Solaris Factory Preset info - UPDATE

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John Bowen
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Solaris Factory Preset info - UPDATE

Post by John Bowen »

Here’s a brief explanation of the factory presets.

The Solaris ships with 10 banks of presets, as follows:

Bank 0 - John Bowen bank...I have a number of pads, leads, basses, and a few others, plus some templates. 61 presets.

Bank 1 - Marco Paris bank - a very nice selection of synth sounds - pads, leads, chordal, arpeggiation. 128 presets.

Bank 2 - Carl Lofgren bank - Carl wanted to address the 'Berlin school' of techno and more current sound design. 91 presets.

Bank 3 - combined set by Howard Scarr (22 presets), Kurt Ader (27 presets), Stephen Hummel (12 presets), and Paul Kuchar (10 presets). Various sounds for film soundtrack work, with a few 'gigging' sounds.

Bank 4 - Ken Elhardt bank...I recently contracted Ken Elhardt to make a number of presets that were more in the acoustic realm. He said that most weren't interested in synthetic version of acoustic or orchestral instruments, since sampling now satisfies that space, but I wanted to see how he would do with the Solaris. With 52 presets representing strings, brass, organs, flutes/recorders, guitars, tympani, etc. Ken also produced over 25 audio examples using his presets (none of which use samples of any kind - all synthesized). you can browse through these on line at the Solaris Sound Cloud page:

http://soundcloud.com/solaris-synth/sets

Bank 5 - Jimmy V. bank - classic analog - thick and powerful! Jimmy V. is a full-time performing musician with years of experience. He has created extensive performance notes for his presets, with some very creative uses of the ribbon, joystick, and wheels. Jon Aschalew’s 20 presets are also added.

Bank 6 - Robert Wittek - Robert produced a set of 51 presets highlighting the Waldorf waveshapes. Well documented. He also has posted an extensive review (in German): http://www.synthesizer.at and created the 36 minute Audio Workshop demo that has impressed so many! (You can find the review here: http://synthesizer.at/synthesizer/Solaris/solaris.htm)

Bank 7 - Toby Emerson - Toby’s first bank of sounds for Black Octopus, called Event Horizon 1. He now has a second set (Event Horizon 2) for sale at: http://blackoctopus-sound.com/product/e ... n-solaris/

Bank 8 - Christopher Eckert Collection - Christopher has been posting a number of files for users, and here I’ve collected all of his work into one bank. Well documented.

Bank 9 - François N. (Kalaspace) - 90 presets from a French contributor known online as kalaspace. Lots of pad sounds, his favorite.


When approaching the sound design for Solaris, I didn't focus necessarily on the 'gigging' preset approach, as these areas are covered extremely well by all of the 'rompler' boards on the market (currently dominated by Nord, Korg, and Yamaha). Without a lot of sample playback memory or ROM samples, the Solaris is probably not going to compete in that area. (We have 32 MB of sample RAM.)

If you go to the Soundcloud site, you will find a few other sound examples in addition to Ken's, which will give you some idea of the other things.
John Bowen
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Re: Solaris Factory Preset info - UPDATE

Post by John Bowen »

As a follow up to some questions I've received recently:

There are 2 banks of sounds by Jimmy V. (JAV). These are in Bank 5 and Bank 7. There is also a bank by Jon Aschelew, which only contains 20 Presets. This is Bank 8.

It has been asked and suggested that I combine all of these into a single Bank 5, which I am proceeding to do. I have noted that there are a handful of Jimmy's presets with the same names, but with very slight editing differences, so I've asked him to let me know which version of the two he prefers, and that's what I will include in the final Factory Bank 5 readjustment.

Once I get the documentation updated, I will post a new Factory Preset file (v3.1?) for download. I was originally leaving each bank as I received them, just to make any readjustments by early Solaris customers unnecessary, but I think at this point, I should clear things up.

Stay tuned for the announcement!

john b.
John Bowen
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Re: Solaris Factory Preset info - UPDATE

Post by John Bowen »

OK, I have now posted an update - Presets v3.1, over in the Data Files section. This merges Jimmy V.'s presets and Jon Ashelew's presets into a revised Bank 5.
Robert Wittek's presets are now Bank 6, and Toby Emerson's set (who graciously agreed to have them included on the Factory set) is now Bank 7.

There is an updated document for Bank 5 posted there as well....

cheers,
John B.
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Re: Solaris Factory Preset info - UPDATE

Post by M-Prod »

Thanks! That's great
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