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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.

 

UY4iHC8.jpg

 

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!

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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You forgot one other difference, Stephen: the PolyBrute has a display that's actually good for something and the MatrixBrute really doesn't. *sigh*

 

Looking forward to this!

 

mike

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

clicky!:  more about me ~ my radio station (and my fam) ~ my local tribe ~ my day job ~ my bookmy music

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I'm really curious how it handles the morphing in regards to the mod matrix source/destination assignments.

 

From what demos I've seen so far, it's the kind of thing that could redefine what an analog polysynth can be. It has a few quirks that can be accomodated. I would have liked a longer ribbon (I'm spoiled by the Hydrasynth). Not a fan of 'above the keyboard' Pitch/Mod wheel placement. I would have extended the case width & put them between the Morphee' and the keyboard so you could play the Morphee' with your pinky and/or ring finger and still reach the Pitch/Mod with your index & thumb. Maybe that would have given them room for a bit more electronics inside, as it's killing me it's not 8 voices :)

 

Manny

 

PS - Hopefully it will be a big success, so they'll release an XL version with 12-16 voices, 73 note Poly AT keyboard, repositioned wheels and 4 octave ribbon. That would make me give up my FM synths... Just kidding, but I'd lay out $5-6K for that in a second!

People assume timbre is a strict progression of input to harmonics, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timbrally-wimbrally... stuff

 

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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.

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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That's cool that they have the waveform mixing/blending in the oscillators.

 

My specifics of interest re: mod matrix is how the morph handles continuous data morphs vs. categorical data morphs. One instance could be morphing between souces in the mod matix, or things like LFO waveshape. Can they actually 'blend' everything as they are essentially voltages -- one thing that is interesting in doing morphing on an analog synth vs digital is I could see in the appropriately designed analog synth structure/signal flow all parameters could be continously morphed.

 

This in contrast to digital synth engines which typically have a lot of categorical parameters as part of their configurability/flexability i.e. Montage/MODX. The issue with morphing in these systems (SmartMorph) is transitions of the categorical parameters create stepped discontinuities in the morph. Of course, one can build the morph analysis data set (Parents in SmartMorph-speak) with identical categorical parameter values (algorithm, feedback, filter type etc) thus giving results without any categorical parameters changes, and the results will be fully continuous.

 

Manny

People assume timbre is a strict progression of input to harmonics, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timbrally-wimbrally... stuff

 

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Good to see you doing a review of the Polybrute Stephen. Last year there were two synths that got me really quite excited. One was the Novation Summit which I"ve subsequently bought and the other was the Arturia Polybrute. Just watching and listening to the YouTube reviews so far it sounds awesome. The oscillators are very powerful even before you add the twin filters.

 

The reason I bought the Summit was because of three things. 1 the mod matrix, 2 the twin filters (I used to own an Oscar which Chris Huggett also designed) and the hugely flexible oscillators. I"ve not been disappointed by the instrument"s power and flexibility. It is a true synth designers instrument.

 

The twin filters on the Polybrute make it stand out even more because each has its own character. Arturia have made some compromises EG where you can use noise modulation and filter over drive. I did also have to check with them that key tracking was a modulation matrix source because the manual does a poor job at explaining what the poorly named source providing that function does. Anyway all good. Well apart from the 25 Kg!

 

BTW I think you"ll find that analog VCO"s often have multiple waveforms running concurrently. It"s sort of because that"s how they work. So something like a minimoog will have the basic 180 phase shift op amp oscillator with a capacitor and some log law voltage / resistance network connected across its output and inverting input, this will produce the basic triangle wave, which is then fed into a comparator to produce the sawtooth and square/pulse waveforms. Rough description I know but hopefully it illustrates that an analog oscillator is likely to produced all the waveforms available all the time. So probably the Polybrute has vca's instead of electronic switches to select the waveforms.

 

Anyway detail! Most importantly I"m looking forward to hearing what you"ve got to say about the beast!

Cheers

Steve

RhodesStage73,Wurly,M102&L122,MiniMoog,Yam DX7,P250,Rolnd Juno60,Di,RD700SX-2000,Clavia N373,NS2ha88,CASIO PX5s,SL Sledge,Kurz Forte,Kawai MP7SE,Korg DSS1,Kronos2 61,Prophet2k,DSI P6,OBm M6r,Emu ESi4K
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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

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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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:

 

My specifics of interest re: mod matrix is how the morph handles continuous data morphs vs. categorical data morphs. One instance could be morphing between sources in the mod matrix, or things like LFO waveshape. Can they actually 'blend' everything as they are essentially voltages -- one thing that is interesting in doing morphing on an analog synth vs digital is I could see in the appropriately designed analog synth structure/signal flow all parameters could be continuously morphed.

 

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.

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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Stephen,

 

Cool stuff, can't wait for the rest of the series!

 

Manny

People assume timbre is a strict progression of input to harmonics, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timbrally-wimbrally... stuff

 

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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.

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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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!

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
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!

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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Hi Stephen

I have some questions:

1. Not being an Arturia product owner I"ve not come across the term metalizer before, I"d be interested to hear your view of what it actually does and how.

