by Neotrope » Fri May 25, 2012 9:42 am
UPDATED LINK: UA APOLLO ON COVER:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun12/a ... olaris.htm
SHORT QUOTE:
buy the issue via iTunes/newsstand for $5 (support SOUND ON SOUND!)
(short excerpt ... )
Years in the making, John Bowen’s Solaris is finally with us. So is this hugely ambitious synthesizer everything we hoped it would be?
Gordon Reid
Over the past few years, many vintage synths have been analysed, converted to digital algorithms, and found themselves reborn as software plug‑ins. The flow has always been from hardware to software, exchanging wood, metal and plastic for wafers of silicon and a few gazillion mildly inconvenienced electrons, and many musicians now take this for granted. Love the sound and ergonomics of the SuperPoly80Xa, whose manufacturer went bankrupt a decade before you were born? Don’t worry: like buses of the large, red, double‑decker variety, a selection of virtual analogue recreations will arrive presently. But have you ever wondered what would happen if somebody turned this concept on its head, taking an established Virtual Analogue soft synth that’s not based on a vintage synth, and converting it into a large lump of wood, metal and plastic? Well, now you don’t need to, because that’s what John Bowen has just done.
At the recent Musikmesse in Frankfurt, I asked John how the Solaris was conceived. He told me, “When I was at Korg, we were working on the software for the original OASYS card and I noticed that Creamware were essentially doing the same thing. I saw the virtual Minimoog come out on Scope and went to try a system in Canada, and when I realised that Korg was probably not going to continue with our little group, I jumped ship. After a year with Creamware and some consultancy work elsewhere, I decided to go it alone and see whether I could make it writing plug‑ins for the Scope platform. My first plug‑in had been called the Orion and, because people kept asking me to add things, it just grew and grew until, around the fourth iteration, I went bonkers and added lots of new stuff and then realised that it wasn’t the same product any more. So I gave it a new name and the Solaris plug‑in was born. I thought it wouldn’t be too shabby as a hardware instrument, and since the ex‑Creamware guys and I had remained friends and said that someday we would do something together, we decided to develop what is now the Solaris keyboard. By this time, the plug‑in had grown to over 1200 parameters, so I had to figure out a way to translate its user interface into a physical control panel. I had wanted to try multiple displays on a hardware synth for some time, and at first we were thinking of the Solaris as something with a small keyboard, but when I mocked things up to fit the available width, the front panel looked too ‘deep’. Arranging everything across a wider keyboard, it became clear that this was how the Solaris needed to be.”
The Solaris’ Oscillator and LFO sections.
John settled on a design that uses five text displays and a single, larger screen that contains everything else in dozens of menus, and which will eventually (if all goes well) provide a degree of graphical editing. If this looks familiar, I’m not surprised, because if some nasty people kidnapped your granny and said, ‘update the design of the Matrix 12 to bring it into the 21st century, or the old lady gets it’, you could send them a photo of the Solaris and she would be back home baking cookies in no time.
( .... )
buy the issue via iTunes/newsstand for $5 (support SOUND ON SOUND!)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sound-on ... 46470?mt=8UPDATED LINK: UA APOLLO ON COVER:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun12/articles/john-bowen-solaris.htm
SHORT QUOTE:
buy the issue via iTunes/newsstand for $5 (support SOUND ON SOUND!)
(short excerpt ... )
Years in the making, John Bowen’s Solaris is finally with us. So is this hugely ambitious synthesizer everything we hoped it would be?
Gordon Reid
Over the past few years, many vintage synths have been analysed, converted to digital algorithms, and found themselves reborn as software plug‑ins. The flow has always been from hardware to software, exchanging wood, metal and plastic for wafers of silicon and a few gazillion mildly inconvenienced electrons, and many musicians now take this for granted. Love the sound and ergonomics of the SuperPoly80Xa, whose manufacturer went bankrupt a decade before you were born? Don’t worry: like buses of the large, red, double‑decker variety, a selection of virtual analogue recreations will arrive presently. But have you ever wondered what would happen if somebody turned this concept on its head, taking an established Virtual Analogue soft synth that’s not based on a vintage synth, and converting it into a large lump of wood, metal and plastic? Well, now you don’t need to, because that’s what John Bowen has just done.
At the recent Musikmesse in Frankfurt, I asked John how the Solaris was conceived. He told me, “When I was at Korg, we were working on the software for the original OASYS card and I noticed that Creamware were essentially doing the same thing. I saw the virtual Minimoog come out on Scope and went to try a system in Canada, and when I realised that Korg was probably not going to continue with our little group, I jumped ship. After a year with Creamware and some consultancy work elsewhere, I decided to go it alone and see whether I could make it writing plug‑ins for the Scope platform. My first plug‑in had been called the Orion and, because people kept asking me to add things, it just grew and grew until, around the fourth iteration, I went bonkers and added lots of new stuff and then realised that it wasn’t the same product any more. So I gave it a new name and the Solaris plug‑in was born. I thought it wouldn’t be too shabby as a hardware instrument, and since the ex‑Creamware guys and I had remained friends and said that someday we would do something together, we decided to develop what is now the Solaris keyboard. By this time, the plug‑in had grown to over 1200 parameters, so I had to figure out a way to translate its user interface into a physical control panel. I had wanted to try multiple displays on a hardware synth for some time, and at first we were thinking of the Solaris as something with a small keyboard, but when I mocked things up to fit the available width, the front panel looked too ‘deep’. Arranging everything across a wider keyboard, it became clear that this was how the Solaris needed to be.”
The Solaris’ Oscillator and LFO sections.
John settled on a design that uses five text displays and a single, larger screen that contains everything else in dozens of menus, and which will eventually (if all goes well) provide a degree of graphical editing. If this looks familiar, I’m not surprised, because if some nasty people kidnapped your granny and said, ‘update the design of the Matrix 12 to bring it into the 21st century, or the old lady gets it’, you could send them a photo of the Solaris and she would be back home baking cookies in no time.
( .... )
buy the issue via iTunes/newsstand for $5 (support SOUND ON SOUND!)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sound-on-sound-usa/id501046470?mt=8