John Bowen Synth Design

I noticed a rather annoying bug/feature. This occurs only occasionally, unfortunately. If you happen to accidentally touch Shape control in oscillator when MM1 - Saw is selected, the result is pitch randomization, which produces random pitches when playing the keyboard, and doesn't cure unless you power cycle the machine.

Anyone else noticed the same?

Weird!! Have not seen or heard of this at all!

So, you are on the Main screen, have MM! = Saw, and move the Shape parameter, and suddenly the osc is not tracking the keyboard at all?

John Bowen wrote:Weird!! Have not seen or heard of this at all!

So, you are on the Main screen, have MM! = Saw, and move the Shape parameter, and suddenly the osc is not tracking the keyboard at all?

Sorry for taking this long with my answer - I've been super busy.

In short, yes, that's what's happening. I even managed to record a short video when I noticed this. Unfortunately, as things usually go, I've got it "somewhere to be found", but I'm sure it's there. Wherever "there" is. If possible, I'll try to investigate this a bit further today/tomorrow (26th, 27th Oct. '13).

It seems that something happens when playing the keyboard whilst changing the controls, I couldn't reproduce it otherwise. The result is an erroneous keyboard pitch tracking, with random scaling all over the keyboard, every octave have same "random pitch offsets", if that's the right way to put it. If I switch the oscillator mode, it becomes normal (at least in most cases), but switching back to MM1-saw, it reappears.

Oh, another one: My Solaris lets out sometimes a few odd notes when just playing back a patch, a short burst of "wrong note" when just pressing down a chord. The false note stays on for a short time, then disappears, and those anomalies last usually only 200-600 ms. Say, if I push C1, C2 and a C major chord at the C4 location, Solaris might produce a F#4, although my fingers weren't even near the key.

This happens about 2-3 times per hour, and only with somewhat lush and complicated patches (could it be related to "complexity"?). I noticed this after I had recorded an audio live take of a patch I made for a project and just thought I'm even worse player than I expected... Anyway, I decided to sequence the chord progression and record that into audio - and it made the "odd note" several times. I had to edit the cut together from three takes. After the project was completed, I tested the patch a bit more during the several next days. One day: no odd notes, the next day: some - and so on.

(*joke mode on* Could it be my Solaris is a female? *joke mode off* Sorry, couldn't resist a chauvinistic one.)

Found the video - actually, I tried doing another video, and it happened again, this time with MorphSW waveform. If needed, the clip can be found here: http://bit.ly/1d9UTmN (a link to dropbox folder)

I'm not much of a videoshooter, and the lighting is poor, too, but hopefully something can be figured out here. Should you have any further questions, please let me know. I guarantee this is not some practical joke, the pitch error is a real one. If I save the erroneous patch, switch the patch to another one, and then return back to the saved pitcherrorpatch, it has returned to normal - which is a good thing.

I noticed another thing, too: the overall pitch offset is bananas too, when this error happens, and that, too, returns to normal after I visit another patch.

EDIT: The bug appears at 1'26", and it's OSC3 this time. I'm adjusting the shape (?) parameter, when the sound suddenly jumps up in pitch and I start muting the oscillators. The other video in the folder shows there aren't any pitch altering parameters or modulators and I'm just playing, Solaris randomizing the notes.