Stephen Fortner

Thank you mu:zines for bumping up this topic from almost a year ago. Since the last flurry of activity on this thread, there really hasn"t been any official movement on this. For my own part, I can say that the Covid year really forced me to focus on essential work and labors of love such as this got put on the back burner. I am interested in rejuvenating this idea, though, as in the interim, online access to Keyboard articles has only gotten worse. I have always seen a Keyboard archive as being its own site slash part of MPN but maybe a strategic partnership is a conversation worth having. I'm strictly thinking out loud and not speaking for MPN as an entity.

Possibly of interest here: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/izotope-and-native-instruments-join-forces.html

Hi Hector! Great questions. 1. The Metalizer in oscillator 1 is basically a wave-folder. You may already know how wave-folding works, but imagine taking a triangle waveform and folding the peak (and the valley of the negative phase) so that both are pointing back at the zero crossing. One full positive phase will look roughly like a capital M and then a capital W. Now take the peaks on those letters and fold them again, but the new folded bits are not going all the way to the zero crossing, maybe halfway. Rinse and repeat. You get an increasingly complex waveform that sounds more, well, metallic. Cranked all the way, it turns the triangle wave into something that could be one of the harsher options from a wavetable synth â or almost sound like ring modulation. This affects only the triangle wave, or whatever portion of it is mixed with other waveforms â which oscillator 1 does do. 2. Brute Factor is a knob in the Steiner-Parker style filter (12dB-per-octave; there's also a 24dB Moog-style filter but Brute is only in the Steiner). Essentially it's a filter feedback circuit, feeding the output of Filter 1 back into itself. Given this filter design, though, this can do anything from fattening up the low end a little bit to adding a formant-like growl. It definitely does not sound like pedal distortion, tube overdrive, It"s more melodic and industrial, at the same time. 3. I haven't experienced any latency even with a split or layer that's using a ton of modulation routings. When it's necessary to steal notes (and there are settings for how this works â oldest. lowest, or none, which means you won't get new notes until you release some â but no latency at any of them) the new note speaks and steals the old one immediately. I'm not sure but I suspect that all of the modulation being in the analog domain is actually helping the latency situation. If latency does come up, I would think it be in, say, how quickly turning the Morph knob is actually effecting those changes, or how quickly a modulation routing is rising to its full amount and being "heard" by the destination, etc. In other words, stuff that's hard to hear and not disruptive musically. 4. There are calibration routines for the oscillators and filters. They take roughly five minutes each. If the PolyBrute is cold, it will say it needs to warn up. I've had this happen in Vermont when I've had the heat off in the studio overnight, but only three or four times. It warms up, you calibrate it for good measure, and you're good to go. I haven't yet seen how it performs when it's very hot, but I'd say at 50 - 80 degrees you're fine from my experience so far. Hope this is of value, let me know if I've missed anything! SF

Hi all! Bumping to see who would like to know more about the PolyBrute! I"m still going, and next up is the oscillator and filter sections in a day or two!

The Fantom 6/7 action is very fast and smooth. I agree with other posters about the aftertouch being an all-or-nothing affair, and my only other ding against it is that if you're playing hard the keys do hit bottom with a bit of a thunk. But the overall feel, velocity response, and quickness screams quality. SF

Fun fact brought to mind by the cartoon: Power Computing was either the first or one of the first companies led by Victor Wong, the same guy who did the Open Labs NeKo series of PC-based synth workstations in the 2000s.

I have two Speakeasy preamps: one for Leslie 122/147 and one for Rhodes. Outstanding stuff. Used to have their rotary speaker with a real top rotor and simulator on the bottom.

I was shocked to hear this news yesterday. Justin worked with me on a few articles about video game composing for keyboard. Great guy, super generous with his time and knowledge. And only 39 at the time of his passing.

