John Bowen Synth Design

Hi John,

Thanks for your answer and excellent work. What I meant with my question is following:
I'm learning to love how VCA and mixers can contribute to the final sound. The way a mixer distorts (or not) and the way a VCA saturates (or not) can make a great difference to the final sound. On classic synths, having a cleaner or fatter sound come from the interaction of all sound stages. Filter-modelling is a very common feature, but VCA and mixer modelling is IMHO a very desirable option. Unfortunately this is something missed on most digital stuff. As I heard you making internally/digitally the old Minimoog input trick, I was very impressed with the sound coming out of Solaris. Then I thought that Solaris could be the first digital synth wich actually can sound like real analog circuits interacting. Hence my question about VCA and mixer models being implemented on Solaris.
Warm regards.
Jose

Welcome Jose!

I’m not sure what you are asking, since, as you say, the Solaris allows you to route the VCA output into the mixers....or were you thinking in your first statement that we are using a physical 1/4” cable to connect these?

In that case, I can tell you that all signals can have recursive feedback internally, without external cables - that the the function is already in there. You also have 3 different VCA models (although this turns out to be fairly subtle - they are mainly different in their response to control signals) and a ‘Boost’ parameter, which is a modeled OTA structure (http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/VCA%20Applications.pdf).

But all of the 4 mixers can have any signal in the synth as input - you are not restricted (even control signals such as LFOs, etc.). It’s a fairly flexible system - the only ‘hard wiring’ is the inputs to the Insert FXs and VCAs - they can either be their same-numbered Filter or Mixer (for the Insert FX) or Filter and Insert FX (for the VCAs). This means that VCA 1 can only choose Filter 1 or insert FX 1 as its input, for example...but the Filters have the same input Source list as the Mixers, which include all signal paths.

Cheers,
John b.

Hi,

I'm new here and this is my first posting.

I was very impressed by the Solaris doing the old Minimoog trick of routing the audio output into the audio input for feedback and saturation effects. Kudos to John to make that possible in the digital domain.

Experimenting with different hardware synths and modules I've come to realize how important the interaction between mixer levels and VCA's (amplifiers) is. For the first time I have real high hopes that a synth like Solaris could implement that kind of behavior, thus improving the programming capabilities and the "organic" quality of the sound.

So I would like to ask John if this kind of modelling/programming/interacting is already there or will be implemented in future software updates.

Best Regards

Jose