John Bowen Synth Design

Hello all! I just made my down payment on a Solaris from the upcoming run. After nearly a year of watching the developments, I am finally sold that this is the synth for me. Anyway... to the topic...

I am intrugued by the multi sample loading capabilities of the Solaris. I already own Translator 6, and I am able to create Solaris Sample Pools using that. Of course, there is no way for me to test how good they are yet. My main questions (for now) are:

1. Is the Translator "Solaris Sample Pool" function really all that is needed? i.e. does the Solaris automap everything seemlessly, or are there issues with that? After reading John's instructions, it seems like some editing of the Sample Pool text files is needed so it will work. Is this right? If so, some easy instructions on what to do might be needed...

2. Is the internal ram expandable, and if so, what does it use?

Looking forward to diving in...

An addendum...after looking at this some more, I'm assuming that all multisamples have to be treated as single level multisamples. That is, the Solaris needs to treat each velocity cross-fadable level as its own Sample Pool (?) Is this correct, or does it take cross fades/switching into account already, within a single sample pool?

Marc

Hi Marc (and everyone reading this),

It's been mentioned elsewhere, but let me clarify for you here:

1) the Solaris WAV oscillator object cannot play multisamples across the keyboard at this time.
Each Osc can be set to play back a single sample, which it will do over the entire MIDI note range.
The only way to have multiple samples across a keyboard is to set different key ranges for selected samples by editing the SamplePool text file, then call up 1-4 samples by using the oscillators separately, playing them all at once (so, up to 4 samples can appear across the keyboard).

2) the sample RAM is not user expandable. (Current size is 32 MB.)

It is planned to have a multisample object type in the future. Perhaps we can provide for more sample RAM as well at some point, but please keep in mind that sample playback on the Solaris was intended more for experimental use and sample manipulation, rather than a ROMpler style approach taken by many other products.

Cheers,
John B.

Thanks for the reply, John. Very concise and clear. Perhaps I was "jumping the gun" a bit, since I am hoping to revive some multi samples I have in my library, and the Solaris would be a great tool to do that with in the future. I am mainly focussed on it for its current synthesis capabilities, but that quasi-rompler capability would really put it in a unique class of instrument. I hope this capability, along with multi-timbral operation, increased polyphony, and the ability to increase the internal ram would truly make it the world's super synth. (All those are not too much to ask, right? )

So thanks thanks again for the reply, and for creating this project. I am looking forward to my Solaris arriving this fall.