Modulation Matrix The PolyBrute"s mod matrix takes the concept developed in the MatrixBrute up several more notches. If you"re not familiar with it, it uses a button grid (called the Matrix Panel, which has multiple functions including modulation, selecting presets, and step sequencing) in which rows are sources and columns are destinations. The aesthetic is sort of a modern version of the 'Battleship' pinboard on the VCS3 and Synthi. Simply press a button at the intersection of the source and destination you want, and the routing is assigned. You can set a positive or negative modulation amount with the silver Amount knob. The buttons are backlit: blue indicates an active 'cell' and purple indicates the currently selected cell that has the Amount knob"s focus. Sources are relatively fixed and cover the following, by rows: A: VCF envelope (yes, it can modulate other things besides the VCF, which it always does by default) B: Dedicated mod envelope (one of three envelope generators on the PolyBrute) C: Voices â this is an interesting one, which I"ll explain below D, E, F: LFOs 1, 2, and 3, respectively G: Key/Seq: Output voltage tracks keyboard, sequener, or incoming MIDI notes. H: Velocity I: Channel aftertouch J: Sum: Mod wheel plus X axis of Morphée controller K: Sum: Ribbon plus Y axis of Morphée controller L: Sum: Exp. Pedal 2 plus Z axis of Morphée controller So, what is that Voices source about? It ties output voltage to the currently active voice number(s) in two ways. In Centered mode, voices 1 through 6 cycle between zero, +1 (max positive), -1 (max negative), return-to-zero, +0.5, and -0.5. In Gradual mode, the values are -1, -0.6, -0.2, +0.2, +0.6, and +1. Musically this means a couple of things. If you"re playing polyphonically, those different voices will send different values. And, since each patch preset can have different voice allocation behaviors (cycle through, reset, etc.), that"s relevant to what you get when using the Voices modulation source. You could assign it to, say, stereo position to have notes bounce around the stereo field as you play. Where only four destinations were user-assignable on the MatrixBrute, all 32 slots on the PolyBrute are. On the hardware, the button grid is half the width of the MatrixBrute"s because Arturia had to save space and cost somewhere, so they handle this with pages. In the PolyBrute Connect editor software, you can see them all at once: http://i.imgur.com/irSPEvn.gifv (Sorry to make you click out. I"m having trouble getting the forum to embed animated GIFs.) Cell D5 is changing color because I"m turning the amount knob and in PolyBrute Connect, active cells change from purple through tan to bright blue as you go from negative to positive. Clicking on any of the diagonal destination names at the top lets you select a new destination for that slot. Left-clicking turns the onscreen knobs purple so you can pick one: http://i.imgur.com/lPXEpQM.gifv Right-clicking brings up a menu of all destinations: http://i.imgur.com/tK1kJNP.gifv This is also pretty easy to do on the hardware. You page through the possible destinations with numeric buttons 1-4 (right under the LCD), then hold one of 1-8 to select that destination, then wiggle a control to assign it to that slot. The Amount knob also scrolls through a handful of destinations for which there aren"t panel controls, like overall VCA level, stereo pan for each filter, and more. I"m just showing you in the editor software because (A) it"s way easier to get clean screencap video and (B) my PolyBrute prototype has out-of-date labeling. In PolyBrute Connect, clicking on any modulation cell brings up an amount knob for it, with its surrounding collar where you set Morph A and B points. http://i.imgur.com/RPAOlZF.png You may have noticed those 'Amount' destinations in the big menu. The letter and number after each correspond to active mod cells in the patch. Those are there because modulation amounts can themselves be modulation destinations.[/] Essentially, you can modulate anything with anything, then modulate the amount of that if you want. There are some limits. Morph A and B points can"t be destinations, for example, but the overall Morph knob can. Whether a VCO goes into one filter, the other, or both, is likewise not a destination, but since that is Morphable, you could handle that by modulating the Morph. One more thing. I mentioned that the sequencer is modulation source. However, I haven"t found a way to use it only as a modulation source, i.e. without it also triggering notes. Some other synths offer stepped modulation sequencing, such as the Yamaha Montage/MODX, whose implementation is pretty deep. IIRC the venerable Roland V-Synth XT did as well. I plan to double-check this with my friends at Arturia because the PolyBrute is otherwise so much like a cable-less modular synth in terms of its modulation possibilities that it"s natural to want to 'patch' the sequencer to destinations other than notes. M"kay, I"m sure I"ve missed something here, as much as I"ve been working with this instrument, so don"t be shy with the questions!

