Solderman wrote:I played Z's CS-15 for about 15 minutes...It's really just too sterile sounding to me.
I'm quoting myself in an old thread because I've since bought a CS-15 for a great price. It's definitely on-chip sound with clean upper-harmonics, but I can hear a very slight oscillator drift in mine. It can sound very sweet and gooey soft, gets a bit harsher with resonance, and doing the feedback loop(use highpass on channel 1) can make it aggressive. Lots of timbre potential with the parallel filtering, as has been mentioned.
It doesn't quite have the parallel filtering potential of, say the MaxiKorg 800dv, but you can approach it. VCO Sawtooth is louder than Rectangle, which is kind of unusual. I was generally disappointed in bass, compared to using an MF-101 pedal with the SEM or Kraftzwerg. It sort of loses steam below 90 hz or so, with no growl or rumble at all, just a muddy hum. Great EBM/industrial-type basses using the feedback loop, though.
I can't say it's as flexible as some are claiming. As mentioned in this thread, no oscillator sync, even though it's pretty much set up for it, and no filter self-oscillation, typical of multi-mode. Also though, there is no adjustment for VCF keyboard tracking, the LFO has no square wave and can't trigger the envelopes like the audio input can, the LFO destinations have attenuators but no waveform-select for each,(like the CS20M/40M) there's no real way to set up a single control for vibrato depth of both VCO's,(ie. no modwheel) both CV and Gate inputs are incompatible with the standard types, there's no external CV input to control each filter's cutoff, the max LFO rate is fast, but not fast enough for typical ringmod sounds without Don Solaris's modification, and finally, there's no oscillator crossmod or VCF frequency modulation from the oscillators.
The envelopes are pretty fast, but not Pro~One or Minimoog fast. It does not sound nearly as bright as my SEM at full filter cutoff, but that's probably asking too much. It really delivers the twang with the bandpass, especially in parallel with lowpass on the other channel. I've found some inspiring sounds with it and it should get some use after I re-cap it. It's also producing faint ground-hum without a two-prong power outlet adapter, so the chassis grounding may need looking at.
It's a nice sounding monosynth with lots of sonic potential, despite the shortcomings listed. We'll see yet if it stands the test of time.
I am no longer in pursuit of vintage synths. The generally absurd inflation from demand versus practical use and maintenance costs is no longer viable. The internet has suffocated and vanquished yet another wonderful hobby. Too bad.
--Solderman no more.