Polyphony question

[shaynewhite]

Hi John,

I know there have been lots of questions about the polyphony of Solaris and I know it depends on the configuration because the various oscillators and filters use different amounts of DSP power. But my specific question is: what's the estimated polyphony I will be able to get for a simple Prophet-5-type configuration? Two CEM oscs, one CEM/SSM filter, an LFO, a couple of envelopes...standard stuff. I'm looking for at least 8 voices like in Dave Smith's Prophet 08. Is that possible?

And sound quality-wise...everybody says it sounds head and shoulders above the Scope version of Solaris. Did you program the "trashy" sound into the VS wavetables or do they sound clean? (I'm hoping clean.)

Thanks...I'm kind of wavering on what I want to get...I know Prophet 08 is "real" analog but it isn't nearly as powerful as Solaris so I'm hoping that the closely modeled oscillators of Solaris can match.

Shayne

[John Bowen]

Hi Shayne,

They tell me now to expect 15-18 voices with the system going full - all 4 filters, oscs, etc. For the first release, they won't have the DSP offloading per configuration, as I do in the plug-in (Juergen says this will take a bit more time to program). I guess this means no matter the configuration, we will still have 15-18 voices.

re: VS tables - the interpolation is handled to produce a similar sound as to the original, although I don't think they sound 'trashy' in Solaris. It definitely has a less noisy output than the VS.

-john b.

[shaynewhite]

15-18 voices!! That's awesome!

When I meant "trashy," I meant aliasing and jitter...I kind of don't like that effect so what I've done is sample some of CreamWare's VS tables and load them into Cakewalk's Rapture to make them aliasing-free. I hope Solaris can do that at some point....

Thanks for your reply -- the unit looks amazing!

Shayne

[sausagefoot]

Hi Shayne,

They tell me now to expect 15-18 voices with the system going full - all 4 filters, oscs, etc. For the first release, they won't have the DSP offloading per configuration, as I do in the plug-in (Juergen says this will take a bit more time to program). I guess this means no matter the configuration, we will still have 15-18 voices.

For what is basically a polyphonic modular synth this will more than suffice for my needs

Btw, I have a rather weird question John, and I'm not sure if its been covered somewhere else on this board. Anyway, what I was wondering is if the synth is basically 4 signal paths that can routed numerous ways (4 osc, 4 filter, 4 amp envelopes, etc), is there going to be a way to map say... two signal paths (2 osc, filters, etc) to one side of the keybed and two to the other? Or 2, 1, and 1? It would be kind of like a split between presets, only obviously it would be derived from one patch. This might be a stupid idea, so tell me if it is, but I think it would be useful.

[John Bowen]

sausagefoot,

While you can't create a hard split from the keyboard to do this (as I think you are requesting), you can route Key Note as a Modulation Source to the VCAs. Setting one side to +100% and the other to -100% will provide you with a way to create the 'separation' desired, but with each sound tapering off as they approach the key center (which is currently defaults to note 64).

Actual split keyboard implementation will be used in the Multimode setups, planned for a future upgrade.

-john b.

[sausagefoot]

sausagefoot,

While you can't create a hard split from the keyboard to do this (as I think you are requesting), you can route Key Note as a Modulation Source to the VCAs. Setting one side to +100% and the other to -100% will provide you with a way to create the 'separation' desired, but with each sound tapering off as they approach the key center (which is currently defaults to note 64).

Actual split keyboard implementation will be used in the Multimode setups, planned for a future upgrade.

-john b.

Thanks John

You really are creating a monster here. And thanks for putting this much thought into an instrument. It's pretty much unparalleled in this day and age.