by Sir Ruff » Tue Sep 11, 2012 7:28 pm
Finally got to plug mine into the mixer and monitors last night and hear it properly. Here are some thoughts:
It really is a SOLID sounding synth, even at just a basic waveform level.... It does so much right, if it had come out 25 years ago, it would be revered today. The oscillators have a little more "bite" and high-end to them than you'd probably find in most vintage gear but not much, and it's to be expected.
The filter is definitely unique, and probably not to everyone's taste. It's definitely a blunt-force filter. But regardless, at least we're regarding it for what it is--a unique, fairly novel filter--rather than just another Moog/Korg knock-off. And it can still pull off your standard "soft" '70s monosynth sounds.
I've only come across a few ultra-minor issues: when using the square wave on the LFO for PWM, you get an odd glitch artifact every few cycles... Not sure how that's possible, but obviously something on the digital LFO side, and it's probably something I'll never use anyway. There is also some LFO bleedthrough when putting the metalizer knob in negative territory, even with no modulation, but that's subtle.
The last quibble is more architectural, and that is how the envelope delay goes from ultra-short to medium is a very tiny amount of fader travel. Given how long the decay can be in "fast" mode, I might have traded ultra-long decays for a more manageable "fast" decay range. I suspect swapping a resistor would solve this.
I am also not sure what's going on with the "random" arp. mode. It seems to only select the octave scale randomly, rather than the actual notes. But I also have it set to "sequencer" mode, so perhaps in regular mode, it will play the actual notes randomly. Anyone know? It's not mentioned in the manual.
Aside from that, it's fantastic. Does far more than it should for the price, really, and there's honestly nothing else like it out there.
Do you even post on vse bro?