Splits and Layers The Timbrality button on the left side of the panel cycles through single, layer, and split modes. When I first tried a split, I scratched my head. 'How do I put a different patch preset in the lower part?' It turns out you don"t. Instead, Morphing is used to create a split or layer within the same preset. This works because the A and B states of a Morph can be as similar or as different as you want. In split mode, A is always the lower part. The upper part sounds like however much you turn the Morph knob away from A, all the way to nothing-but-B. This encourages you to create presets meant for splitting. Even though both parts are in the same preset, the PolyBrute is duo-timbral in the sense that the upper and lower parts can be addressed on separate MIDI channels so as to play one part from a different keyboard or sequence each separately in a DAW. But wait, what if you hear two different presets that you"d really like on either side of a split? Do you have to spend time duplicating the settings of one of them? Nope, because there"s a clever shortcut. If you press the Morph button on the Matrix panel (that"s the big button grid), option 4 in the menu in the LCD will be 'Pick B.' Hit that, select another preset, and the A state of that preset becomes the B state of the current preset. This menu also has cool shortcuts that apply to Morphing in general, like immediately copying all current control settings to the A or B states, swapping A and B, and the like. The split point is set by holding the Timbrality button (while in Split mode) and pressing a key, which selects the bottom note of the upper part. You"d also hold the button to choose a different polyphony behavior (poly, mono, or unison) for the lower part. Layers work similarly. When the Morph knob is all the way at A, the A sound is doubled. Start turning it up, and sound A is layered with whatever the Morph state is in that position, all the way to B. Voice allocation is independent for each part of a split or layer, but we do only have six to work with between the two. When both parts are polyphonic, a single steal policy (either the least recent or lowest voice, selectable) governs both. If one is mono or unison, that part has its own note priority: lowest, highest, or last. You can also set a cap on unison voice count for each part independently. Also, in mono or unison mode, either part has an independent on/off for legato triggering, i.e. whether legato playing will re-trigger the envelopes. Working with splits and layers was where I found myself most wanting for more voices, especially if one part was a unison. A 12- (or more) voice 'PolyBrute XL' would indeed be a monster here. But because the PolyBrute sounds so lush, it does a lot with six voices and once you get your head around its odd way of handling splits and layers (remember what I said about weird) they"re pretty powerful. As an aside, this all got me thinking about the analog synth market in the 1980s. In general you had the six-voice tier that was more affordable and didn"t do splits or layers: Korg Polysix and Poly 61, Roland Juno series. Then you had the more pro stuff that had eight voices and did: Jupiter-8, Oberheim OB-Xa and OB-8, etc. There were exceptions, like the Roland Jupiter-6 (six voices, splittable) and of course the Prophet-5, which had only five voices and was not splittable but came at the very pro price of $4,595 in 1978 money. (Of course it showed up earlier and broke other ground, being the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer with memory presets.) I"m not sure I"m going anywhere with all of that, other than to reflect that I originally said the PolyBrute"s vibe reminded me of both the Jupiter-6 and Yamaha CS-70M. Interestingly, both of those were 'pro' splittable six-voicers well out of my teenage reach. Next Is it VCO or filter time yet? Not quite. Let"s dive into another marquee feature, the crazy modulation matrix.

Morphing This is one of the PolyBrute"s big marquee features, and also one of its most misunderstood. I misunderstood it for some time myself. Right above the first C# is the Morph knob. You can also control this parameter with a pedal, the Morphée thingy, and as a modulation destination. All the way counterclockwise is state A; all the way clockwise is state B. A and B represent two sets of values that are stored in a single patch. So, one Preset with a name on the display is really two. This is how Morphing is different from macros on most synths. Typically, a macro is a bunch of offsets from a single set of stored values. What does that mean practically? When the Morph knob is all the way at A, any changes you make to any other controls (well, most of them) are registered only as belonging to state A. Likewise for B. Now, if I turn the Morph knob to 12 o"clock any other control changes I make will register for both states equally. If the Morph knob is in some other intermediate place, the synth figures out the proportion according to a differential equation. Essentially, a Morph is two patches in one. That still doesn"t sound very practical, does it? The musical benefits are, first, that sweeping from A to B and back is continuous and smooth, though a setting called Morph Pitch Quantize lets you determine whether anything pitch-related changes continuously, chromatically, in fourths, in fifths, octaves, or abruptly from A to B and back. Second, parameter polarity and scaling are independent for every Morphable parameter and are intuitive to set. For example, if you want a full Morph sweep from A to B to reduce the master filter cutoff by X amount, start with the cutoff high with the Morph knob at A, turn it to B, then reduce the cutoff the desired amount. Morphs are very easy to set up on the hardware, but it"s best to visualize Morphing in action in the PolyBrute Connect editor: [video:youtube] Notice that the knobs have collars around them and the sliders have vertical strips adjacent, with little blue and green and white 'needles.' For each parameter, the blue needle is Morph A, the green is Morph B, and the white is the current value, which may or may not be identical to A or B. What about things you change with a switch or button? This speaks directly to DrSynth"s question about continuous versus categorical parameters: OK, so if categorical refers to things you change with a button or menu â i.e. there"s a handful of items you can select â the answer is YES, these things can Morph continuously as though you were making the change with a knob or slider. You can set this up on the hardware, but it"s easier in PolyBrute connect: right-click on the button you want to set up and notice the 'Edit A' and 'Edit B' submenus that pop up. Here, I"m setting this up for LFO waveshape: [video:youtube] Now, when I Morph between A and B, my choice for A (triangle) will gradually change into my choice for B (sawtooth/ramp). Move the Morph knob slowly and you can hear it taking place, as well as see the indicator light fade out for one choice as it fades in for the other. Lots of categorical parameters are eligible for this treatment: pitch-bend range, for one, and even which filter each VCO and the noise source are routed to. (In this case, the Edit A and Edit B submenu choices are none, Steiner, Ladder, and both.) As Hector Space correctly guessed, this is possible because we"re in the analog domain. DrSynth also mentioned modulation sources. Routings themselves â which source is modulating a particular destination or which destinations are subject to a given source â are not eligible for Morphing. However, the amount of any given routing is. Also, multiple sources can affect the same destination and multiple destinations can be affected by the same source. (The 32 destination slots are also all user-assignable.) The PolyBrute can also handle up to 64 routings per patch, so sources and destinations not being Morphable categorical parameters doesn"t IMHO diminish the flexibility of the mod matrix. That certainly would be cool, though. Next Morphing is intimately related to how the PolyBrute handles splits and layers, so we"ll go there.

