synthesizers.se

Until I can find / solder a cable that lets me use the audio input of the iPod while getting a signal out and not just through headphones, I can’t really post a proper example of the vocoder features of the Vocoder SV-5 iphone / ipod application. When I saw Jetdaisuke’s video of it I had to give it a try. Sorry for the noisy video, my camera offers stereo recording but no audio input- guess I should modify it..

After a splash screen, you are immediately thrown into a Juno-like synth interface, where you find a 2-osc polyphonic synthesizer. Oscillator one has several waveforms to chose from (sine, square, triangle, saw, short pulse, long pulse, noise, “bell 1″, “bell 2″, “braster”, “compress”, “crisp”, “delish”, “diffenser”, “pwem”, “strongsaw”, “sync” and “wys”- I’m not enirely sure of the ones with exclamation marks). Oscillator 2 has sine, square, triangle, saw and short and long pulse. Both oscillators offer controls for course pitche, fine pitch and level. Next to the oscillators, there are controls for modulation. SV-5 has two LFO’s, waveform unknown though it sounds like sine / triangle. The LFO’s can either modulate the filter, the oscillator pitch or the volume. The LFO’s depth and speed can be controlled.

The filter is a lowpass one, with controls for cut, resonance and distortion. Some stepping can be heard, a bit like my yamaha dx200, where the steps 0-127 are audible. It does its job, though.

Under the filter, we find what is labeled as volume env. I’d label it VCA. The envelope generator is a basic AR one, no ADSR here.

Next to the volume env / VCA we find the master section, where there is a master tune knob and switches for ring mod and “osc a>b”, which I believe to be oscillator sync.

I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised- even though I haven’t tried the vocoding features of the vocoder app. As a synthesizer, this is an absolute must-have for the iphone / ipod. Of course, I’d like some more features, some bug fixes, and so on, but come on. This will probably provide me with the soundtrack of my subway travels.

Pros:

- Extremely easy to use if you are used to a subtractive synthesizer. Great sounds, vocoder (which I haven’t even tried). Cheap!

Cons:

- Every voice gets its own LFO. I am used to having one ‘global’ LFO. This makes rhythmic sounds sound off. Sound stops working on shutdown. I also miss some features for more “advanced” sound creation, but, what the hell. Get it.