some thoughts on the rev2 as a sound designer tool

some thoughts on the rev2 as a sound designer tool
« on: July 27, 2019, 06:11:10 PM »
i just got a rev 2 which is actually my first contemporary analog poly in a collection of vintage ones. i make experimental electronic music in berlin and here are some of my thoughts on this synth.

right off the bat, its really interesting to look inside first. so what we have here is a very limited number of chips under close digital control. compare this with an oberheim xpander chip mass grave and you get the idea :-)



what strikes me first about the rev 2 is the precise tuning of the 32 dcos vs. the raw "real" chip sound, its actually the main reason i bought it. that means you could theoretically build up arbitrary precision wide band harmonics with many oscillators that dont sound like a digital plugin.

for that you would need total control over the engine of course. the rev 2 seems to be still stuck with one leg in the 80s keyboard paradigm but maybe there will be a "sound designers edition" one day?:

- full control over the frequencies of all oscillators ie. not detuned midi but direct frequency input via OSC or extended midi data. precision control over the frequency beating ie. "slop" so you can actually tune the sound of chords.

- flexible routing and gain structure. thats probably the hardest part but in my experience in analog audio the gain structure makes most of the sound. on my rev 2 i have to switch off one oscillator to lower the gain of the other one and reduce the filter saturation. what?

- arbitrary stacking of the 16 voices instead of 2 layers, obviously.

- instead of 2 analog oscillators, one analog and one digital USER oscillator would increase the sound range vastly. that is a different synth of course but it would still sound better than the prologue :-)

just my twopence after a few days of fiddling with the rev 2. cheers from berlin!

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« Last Edit: July 27, 2019, 06:46:22 PM by lilakmonoke »

Re: some thoughts on the rev2 as a sound designer tool
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2019, 11:54:06 PM »
You can get "full control" over all oscillator tunings via a trick with the Key-Stepped Gated Sequencer and Mod Matrix scaling... ie:  you can vary the exact fine tuning of each oscillator on a "voice by voice" basis.    I wrote up an article about it, and you can read more in the forum thread here:   https://forum.sequential.com/index.php/topic,3449.0.html

The Rev2 is definitely a great synth for sound design... very flexible mod matrix. 

Also, with the bi-timbral stack, you can do some really interesting things besides the obvious two-timbre stacks.   You can use the second layer as an "extended first layer", with identical settings, but access to four oscillators and two subs (ie:  treat it like a six oscillator single program)   OR - you can duplicate most settings of the layers and just pan each layer hard left and hard right for some great binaural patches... and achieve huge, defined stereo field, with two oscillators + sub + filter + amp on each side... I highly recommend this, as it makes pads, strings and brass sound massive!   

Anyways, welcome to the Rev2 club!   

OB-X8, Pro 3, P6, Rev2, Take 5, 3rd Wave, Deepmind, PolyBrute, Sub 37
Sound Sets:
https://sounddesign.sellfy.store/
Free Patches:
https://www.PresetPatch.com/user/CreativeSpiral

Re: some thoughts on the rev2 as a sound designer tool
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2019, 05:19:59 AM »
You can get "full control" over all oscillator tunings via a trick with the Key-Stepped Gated Sequencer and Mod Matrix scaling... Anyways, welcome to the Rev2 club!

thanks! im in the dave smith club for a while as i also have a p600 and a sixtrak/drumtrak combo.

i think you can also include the tuning information in extended midi data per note? i read that somewhere, you would have to program that, i use pure data, listen to this:

https://soundcloud.com/lilakmonoke/in-3003-ad-the-prophet-will-become-the-mountain

this is the Prophet 3003 as i cant afford a prophet vs :-) its a diy wavetable synth with three oscillators that can be tuned to arbitrary whole number relationships like 5:128:13. the waves are then multiplexed by 3 sinewaves and 3 vcas which sounds kind of like a complex ring modulator or a vector synth if you do it slowly.

thats exactly what i would like to do with the rev 2 but for that i would need full frequency control and control over the lfos phase ... 

i mean i really wish that DSI would understand that in 2019 the world has actually WAY MORE sound designers than keyboard players ;-) what we need is full OSC audio rate control over all aspects of the engine!
« Last Edit: July 28, 2019, 05:41:03 AM by lilakmonoke »