Hi Hector! Yes, the PolyBrute is on the heavy side for a 61-key synth. I never place it too high up on a multi-keyboard rack, and make sure to check the tightness of the tier before I do. My weighted Yamaha CP73 stage piano is noticeably easier to carry, as in under one arm with the other hand free. I wouldn"t try that with the PolyBrute. You are correct of course about analog oscillators, and I probably chose my words poorly there. Impossible not in the sense of what analog circuits can do, but in terms of what synth newcomers might expect from a blend or a macro. In the PCM-based realm, you"d get a similar result with a crossfade, so if you"re hearing two waveforms at all you"re necessarily pulling an extra voice per note from whatever voice count the sound engine has. That"s where my head was at. Working on another post (on Morphing) at the moment, and if things stay this quiet I'll have it up shortly today. SF

DrSynth I"ll get into this in depth later but here"s a quick answer: Morphing and the modulation Matrix are indeed interrelated. On one hand, the Morph function can be a modulation destination in the Matrix. On the other, modulation amounts in the Matrix are themselves Morph-able. So, you can imagine how this interaction could get recursive pretty quickly, even to a generative-music degree. All this with more voices would be killer. No idea about Arturia"s plans in that regard, but I would love to play one. The success of the MatrixBrute proved the concept, so if the Poly similarly succeeds, who knows? FWIW I think there"s a lot of potential in that premium $5,000+ market. A manufacturer doesn"t need to sell a ton of units to make a profit, and people who can afford one can usually afford more than one. ('Arturia did WHAT? That needs to go next to my Moog One.') Related, one way in which the PolyBrute seems to do the impossible is this: Say your VCO1 waveform is a square at Morph extreme A and a sawtooth at extreme B. Turn the Morph knob up halfway, and you will hear both the square and sawtooth in equal amounts. This is more than a simple crossfade because it"s pulling them from the same analog oscillator. Think perhaps of a modular VCO with multiple waveform outputs all active at once. You can"t somehow break this out into more polyphony, but it does mean more thickness.

John Worthington FWIW the way I"ve been doing it is to fully utilize the DB-25 connectors on the back via a couple of Planet Waves, erm, baby snakes, to and from the line I/O on my Apollo. Eight out, six back in. The Apollo monitor outputs feed EXT1 on the SiX, and another keyboard submixer (of late the Korg MW-2408 for its review here in GearLab) hits EXT2. The SiX is my main monitor controller, switching between my A system (ADAM S2A I bought off dB over 20 years ago, still going strong) and B system (Genelec 1029A plus 7060A sub). On the first page of this thread is a post where I detailed the DB-25 connections. This setup gives me full send and return between the SiX and Apollo. Also, since the main and monitor busses are on the DB-25 outs, I can even route different things to them and record both buses to different stereo DAW tracks. If I need more mic preamps I've got the four on the Apollo I can switch in. For when I"m feeling really fancy, the XLR main outs feed an old Korg MR-1000 DSD recorder. This lets me play stuff coming back out of the DAW (via EXT1 to main) and record it real-time for pre-mastering tracks instead of bouncing to disk. At least in theory, because I haven't needed to do this yet. But it's nice to know I can! I haven't come up with a use for Bus B yet, as you get there by muting channels on the main bus. Routing things through an alternate hardware processing chain then back to the DAW is a possibility. I never thought a compact desktop mixer could make that much of a difference to my workflow, however nice it was. But there really is a little magic to the SiX IMHO. SF

