I’m hoping that this thread will be one of appreciation and enthusiasm for the Synth and its inherent possibilities.
Bringing a quality synthesis product into being is a huge undertaking, especially with a small dev team. I think maybe the more mature users will acknowledge the amount of time and energy, and resources required, to bring Polyend Synth out to a mass international market.
If anything this thread is to:
Enthuse about Synthesisers, especially vintage products that changed the sonic landscape with innovative approaches to sound design.
Improve our understanding of how the existing Polyend Synth Engines might be utilised to replicate or even improve upon how those ancient machines made sounds and music.
Explore future synthesis ideas for future Synth Engines based on our shared love for Synthesis.
I’ve barely sniffed at the surface of what is possible with the Synth so far. Each of the Engines have their own character and merits. (I had actually been saving and selling gear for the Ab***** M*** but then Polyend Synth dropped from orbit!)
So, ARTURIA Pigments came up early in the thread which has inspired the beginnings of exploring the WAVS and GRAIN Engines which allow importing User Wavs. I’ll have some time later today to figure out the Wav format stored on the Synth and try out some ideas.
I’m sure my love for the EMS VCS 3 will inspire me to explore the Mod Matrix and Macros in all the Synth Engines and try to replicate some of the random weirdness and complexity that arises from an unstable voltage controlled oscillator modulating LFO frequency which in turn modulates FM feedback etc etc…
I’m showing my ignorance more than my knowledge but curiosity is my strength!
Feel free to chip in with any ideas about how to generate the kind of Sonic Attack vibes from Hawkwind in 1972 with the Synth!
just started (like 30min ago) playing around and seeing if there are any presets that are closest to a grand piano. i’ve been using the pianophonic in eurorack and that sounds pretty amazing and is a wavetable osc. might be interesting to see if some of those could be transported over but i’m uncertain about format compatibility
The PMD Engine is a physical modelling synth which could model a hammer striking a metal string inside a resonant wooden box.
That would be okay for a piano ‘solo’ monophonic line. A different Engine could be tweaked to provide chords.
Perhaps even use WAVS Engine with a sample from a real piano around the octave you need. It would only need to be a small mono 16bit 44100 Hz sample that’s looped.
Use the ADSR to give a sharp resonant attack that decays quickly to a long sustained note. Velocity could be mapped to make the attack louder and brighter.
Any other ideas of how to achieve a decent piano sound greatly welcome!
Didn’t want to push the GRAINS engine too much so tried loading a 32 second long Mono 16bit 44100 Hz wav, plays well and able to get some really funky atmospheric stuff especially adding mod delay and reverb. There are some slight audio artifacts like slight crackling but hard to say if this is due to the issues related to tempo synced delay or just the GRAINS engine jumping from sample point to sample point.
I guess I could try loading longer samples just to see what happens!
Nice! I’m having a play with it now - I mostly want sounds like Jungle/ rave pads smeared out into long textures to be played chromatically, and so far it’s doing it well. I had a Microfreak until recently that was OK doing grain stuff but had hardly any storage so could only use short segments if you wanted to import a decent range of samples. The PSynth has a few more parameters, loads up from SD and is handling longer samples. My only gripes so far are lack of folder support when selecting samples, and single voice limitation on the Grain synth (although there is a paraphony setting). Haven’t tried the WAV stuff yet, but again I do have a collection single cycle wavs from the Microfreak too so will look at that soon. The full manual for the PSyenth that Polyend put up the other day is helping too. But yeah - looking forward to a resolution for the tempo sync delay…!
