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 Forum index » Instruments and Equipment » DSI Synths
Finally gave my Poly-Evolver keyboard some quality time
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EdisonRex
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 1:09 pm    Post subject: Finally gave my Poly-Evolver keyboard some quality time
Subject description: Should have done it long ago
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Actually, it was this forum which made me decide to spend the better part of the weekend with the Poly Evolver. I realised that I had this thing sitting here and I barely knew how to do anything more than get a patch out of it.

Which, really, is unacceptable. So instead of being lazy and calling up 100 patches or so trying to find something interesting, I found the Basic Program and loaded it, grabbed the manual and actually sat and went through things.

At least my instincts were good when I bought this thing. It really is as nice as I thought it was going to be, even if I was too involved in my other board at the time. (I bought two keyboards in two weeks; the Poly Evolver and a Hartmann Neuron. Guess which got the attention).

So anyway, my idea of getting to know a keyboard is to go manual, open up the filter and VCA, and get to know the oscillator. There's a lot to get to know, I didn't realise the waveforms on the digital side are from the Prophet VS. Now that I hear them alone, I can see. Nice you can solo an oscillator.

How does one solo a voice? I mean, without going into Combo mode, or patching into a voice output. Sigh.

So this thing has gadjillions of mod destinations. And a fair number of modulation sources too. I had sat with the manual, oh, last year, and read it, and said "yeah, ok, looks like I can do a lot" and never actually sat with it.

Probably the reason was ergonomics, in my own defense. I didn't have the board set up where I could really see the panel. I fixed that this weekend, now I can see what I'm doing. It's not perfect, but it will be once I take the studio apart.

After playing with the Wretch for a couple of weeks, the filter on the Evolver is rather pristine, and the oscillators are, well, different. I don't think the saw waveform is that accurate, hooking it up to a scope and looking at it, I see it's got some of that shark fin curve to it. It's a nit though because there's not a lot of excuses for not getting a decent sound out of these oscillators.

So, the top range of waveforms on the digital side is made to be user-loadable "using the editor". But the website says the editor isn't needed for Poly owners, since we have the knobs, so we can't use it. >_<

I hooked up the Wretch's VCOs through the external input. The Wretch's VCO sounds a lot different through the Poly's voice circuit. The filter being the most different. This filter reminds me of my old Polysix. It's not too fat, but it's got some meat.

And I had totally not explored the sequencer. Mostly because I can't in the current studio configuration, the way I have the thing channelized and in a daisy chain in the analogue ghetto, I couldn't send out anything from the sequencer to other systems, and I hadn't explored it anyway.

I don't think the inability to route from one sequencer to another is a big problem. I'm thinking going via the LFOs, with the LFO amplitude down, or modulated from somewhere else, might do the trick anyway. The fact that there are 4 sequencers is kind of interesting. I played with the tempo modulation. That's pretty interesting. Now I need to figure out how to clock it from M, or from DP.

It's shameful. I have had this instrument for over a year and I've been simply playing patches out of it. I think that's going to change, not least because I have discovered I can integrate it better with my other analogues, but as with everything, part of learning is deciding to learn.

It was this forum which kicked me in the ass and made me decide to stop making excuses. Thanks, I needed that.

[/i]

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 2:00 pm    Post subject: Re: Finally gave my Poly-Evolver keyboard some quality time
Subject description: Should have done it long ago
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EdisonRex wrote:
How does one solo a voice? I mean, without going into Combo mode, or patching into a voice output. Sigh.[/i]


Hi!

Just bought an PEK last week!!! AWESOME!!!

But tell me..is there no way to solo a voice in program mode?...that would be very nice..


regards!
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

you can set Key Mode: Mono, which I think (I'm not by my unit) will play everything on voice 1. Were you thinking of something else?

/Stefan

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 5:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yes, actually I was thinking of something else. My fault.
I try to explain it better:

Is there a way to EDIT each voice on program mode?
Imagine voice 1+2, just with the analogue OSC and voice 3+4 with the digital OSC´s and delay.

Ok...in combo mode I can choose 4x the same sound and set them to mono.

Any Idea ?

I´m quite a newbie in this..maybe it´s just absurd what I want to do...

Wink
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 6:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ok, now I understand, kind of.

No, in program mode you're working on a single patch, and it is the same on all four voices.

A couple of things you can do:

* in combo mode you can set one combo to use one patch (using e.g. only analog osc) for two voices, and another (using e.g. only digital osc) to use the remaining two voices. The annoying thing with combo mode is that you can't save patches from there I think, only combo setups. Sad

* I'm not sure about this, so look it up before you try it, but you might be able to buy some extra Evolvers (mono or poly) and use the poly chain feature to distribute chords over different hardware units. I'm not sure if that was what you were after?

* Route the keyboard through a computer, and write a program in e.g. ChucK that routes MIDI back to the Evolver in Combo mode, using whatever algorithm you want.

/Stefan

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hi Stefan!

Thanks a lot for your advices! I will try out the few things...but tell just one more thing...:

Antimon wrote:
* The annoying thing with combo mode is that you can't save patches from there I think, only combo setups. Sad


So how do you work/edit on combo mode if you can´t save the changes???...Do I need maybe the soundtower editor to store combos on the computer?..

Just the last question (sorry..), when you save programs, is there just the possibility to overwrite the existence presets?...ok..I´m not really a big fan of them, but there are sometimes really good to have at least a starting point.

Will appreciate your experiences!

best wishes!
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Antimon



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PostPosted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

When you work with combos, you can save the combo setup (which patches are used in which slots, what midi channels to use, note range etc), but you can't save patch data (frequency cutoff, whether osc1 is triangle or was etc). It's possible that you can do this in some editor - I haven't tried any of the Evolver editors.

And yes, you have a fixed amount of places to save patches in (four banks with 128 patches each), and when you get the Evolver the patch slots are preloaded. You can use the Compare button to check before you save over something. Some presets are more useful than others.

/Stefan

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ahhh... it would be so nice store the changes in combo mode... Crying or Very sad

But ok... I can live with that. But just in case I´ll write to the DSI support, to ask them if the Editor helps you to memorize the changes. That would be a helpfull solution.

So, my afternoon is going to be, deleting useless patches...


Thanks for your advices and time!!!!

Wink
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 7:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

No problem. In fact, I feel I should delete some useless patches myself...
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