John Bowen Synth Design

Following up on the previous topic about ratcheting - there’s some questions as to how best to implement it, so I’d like to know if you use this, what you would like to have in terms of settings for it. We currently have an overall random ratcheting probability percent, plus the ability to set a ste...

Thanks for posting! Great to see the Solaris in use.

John

Here’s a 14 min video that goes into more detail about the forthcoming 2.0.5 OS Sequencer functions:
https://youtu.be/6pOpO1ai5wY

Excellent! "record (the keyboard)" alone would be a much valuable addition. Do you mean a real-time recording of whatever you play? I know we aren’t set up for that at the moment. I'm not sure what resources that would require. With the new sequencer, you do load the notes by playing the ...

For a long time I’ve had requests to update the sequencer functions of the Solaris, and it’s been on the list once we got the 4-part multi-timbre v2.x OS done. Jim has been hard at work implementing a number of new features in a major overhaul of the Solaris sequencer and arpeggiator code, and we ar...

You can construct a very basic piano sound from 4 samples mapped across the keyboard. First we have to find the best samples for that, which can sound decent being stretched across the keyboard. Usually the lower samples are longer and higher ones shorter, of course. I will see if I can put together...

Make sure the Tuning in the System page is at zero. If that is correct, then possibly an analog control somehow got reset? You can find the Selftest Menu by pressing 1-3-8 together. From there you can find a calibration for the wheels, ribbon, and joystick (all of which could be offsetting pitch). U...

Ah, you are involved with that one? It looks quite interesting. Is it all built on the Mutable Instruments modules’ code? I had some communication with her about using such things for the Solaris, but the code conversion to SHARC DSPs seemed to be too problematic.

I will have to investigate what it would take to add a basic sampling function to the Solaris. Never say never!

Thanks for the helpful response. A few comments....I don't understand why the engineer that coded the audio file handling couldn't just take the wav files and strip the metadata out in the code and then play it. It is certainly straightforward and there are numerous public domain code resources (au...

Oh, and last thing is to be able to handle stereo sample files. Kluging up a solution with panning multiple oscillators is a bit odd and inconvenient not to mention, as you have, the phasing issues that might arise. I don’t see how it can be done without using 2 voices, since the Solaris structure ...

So, last question first - what I learned about playing back .wav files - the Solaris can play them back already, but the way the code was done plays back all the data in the file, which includes the metadata tag. For a few samples, I could hear a tiny ‘click’, and when I asked the coding engineer at...

Another thing to know - as I stated above, you can freely edit the SamplePool text file using your computer (and a CF card reader, of course). You can change the low and high key values right there in the text file, so if you’d like a sample to be ‘key windowed’, just set the low and high values in ...

My apologies for any confusion regarding the change in how the samples are handled. This was actually changed in the 1.4.3 OS, which is described here: https://forums.johnbowen.com/viewtopic.php?t=16758). A preset can now load a sample pool when the preset is called up. This is determined by the set...

John, Jim, since ratcheting is about the seq, is there any chance that you implement what's now known under the name "Voice Component Modelling", i.e. using multiple internal seqs in keystep mode to slightly modulate parameters per voice as discussed here?: https://forums.johnbowen.com/vi...