2. Similarly brute factor.. what is this in detail please?

3. The Polybrute has a huge amount of modulation to process, especially when you add morphing. So I"m really interested to hear how well it does on latency. Especially when it"s doing it"s supposed bi timbral thing. Also how is latency affected by note stealing. IE when you"re at max polyphony how quickly does the next note of an unvoiced timbre sound?

4. With regard to tuning, calibration stability, how quickly does the reach stable operation from switch on? And over what sort of temperature range can you expect the instrument to remain stable without recalibration? What is the nominal time taken to calibrate?

Cheers

Steve

RhodesStage73,Wurly,M102&L122,MiniMoog,Yam DX7,P250,Rolnd Juno60,Di,RD700SX-2000,Clavia N373,NS2ha88,CASIO PX5s,SL Sledge,Kurz Forte,Kawai MP7SE,Korg DSS1,Kronos2 61,Prophet2k,DSI P6,OBm M6r,Emu ESi4K
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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

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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  • 2 months later...
I played a Polybrute today for about 20 minutes. Wow.... Been a long time since a hardware piece inspired me like this. Funny thing is, I only went thru 2 sounds. I spent all the time tweaking. Took basic sounds and turned them into magical pads with motion... And didn't break a sweat, let alone have to crack a manual. Reading this thread, realizing how deep this baby is, and knowing how good I made it sound with very little effort... Well, I think this piece will find a place in my studio soon.

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Hi mcgoo! Glad to hear you enjoyed it, and wanted to let you know I am still keeping an eye on this thread. I am told Arturia is working on a firmware update that will be out soon (I will probably work on the documentation) so I have been waiting for more news there. It really is a different sort of synth, and you"re spot on to point out that one preset can become something totally else very quickly. It just seems to encourage experimentation, somehow more than some other synths that are also covered in knobs.

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Cool! For a long time I've had my eye out for something that I could loosely think of as a hardware Omnisphere. Obviously these are very different beasts, but Omnisphere is my primary sound design tool, because of its depth. I've wanted a hardware piece that was really deep, but also easy and inspiring to tweak (which is always kinda laborious on a softsynth IMHO). I love that this is analog, but doesn't necessarily have to sound analog. I'm pretty confident I'm going to own one of these within a month or two. 'Looking forward to any more you end up writing about it!

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I played a Polybrute today for about 20 minutes. Wow.... Been a long time since a hardware piece inspired me like this. Funny thing is, I only went thru 2 sounds. I spent all the time tweaking. Took basic sounds and turned them into magical pads with motion... And didn't break a sweat, let alone have to crack a manual. Reading this thread, realizing how deep this baby is, and knowing how good I made it sound with very little effort... Well, I think this piece will find a place in my studio soon.

 

 

I can tell you I had the exact same experience today as I played one. I was absolutely blown away by the sound. I only had about 15-20 minutes playing this but this was the first time in a very long time I had real GAS for a synth. As I heard sounds and ideas were flying in my head. The inspiration has been missing quite some time for me. The last time I felt this was when I first heard a Roland V synth many years ago for the first time.

Begin the day with a friendly voice A companion, unobtrusive

- Rush

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Stephen, I have a question for you. In using this with the Polybrute Connect plug-in in a DAW, I'm assuming I'd want to set this to Local Off, correct? With the sheer amount of controller data going out at a time, especially if a LFO is sweeping the A-B states back and forth, is there any concern about clogging the stream? I'm not worried about my computer handling it, I'm more concerned about USB (I assume it's 2.0, not 3.0?).

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  • 1 month later...
mcgoo Thanks for waiting for my reply. I have left it at local on with mostly no issues, but if the controller stream has gotten a bit dense or latent, local off does seem to solve the problem.

Stephen Fortner

Principal, Fortner Media

Former Editor in Chief, Keyboard Magazine

Digital Piano Consultant, Piano Buyer Magazine

 

Industry affiliations: Antares, Arturia, Giles Communications, MS Media, Polyverse

 

 

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  • 2 years later...

So….. resurrecting this for any other PolyBrute owners out there that might be interested. I’m still loving my PolyBrute nearly 3 years later, but (and this may be a big duh for some) one thing I didn’t anticipate is just how good a controller it also is.

 

I’ve been fascinated by, and still am, the Soundforce controllers and have been thinking about getting a few…. Or several… or all of them. For those unfamiliar with them, they are front end MIDI controllers for VSTis that mimic front panels of popular analog synths. Before taking the plunge on any of them, I decided to see how hard / practical / beneficial it would be to use my PB as a controller instead. In short, the PB works great and programming a VSTi seems much more natural doing it from a synth than doing so with a mouse. I’ve tested it with Arturia’s JP-8 & OP-Xa and U-He’s Repro 5 and Diva. Works great. You’ll need to go thru the MIDI Learn process for whatever softsynths you want to control, but, at least for the ones I tried, it was pretty quick & painless (once I figured out note #2 below!).

 

2 quick notes should you choose to join me down this rabbit hole…

 

1/ On the PolyBrute, assuming you’re using the PB Connect, make sure to have Local Control off (so that when you go to one of the other synth tracks you won’t hear the PB) and make sure that you click “disconnect” on PB Connect before changing tracks. Once you come back to the PB track, simply click “connect” and you’re back where you left off with your unsaved edits still in place.

 

2/ MIDI Learn does not work on the VST3 versions of the U-He plug-ins. You need to use the VST2 versions.

 

Tweak away!

 

greg

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