Future music review

[Soul circuits]

Good review overal a snippet pic so you can buy the paper or download it (it will become free in few months only)
Hope it is ok to publish it ...

[John Bowen]

Yes, they said they would be publishing an online version of it within a week or two. Unfortunately, I did not get a review copy of this for error correction (as most reviewers do), and so there are a few small points that I had to mention to them, which I hope they will address in the online version.

Here is what I wrote to the editor:

Some small corrections:

1)Solaris has 5 LFOs, not 4. Even thought the 5th one is marked as Vibrato LFO, it can be disconnected from the Mod Wheel and used as the others. (The one difference is that it's always attached to the osc frequencies.)

2) in the 'Sun King' box about the Rotor - the Wankel engine was a German development, but was mostly used by Mazda, not Toyota. If I did say that, I was mistaken.

3) In the Specs section, it really should read 4 filters, not 2...plus 5 LFOs there below.

4) Towards the end of the review - I'm really not sure what he meant when he said that there was an uneven response of the knobs (encoders) below the displays. Possibly because I sent an older demo unit that had been around, but I haven't noticed this in general. Also, I don't see the displays being sluggish at all. (Obviously, these 2 points are from my personal experience, and not likely to be corrected, I would guess.)

Concerning my point #4 - after reading the review, I went over to the demo unit I had sent them, and realized that it had 2 different front panel boards, with the left side from 2011, and the right side from 2013's production. And, yes, the right side was a little bit stiffer than the (older) left side, but as far as any regular production is concerned, all units have the same production series PCBs, so this should never be an issue. I've reported this to FutureMusic, so we will see if they say anything about this in the online version of the review.

[M-Prod]

Sadly they did not adjust the online version. But it's a pretty positive, though limited, review all in all.
80% is just about summing up features and not much about the reviewers personal experience of the sound, UI, or creativity. I agree with the mild criticism that the Solaris is shy on fx. But most of all this is finally another (after SOS) review in a popular magazine. The solaris deserves the visibility.
My only hope is os development will continue at some point.

[Soul circuits]

You're right most professional reviews in magazines are most of the time listing functionalities and then 2 or 3 lines on the sound of the machine .
Hopefully times were the only source of information were magazines are gone !
It seems SOS which was considered the most critical had changed their tone due to announcers pressure or self censorship (being to loose some advertisers ...)

Any recommendation for online clever reviews btw (I remember tapeop but I don't think it was instrument related , I need to double check -()
Cheers