dB asked Ah yes, I would imagine they are. I was aware the Jupiter-X had three (i.e. except the JX-8P). I imagine they might also be evolutions of the 'plug-out' synths available for the System-8. Curiously, those are not on Roland Cloud, nor is the System-8 as a hardware option for which you can search for stuff. Current System-8s ship with three installed (Jupiter, Juno, JX-3P), whereas a unit I reviewed sometime in 2017 initially came with only the Jupiter. That was the platform along with other things in the AIRA line where 'analog circuit behavior modeling' was developed. The Fantom is almost certainly a Linux computer under the hood, and I"d bet the Jupiter-X is as well. So, within the limits of its processing power, running different sound engines on it should just be a matter of code. That reminds me, I should add a counterpoint to my above comment about what sounds more vintage. When I had the System-8, I compared its JP-8 emulation to a mint Jupe at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum in Emeryville, CA â right down to loading original factory patches into both. That whole video series is no longer online (thanks Future) but I remember thinking it got damned close. Close enough that I"d be challenged to tell them apart in a blind test. If the Fantom models are presumably better still, then perhaps it is Roland who has the tightest emulation of their own stuff. How"s your Jupiter-X working out? I know you really dug it when you got it. SF

I"ve had the opportunity to get eyeballs deep into the Arturia PolyBrute, and it has twisted my brain into new shapes â the perfect choice for our next GearLab. The official release date was February 11, and I promised Arturia I wouldn"t talk about it until after that because finalized firmware, sound banks, and such would now be shipping. Long story short (though I"m gonna write the long story anyway): This is the most modulation-flexible analog power-polysynth I"ve ever played. To American sensibilities, it"s weird in that good way that many other French designs are, like the RSF Kobol synthesizer or Citroën DS car or the proper way to serve absinthe. Then you realize that the weird contains a lot of cool, powerful, flexible things you wish you"d had before, you start to use them, and your old comfort zone is what eventually feels weird. Full disclosure: I wrote the instruction manual for PolyBrute Connect, the companion software editor-librarian for this synth, and will be continuing to help them with FAQs, future manuals, and more. In the process I learned the instrument like the back of my hand, so I"m in a great position to speak to its features and answer questions. In the interests of impartiality, I"ll especially invite anyone who has a unit to comment and offer counterpoint. I am not an Arturia employee, but I will invite their team to comment as well. An early impression as I got to know the PolyBrute was that the overall sound often reminded me of a Jupiter-6 but not a Jupiter-8, as well as a Yamaha CS-70M but not a CS-80. These were by no means bookends that delimited its sonic range but more like reference points that kept popping up to assure me I knew what I was doing. In fact, the modulation and morphing possibilities make it a real chameleon, but also capable of sounds that are difficult if not impossible to coax out of any other polysynth. One more caveat before we get going: My PolyBrute is an early prototype, and though it has current firmware and performs exactly like any unit that would come out of the box if you ordered one today, the silkscreening on the panel was not final and some controls are mislabeled. Every new keyboard goes through this stage at some point, but I respect my NDA so I will ask Arturia"s permission before posting any visuals that show something different from what was released to the public. (Above image is an official press photo.) It"s Not a 'Polyphonic MatrixBrute' Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that it is. I mean, just look at this thing. But while the PolyBrute does share significant circuit design and signal path attributes with its predecessor, the two are different animals. To describe it at its most basic, the PolyBrute is a six-voice analog synthesizer with two oscillators per voice, two different filters, a sophisticated onboard sequencer, extensive modulation options, and Arturia"s new 'Morphée' three-axis controller. There"s also Morphing, which refers to the fact that any PolyBrute patch is really two in one, able to 'morph' between two sets of settings for nearly all parameters. This is different from the usual idea of a 'macro' that can move multiple controls at once (e.g. the SuperKnob on Yamaha Montage/MODX) in important ways, which we"ll get into in a dedicated post on Morphing. This may be getting ahead of ourselves, but here are some of the major differences between the PolyBrute and MatrixBrute: The PolyBrute has two VCOs per voice and three stand-alone LFOs. The MatrixBrute has three VCOs per voice and two stand-alone LFOs, with the third VCO able to double (simultaneously) as a third LFO. The PolyBrute has 32 possible modulation destinations, all of which are user-assignable, and can handle up to 64 modulation routings at once. The MatrixBrute has 16 modulation destinations, four of which are user-assignable. (On both, a source can modulate multiple destinations and vice versa.) Only the PolyBrute has the Morph function. Only the PolyBrute has the Morphée controller. Only the PolyBrute has a ribbon controller. The control panel does not tilt upwards on the PolyBrute. The PolyBrute does not have CV/gate I/O, whereas the MatrixBrute is extensively equipped. However, the PolyBrute does have analog sync I/O on 1/8-inch jacks. The PolyBrute does not have an audio input. A good analogy for the MatrixBrute/PolyBrute difference would be Sequential"s monosynths like the Pro-2 and Pro-3 versus their poly slabs like the Prophet Rev2 and 12: They"re meant to show you different paths when it comes to composition and sound design. If I can clarify anything, ask away, because I also have a MatrixBrute here. My plan at the moment is to talk about Morphing next, because it"s so central to the concept of the whole Synth that I should really cover it ahead of anything about what the VCOs and filters are like. Stay tuned!

