Hello all,
I'm new here, and took receipt of a 2nd hand Rev2 this week. I'm having a bit of an awkward start with it and was hoping that people would be so kind to let me know whether the below is expected behaviour?
1. Init patch (no changes to knob settings, just the basic empty patch), unison mode (8 voices), detuning 0
When playing keys, alternating between the two same notes repeatedly, leads to what sounds like some kind of phase shift for each key pressed. One key press produces a tone with a lot of high frequency content, then the next suddenly doesn't, then the next one may have a different kind of character again, and so on. The differences between key presses are stark, it sounds like phase shifting, or filtering, or shape mod, something between all three.
2. Same init patch as above with unison
Sub Octave just isn't audible sometimes in Unison mode. It's strange. Then when I turn Unison off and back in, it may suddenly appear and be clearly audible. Or if I switch an oscillator shape, it can suddenly appear - or disappear. It's quite intermittent and often fine, but not always.
3. Same init with unison as earlier
Playing a single note on the keyboard, turning up Osc Slop, pressing the same key, then turning Osc Slop back down. Now the timbre of the tone has markedly changed. Each time I set Osc Slop to another value above zero, then turn it down to zero again, the timbre of the tone has changed.
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General 'issues' not related to unison:
1. It needs an absolutely crazy amount of gain
I realise it needs to accommodate for 16 voices, but it still seems off just how much I need to boost my preamps to get a reasonable signal out of the line outs. I tried creating the loudest sound possible (16 voice unison, 2 oscillators and one sub) and yes, that gave me quite a hot signal... so maybe it's fine. But it does need a lot of gain for normal operation.
2. The headphone output is much louder than the line outputs
Related to the gain observation above, but not much else to say about it.
3. It sounds completely different dependent on sound card/preamps used
This one out of all issues irks me the most.
I thought my soundcard was broken as the Rev2 sounded so tinny, but when I checked it over its own headphone out it sounded fine. So I tried a different soundcard/preamp and this sounded identical to the Rev2 headphone out, leading me to think soundcard 1 was bust.
But then I tried other gear and there was no discernible differences between the two soundcards/preamps. So somehow, only the Rev2 sounds starkly different depending on what soundcard/line in preamp I run it through
I appreciate that perhaps none of the above are actual issues, as this is the first analog polysynth I have ever owned. That said I'm no beginner to audio and synths, and while I may simply be out of my depth here and the unit I have operates as expected, the above all has baffled me.
So hopefully I will be schooled and it turns out all the above is as it should be.
Sorry for this long post, thanks for any help or pointers!