Hi Hein,
I would appreciate if you could see the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guzvcHNwJOI
I am not sure you will state with certainty the CS80 is thin sounding. Many CS80's are actually "broken" machines - the oscillators and sound path are messed up with degraded caps and resistors that have over time, through heat or temperature, changed enough that the waveforms have all the low end harmonics lost. Look at Micheal Jackson's use of the CS80 - his machine did not sound thin in a mix ... and there are a lot of other examples, but most folks don't even know, like I see on Youtube, that there crappy sound is NOT how as CS80 should sound. And many folks who play one, at least in the last decade, get disappointed because the oscillator electronics are messed up with electronic "rot" (well I call it rot, but it amounts to changing the waveforms from what they used to be to fizzly little versions that do sound thin).
Each machine was built different sounding which is something I have found bizarre - why Vangelis owned 8 of them!!! Well, also for backup, but they do sound different.
My CS80 in the video, and for which I got a lot of comments about the sound, is likely one of the fattest sounding analog synths. Of course, there is another CS80 video by Gavin that sounds awesome, not thin at all. But then, Gavin rebuilt the CS80 in his video and so you get to hear what it *should* sound like. For an example, get yoru good headphones and listen to his video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR_c6fPnlFA
On the other hand, these synths need to be very highly maintained, always kept well. Mine is, right now, with someone that needs several months to change the few thousand part to keep it pristine, add in an external tuning unit, remove the power-supply for external mounting (to get rid of the temperature problems) and with the Kenton MIDI kit ... so it aint cheap
However, as far as the SOLARIS is concerned, I could not agree more --- of course, even though I own a CS80, I would like to see its filters emulated and, in particular, the fact the CS80 adds in sub-harmonics (the sine wave oscillator) which add a lot to the sound - and I have seen a lot of machines that are actually broken and the owners did not even know that their CS80 was broken - they just thought it was very thin!
The SOLARIS as it is, and without anything, is already an amazing machine - I would say that with 4-voices (osc's) that it is already in a way multi-timbral but I understand the need by some for true multi-path multi-timbrality. In my case, I have a lot of synths so I don't mind have mono-timbral synths.
The SOLARIS is an amazing piece of machinery that deserves to be in the hall of fame already.
I have the Urs U-He synths and, quite frankly, they are "okay" - in fact, his best synth, and one that I can highly reommend is the Zebra - it is amazing. However, the DIVA is nothing short of *DISAPPOINTING* with capital letters and I cannot shout it out louder - the problem is that Urs has earned too much money being lazy now that he has "made it" with sales so he doesn't need the hassle of SOLARIS --- he has focused on marketing and his target is PROPELLERHEAD. I own Propellerhead software and after 24 tracks of that shit the sounds starts to get irritating and degrade in that way that only digital sound degrades to the ears. But, they sell a lot of software.
My recommendation is that SOALRIS can do much to find a new synth DSP coder to add to the team and go with that than Urs or some other mainstream---- new blood is needed, not more of the same. The problem with success is that robs innovation away from the individual in seeing the possibilities beyond marketing. I think Vangelis stated that in his interview on his concert in Quatar.
I would recommend that someone do a movie soundtrack or a hit record using SOLARIS ... then watch Urs and the others ask to be a part of the development team
Cheers!
Hein Eken wrote:scope4live wrote:
But then I went to a 4 Guitar/Drummer stage, and the CS80 was buried, no thick Monophonic capabilities,
Ankyuvarymush.
True.
When I said "CS80 sounded significantly different compared to the US synths" it was all about the CS80 is truely a thin sounding synth and it´s strength was poly AT usable by local weighted keys keyboard which was an extremely rare feature already at that time.
There were some minor specialities in the CS80 synth architecture, but it would never be possible to mimik these by just only adding a CS80 filter to an exisisting digital synth w/ the lack of a fully weighted velocity sensitive action and poly AT, so IMO adding such a filter could be more or less obsolete or OTOH implemented at any time because some purists want it.
I myself, I won´t need it urgently.
A CS80 sounds so thin it can easily be emulated by a VSTi and the one which does it best is the cheapo Memorymoon ME80.
I like it more than the Arturia.
So yes, John should know best what to do for future improvements.
I´m happy to read he´s busy figuring out MIDI multi mode and optimisations of the already existing features.
Personally, I hate all these update cycles I know from other brands products, mostly adding new features but rarely fixing existing bugs, instead produce new ones w/ the new features require more CPU cycles,- products which never will be finished in the end.
But optimising code, speeding up things, bring the horsepower for MIDI multimode and 5 more voices (eventually),- that would be great improvement !
Can´t wait and look forward winter NAMM and Musikmesse news !
Hein
). 
... I wonder why ... maybe it is my converters? Maybe the KRONOS is hardware optimized? 