New Classic Synth Models Roland busted out a big update to the Fantom on February 9 with version 2.10. I knew something was up when my review unit was well past due for return and one of their PR reps emailed me saying, 'We"re looking into letting you keep that thing a bit longer.' The big deal here is the addition of four new synth models. These cover a quartet of vintage Roland synths: the Jupiter-8, Juno-106, JX-8P, and SH-101. Graphical user interfaces for the synths" various sections show up onscreen in the Tone Edit mode, and the sound is authentic. Importantly, these introduce a new type of sound engine to the Fantom, simply called Model. That brings the total to five, the other four being 'ZenCore,' SuperNatural Acoustic, Drum Kit, and V-Piano. (When it originally came out, the Fantom had just two: V-Piano plus ZenCore to cover every other type of sound.) IMHO this bodes well for Roland"s commitment to developing the Fantom as an ecosystem â and makes me optimistic that we"ll see a tonewheel organ model in the not-too-distant future. Getting the new models is a bit of a process. First, you update the firmware by downloading the latest version from Roland"s support page. As I described in an earlier thread, this involves shuttling it on a USB stick between your computer and the Fantom"s USB memory port, then switching it to one of the USB External Device ports because it loads different files onto two different boards inside the unit. You"re not done. This update makes the Fantom capable of running the new models, but you have to get them separately, for which you need a Roland Cloud account and the Roland Cloud Manager app on your Mac or PC. You don"t need a paid subscription as these models are free perks for anyone who"s shelled out for a Fantom, but the app will certainly take its opportunities to upsell you as you navigate to the new models under the 'Hardware' tab. There are also patch banks for the models, which are distinct from the models themselves. You then copy both a system file (.EXZ) and .PNG file (presumably a master graphic from which the GUI pulls sections to create the user interface) to a USB stick. You then go through a second round of powering up the Fantom with a button held down (Tempo in this case; Write for the firmware update) and installing the files from the USB drive. Once they"re in there, though, they become a seamless part of the Fantom"s zone-and-Tone architecture. You can stack multiple model-based zones up in a Scene (i.e. a multi-timbral performance), too. How do they sound? As I said, authentic. In particular, Roland seems to have paid attention to a lot of the behavior of the originals, such as the curve according to which this or that setting changes as you move a controller. In a live performance or mix, you"d be hard pressed to tell these sounds from their increasingly pricey analog ancestors. They are also definitely models, not PCM sample sets with curated interfaces, at least as far as my ears can tell. For example, when I pull a legacy (PCM) synth sound out of the Fantom"s banks, the high notes exhibit noticeable aliasing. There"s none of that here. That said, active critical listening gave me a slight preference for the sound of the Jup-8V and Jun-6V soft synths from Arturia"s V-Collection, not to mention Cherry Audio"s excellent DCO-106 emulation. They just sounded a tiny bit more 'vintage,' and without relying on hatchet tricks to do this such as overstated oscillator drift or harmonic distortion. (To be clear, the Fantom models don"t rely on such stuff either.) The sound of the Fantom was just a bit more buttoned up, but certainly deserving of the usual fat-and-warm praise. Roland Cloud also offers soft synth versions of all these under its Zenology umbrella, and it"s clear these are ports of that code, designed to run on the Fantom hardware. One more thing: As I said, there are patch banks for these models that are separate downloads from the models themselves. They"re usually either paid or require a recurring membership, but they"re excellent and really showcase the models" power. Especially those by Keyboard magazine alum and forum member Francis Preve.

