John Bowen Synth Design

Hi,

Filter keyboard tracking seems to use raw key/MIDI note number to modulate filter cutoff. Is there a way to include the global glide with this modulation? For a Minimoog-type sound I'd like to use constant rate glide, but can't find how to apply such glide to filter cutoff.

/P

The reduction of polyphony from 10 to 5 would be problematic for me; I would not be happy with that. I have no idea of DSP programming, but could it eventuallly be made possible to load the oscillator / filter code to the DSP in a dynamic fashion, so that only code actually needed in a sound ...

Many good points made by previous posters. This is what I'd like to see in a Solaris OS update:

More per voice 'analogue' random control signals (i.e. 'Analogue drift') (See 1 and 2 )
Live envelope controls
More voices (15 or more)
Other key-to-voice assignment mode than 'rotate ...

Hi John,

I certainly appreciate knowing what is (or isn't) going on regarding OS updates, so thank you for (finally) openly describing the current situation.

I’d like everyone here to post how much would be an acceptable price to charge for:

1) bug fixed only OS
Actually, this is what I'd like ...

Hi John,

After rearranging my keyboards, Solaris is angled differently than before. Because of this, I would instinctively want to adjust the LCD contrast in order to optimize display readability. I am, however, unable to find out how to adjust display contrast on Solaris. Can you help?

Thanks in ...

There’s been no work on any new firmware yet - Sonic Core has been occupied with a huge job of rewriting Scope for their new ‘Open Scope’ platform. There will be some bug fixes coming up, but nothing major like is being discussed here.
Are there any news on this, John? What is the preliminary plan ...

Even though I've been using synthesizers since the early 80ies, especially subtractive and FM, I'm not very familiar with wavetable synths. Being a fan of Tangerine Dream, I have heard a lot of PPG sounds, but I've never programmed a PPG or Microwave myself. After listening to the WT oscillators on ...

These sounds are great. Thank you, John and Ken!

It is impressive to hear what can be achieved with the advanced synthesis capabilities of Solaris. I'm sure I'll learn many useful tricks when analysing the presets. Since I prefer to play the synth myself rather than have an arpeggiator do the ...

Randomness to simulate analogue synth circuits needs to be of (at least) two sorts.

First a couple of 'per voice' random values can be used to introduce variation between voices in, for example, oscillator frequency, shape, filter frequency, resonance, envelope times and voice pan. Since so many ...

Initially I thought that the pitch wheel was very stiff and considered how to fix that. Tonight the spring appears to have fallen off and left the wheel with very low mechanical resistance. Fortunately there is a small dead zone around the center position, so Solaris is still usable. However, I have ...

If a patch parameter "Use global MIDI settings" was added, Solaris could function better as a MIDI controller. Normal patches would have "Use global MIDI settings" set to Yes. To control another synth you would make a patch with "Use global MIDI settings" set to No and appropriate other MIDI ...

Update: Even with MIDICtrl Off and Volume Off the strange response to MIDI Channel AT described in the previous post is present.

1. Channel Aftertouch messages via MIDI affects Solaris regardless of MIDI channel. (Solaris is of course set to OMNI off.) Polyphonic AT seems to be properly channelised.

2. When Solaris receives Channel AT messages via MIDI, different kinds of unwanted things happen, e.g. Pan is set to Left and ...

Even with OMNI mode set to Off, Solaris still responds to MIDI CC 1 (Mod Wheel) on another MIDI channel. OS 1.0.

I haven't checked whether this applies only to CC 1 or to other CC numbers as well.

How do you assign Global Glide Rate to a Performance Knob? I'm able to assign text display parameters, but I don't understand how to assign graphic display parameters.

Is it possible to unassign a Performance Knob?