John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

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t_tangent
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John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by t_tangent »

just saw that John Bowen posted this on the Solaris Facebook group an hour ago.


Solaris Voice Expander Now Available - built in a 1U-sized cabinet, while not a full 19" width (and does not ship with 'rack ears'), the Voice Expander uses the same motherboard as the keyboard version, and adds another 10 voices of polyphony when using Poly Chain. (Just make sure both units have the same Program data on their CF cards!). You can also just layer it with your current Solaris. All parameters are connected to a Solaris front panel (via SysEx) for easy editing. Sales and production are handled by Sonic Core. Please contact Sonic Core at office@soniccore.de for more information.[*]
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astroman
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by astroman »

Thanks for bringing this up... though I can‘t afford the unit, I enjoyed the interview video.
Reminded me at 2007 Frankfurt fair, when I had the opportunity to fiddle with the Solaris prototype for half an hour. 8)
I‘m happy to hear the Solaris story continues for John and his team...
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valis
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by valis »

Talked to John about this last night. About $2k USD currently with the exchange rate, would love to swap to an Xite unit and add this to the Solaris. Considering selling some of my gear that has appreciated tremendously (as much as I love my FS1R, it's literally an investment now at the prices it's getting).
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Spielraum
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by Spielraum »

valis wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 12:46 pm ... I love my FS1R...
and he can do a lot of fun with the right controller
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t_tangent
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by t_tangent »

Spielraum wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:04 am
valis wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 12:46 pm ... I love my FS1R...
and he can do a lot of fun with the right controller
Yamaha FS1R Controller.JPG
That looks very cool Spielraum
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dante
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by dante »

astroman wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 12:12 pm I‘m happy to hear the Solaris story continues for John and his team...
+1
nebelfuerst
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by nebelfuerst »

Sorry for my stupid question, but what is die main difference between the solaris synth in scope and the standalone versions ?
Completely different, just similar names ? Identical sound engines ?
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astroman
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by astroman »

The Scope Solaris was (of course) the source for the hardware design.
But you could call it „completely different“ as well. So many changes and optimizations, a lot of particular coding for the new Sharc chip versions.
John himself addresses exactly this topic in the video below, but unfortunately (at least here) you can‘t position on the timeline, it‘s rather far from the beginning. The interview covers John‘s synth career right from the beginning.
https://youtu.be/NJQrTiCezvo

From my memory:
the engine is designed in 96khz throughout, takes advantage of the new Sharc‘s SIMD, a lot of code rewritten or custom.
Afaik (or guessing) the Scope Solaris doesn‘t take advantage of these features if run on Xite, so it‘s probably kind of „locked“ to the 6 compatibility Sharcs... which is rather the minimum for simple Solaris patches.
According to John the investment in a classic Scope system would at least equal the price of the current hardware to match performance.
And of course (in Scope) you‘d miss the great user interface of the multiple display/dial hardware.
Tbh operating the big Zargs with just a mouse is close to torture... ;)
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valis
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by valis »

You can certainly link to a time, you simply append ?t=TTTT (where T equals the time position in seconds):
https://youtu.be/NJQrTiCezvo?t=2394
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astroman
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by astroman »

Probably... but it didn‘t let me move the marker to find the time. Always jumped back to the beginning :-?
(generally this works with other videos)
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valis
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by valis »

Did I get it close enough? Just trying to help.
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astroman
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by astroman »

Yes, I know that feature. But it‘s probably due to my iPad running IOS12.
The video is 1h2min and it stalls dragging too often on the timeline. Just tried it again, 3 or 4 moves were ok and then it loses track and will not recover. Sorry for the mess.
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valis
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by valis »

It's the compression level they're downloading at. With full frames (not subframe data) too far apart, the indexing falls apart and it can't rebuild the full video past a certain point. Might be iPad related, but it's more likely the video has been re-encoded on YT's end a few times and it's causing issues.
nebelfuerst
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by nebelfuerst »

Thanks for the link to the video.

BTW:On my PC I have no problem to jump to any position/any second in the video.
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astroman
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by astroman »

Thanks Valis for the explanation, :) it seems to happen when skipping backwards after some forward moves.
No big deal, with „fresh memory“ it can be cured.
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valis
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Re: John Bowen Solaris Voice Expander now available

Post by valis »

That's exactly the behavior you would expect from a poorly indexed file. I think there's a way to report videos for technical (not content) related concerns, and they resubmit the originals to their processing queue (or something to that effect).
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