Looks like 2021 isn't about to be in 2020's shadow when it comes to taking away our icons. Just saw this news: https://www.rupertneve.com/news/rupert-neve-1926-2021/ Edit: Trying to change the smiley icon for this post or remove it, as it isn't appropriate, but the software won't seem to let me.

Just sharing because this is an incredibly cool, informative video, the synths are all classics, and the playing is superb. [video:youtube]

I don't have this virtual instrument, but I have played the actual Leeds Rental unit E in Santa Barbara. Must be close to 20 years ago at this point. It was owned by an appliance store owner named George, who had it set up in his home studio. You can't make this s*** up. Apropos of nothing, I really dig the 'Nefertiti' Rhodes patch in the Nord Grand.

MIDI controllers as a premium segment hasn"t seen much traction since the days of having multiple hardware sound modules in a rack. You therefore needed a master keyboard smart enough to handle all the zoning, which module received what control changes, etc etc, on the transmitting end. I always root for companies like this, though, even though I usually get my heart broken. The Infinite Response VAX-77 was the last thing I think was truly interesting in this space, with the folding in half and poly aftertouch, but even more so because of the feel. The heaviest action option was the one to get. It was priced a lot higher than the Extra Deluxe, and not a commercial success. It's hard for me to see $749 for a Fatar TP-9S action in a nice housing, but it's an undeniably beautiful piece of work.

Overall Performance and Conclusions I said I would max out the MW2408 with something in every channel, and I did. Here"s the breakdown: Mono Channels 1-2: Leslie 142 high rotor miked with AKG C451EBs 3: Leslie low rotor miked with Audix D6 (Leslie was fed by Hammond SK-X) 4: Rhodes via Radial JDI duplex direct box 5: Hohner Clavinet E7 via Radial JDI Duplex direct box 6: Original Yamaha DX7 (mono output) 7-8: Roland Fantom 7 Stereo Channels 9-10: Sequential Prophet Rev-2 11-12: Nord Wave 2 13-14: Nord Grand 15-16: Studiologic Numa Organ 17-18: Yamaha MODX7 19-20: Kurzweil Forte7 21-22: Arturia PolyBrute 23-24: Novation Peak What I did to get most of those going at once isn"t exactly presentable, but I can vouch that the entire mix came through without sounding compressed or crispy â what went in came out, essentially. I was especially impressed with the preamps" performance on the Leslie mics, real Rhodes, and real Clav (though the Radial DI gets credit for much of the punch on the latter two). Comparison to my SSL SiX is hardly fair given that it"s roughly the same price as the Korg for two mono and two stereo input channels. As a point of reference, though, the SSL definitely provides extra spaciousness and depth. I hesitate to use terms from the home hi-fi industry like 'soundstage' and 'imaging' because they"re too often used to gaslight orthodontists into buying four-figure speaker cables, but yeah, soundstage and imaging. You wouldn"t think anything was lacking from the Korg under normal circumstances; it"s just that with a truly premium mixer, you really do hear where your money"s going. For me personally, the Korg doesn"t bring quite enough to the table to replace my Crest XR-24 in the studio. I"m only bringing that up, though, to be consistent with the context in which I started this thread. (The XR-24 is long discontinued, after all.) It"s a great mixer at a great price, and if I were spec"ing out a weekend warrior P.A. from scratch and wanted a traditional analog interface, it would be at the top of my list. If you do jingles or video game music and thus work mainly to picture (i.e. at 48kHz) and need to combine in-the-box sounds with beloved hardware synths, the MW could well be all you need and then some as a mixer and audio interface. Even more so if music is a hobby or semi-pro pursuit and you want to keep a bunch of synths wired up and playable full time. The most interesting comparison might be with something that hadn"t come out when I began this GearLab and that I haven"t gotten my hands on yet: Mackie"s latest Onyx mixers. Notably, they boast multitrack recording via USB at up to 96kHz, as well as onboard stereo recording to an SD memory cardâand their 24-channel version (the big one) streets around $900. I don"t expect they"ll give me the 'SSL SiX but with lots more inputs' experience I started out looking for either, but the features-to-price ratio is very aggressive. Brother Bryce recently told me, 'You ex-magazine guys all feel like you have to button up every post. This is a forum â you can be more casual.' I"m trying, but I can"t resist summing up the Korg MW series with a magazine-style Pros-and-Cons box. Korg SoundLink MW2408 PROS: - Lots of input channels for the price. - Preamps live up to their clean, high-headroom claims. - Precise EQ. - Doubles as stereo USB audio interface. - Mute groups can be highly useful. - Musicians" Phones feature is cool. - Master and aux dynamics processing has real practical value. - Genuine 8-bus design makes analog connection to audio interfaces easy. CONS: - Maximum sample rate 48kHz. - No direct channel outs. - No Hi-Z (instrument) inputs. - USB recording is stereo only, not multitrack. - Reverb and other DSP effects quality is ho-hum. BOTTOM LINE: A killer live mixer that's also not too shabby in the studio if you manage your expectations. That about wraps it up. I"ll watch this thread for questions and try to find answers as soon as I can, so please feel free to fire away.

