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Blatant Newbie Question: Help Buying My First Poly

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2016 4:20 am
by ams1989
As you can tell from the title of this thread, I am pretty new to the realm of synths. So far, my collection only consists of an Arturia Minibrute, a Microbrute, an Akai Timbre Wolf, plus the odd Volca that I've bought and sold over the past year or so. Which brings me to my current predicament: I'm about to journey into the costly land of polyphony, and since I'll no doubt be spending more than I'd care to admit, I want to purchase something that I won't regret after a few days. My goal is to find something that is 100% analog, but won't require me to sell any of my organs in order to obtain. I've been reading up on a few polys, but again, since I'm new to purchasing synths I'm not sure that they meet my criteria. The one that I find myself drawn to the most is the DSI Mopho x4, but knowing that it has some digital presets has made me a little skittish. Can someone please tell me if the Mopho x4 has a 100%, tried and true analog signal? Or, if anyone could recommend something else exciting, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Re: Blatant Newbie Question: Help Buying My First Poly

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2016 5:19 am
by ninja6485
On the DSI site, under specs for the Mopho x4, the first bullet point is 100% analog signal path.

Above that it's described as a 4 voice polyphonic analog keyboard synthesizer. It goes on to talk about the analog oscillators and filter.

This is an analog synth! Will you regret buying it? Who knows. You could go vintage vco polysynth and regret buying that. If you like the sound of it, and the prospects of it, perhaps you should cosnider it?

Re: Blatant Newbie Question: Help Buying My First Poly

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2016 12:04 pm
by madtheory
IMO the Mopho is a huge step up from any of the other synths you have. It's ballsy, fun and really well laid out.

Re: Blatant Newbie Question: Help Buying My First Poly

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2016 9:33 pm
by ams1989
Thanks for the feedback. I saw that the description on the DSI website said that it had a true analog signal, but I just wanted make sure that having digital storage didn't change how that signal was processed (again, very new to this realm of the music world). It definitely looks to be head and shoulders more powerful than anything I'm currently running right now.

Re: Blatant Newbie Question: Help Buying My First Poly

Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2016 7:25 pm
by madtheory
Dave Smith pretty much invented digital patch storage on analogue synths, with the Prophet 5. The voltages on the pots and switches are digitised and stored, and when you recall a patch those voltages are sent back to each module on the synth. It doesn't move the pots, but sets the voltages the same way you do when you move the pots (pots= potentiometers, or the dials/ knobs). They are control voltages, controlling the audio signals. But they are not the audio signals. Separate circuits you see?