty pulse/trigger sequencer: x... ..x. x..x .x.x where x is a pulse and dot is a pause. But, one can do this with a "normal" seq as well, nothing crucial.

9. Ah, ok. I was guessing that implementing some further control assignments would probably be more or less a mess. Probably it's the same with other "major" keyboard manufacturers (Roland, for instance, doesn't allow much midi control).

Some of these have been discussed previously:

1) I had this on the plug-in (Scope) version of the Solaris early on. For the keyboard, we had planned a module called the Control Shaper, but this was left until late in the OS development, and never got finished (you can see the dashes for it in the Mod Source list following the Envelope Follower). This is actually a lookup table with 18 entries, dividing the input by 18, and allowing the user to substitute any value for each of the 18 slots. This is still planned to be implemented. (Not exactly the same as you mentioned, though.)

2) Yes, this was also planned, as I mentioned privately to you. I hope it is still possible, but I have to ask them about the architecture for it.

3) This is also on the list - again, didn’t get to it yet. A couple of ways to do this are discussed in the Forum.

4) The plugin does this, but it didn’t make it into the keyboard. Another thing to investigate...

5) Pressing Shift when turning any knob does increase or decrease the ‘speed’ or ‘resolution’ for all of the parameters in the Solaris. It depends on what the normal state of the knob function is - holding SHIFT gives you the opposite of the normal range speed. However, for EQ frequency settings, I just use the keypad and ENTER, for direct entry of the bigger values. (try pressing 15000 then ENTER to get 15k Hz, for example.)

6) Not familiar with the Solina/VP330. Please list the special characteristics that we would need to modify the chorus module.

7) Yeah, there’s only the LPF for it at the moment. I could ask to have them add a HPF as well.

Please describe in more detail what it is you’d like this to do....

9) The Master FX are handled by a separate DSP, and when I asked to route some of the Mod Source signals to the Effects section, I was told this was not possible, given the structure they implemented. The only way to add a Mod Matrix function to these effects would be to incorporate separate envelopes, and so on, and code these all in independently of the core code. You should, however, be able to use NRPN control for each parameter in the synth (but this area needs more testing).

John B.

Hi,

I'd like to see a few additions, not in priority order:

1) a quantizer / scaler, with which it would be possible to do pentatonic scales on LFO/ENV/Ribbon controller
2) master patch gain for settling differing patch gains (for live use, for example)
3) random unipolar/bipolar á la Kontakt (i.e. random voltage with each keypress)
4) a mix parameter for inserts (it's now possible by feeding a mixer with dry and insert fx, lowering the latter, etc...)
5) a "fast forward" function for, say, EQ Hz settings (pressing Shift & rotating a controller, perhaps?)
6) would it be possible to extend/modify the chorus unit into an ensemble/celeste effect á la Solina/VP330...?
7) HPF/LPF for delay
a very simple beat syncable gate sequencer as a modulator, for envelope re-triggering? I know Solaris has a decent analogue style sequencer, but I'm after a simplified version
9) how separate from the core are the effects? Is it possible to add midi/modulator control for effect parameters?