Effects and Output Processing The handful of DSP effects on the MW series focuses on reverbs, with a couple of delays (including an emulation of Korg"s classic SDD-3000) and modulations (chorus, flanger, etc.) added for good measure. There"s also a master nine-band graphic EQ and dynamics processing, with independent simultaneous settings available for the main mix, aux 1, and aux 2. Likewise for the 'smart' feedback eliminator. Once it finds the errant frequency, you can lock that in. In practice, I found that latter tranche of features more useful. Given the Covid absence of live gigs, I only got to test the feedback eliminator by moving a live SM58 too close to my studio monitors, but it pounced on the offending frequency pretty quickly. The dynamics section can act as a limiter, compressor, or noise gate, and is useful for setting an upper limit to house and stage monitor volume. As for the DSP effects themselves ⦠meh. The hall reverb preset was by far the one I"d reach for to put some space around vocals at a live gig or give a singer something in their headphones at a session. The others (stage, room, the usual suspects) frankly sounded a bit tinny, with 'warm' variants that seemed to do little more than roll off some high frequencies. The reverbs with 'vocal' in the name actually exhibited noticeable taps like a delay, and it wasn"t subtle. Speaking of taps, there is a tap tempo button for all time-based effects. I wouldn"t record with any of these effects but to be fair, built-in effects in most compact mixers tend to be utilitarian and I haven't done a comparison to what's in a Mackie or other comparable brand these days. The effects all have a couple of editable parameters each (time and hi dampening in the case of reverb) and you can save user presets.

Input Channel Rundown Okay, I"m going to try to wrap this one up in the next couple of posts. Here are the main differences between the mono and stereo output channels. The eight mono channels have a couple of things the stereo channels don"t. First, there"s a one-knob compressor on each channel. Part of what it"s doing when you turn the knob is makeup gain. Make that a large part. I found that on the input end, it was great at taming peaks from transient sounds (like resonant Moog basses) where I"d turned the synth way up to test it out. It made it a lot harder to clip the input channel but due to that makeup gain factor, I found that the signal could get a bit hot for things downstream, like my audio interface. This was only at extreme settings â say, the upper third of the knob"s travel. Perhaps most notably, it"s a very transparent compressor, with no squeezy artifacts even at higher settings. Mono input channels also have a highpass filter per channel that sharply rolls off low frequencies beginning at 80Hz. We all know the drill: Highpass everything but the kick and bass to elminiate a main source of mix mud. The EQ is unremarkable but clean and precise, which is what I"d want on a keyboard slash live show mixer. On the mono channels, it"s three-band: high 12kHz, sweepable mid band from 250 to 2,500Hz, low 100Hz. On the stereo channels, you get four fixed bands: 12kHz, 2,500Hz, 250Hz, and 100Hz. I should reiterate that the stereo channels are not line only, but they"re only stereo when you use the ¼-inch balanced line inputs. There"s also an XLR mono mic input and the aforementioned mic-line switch on each channel. Again, that switch doesn"t decide which inputs are active, but does seem to make the tone beefier in the 'mic' position. Al Coda and I went over the four aux sends: 1 and 2 are pre-fader; 3 and 4 can be assigned pre or post. Below these, there"s an FX send knob for the mixer"s internal effects, which we"ll get into next.

Hi, I am still watching, and my CP73 doesn't behave like that. All the switches are consistent. I think you may have an oddball part. If you just bought it I"m pretty sure any retailer would swap it out.