Well it's not polite to post w/o a form of an example, but Solaris 5 is a big plus for old card holders, and obviously the new guys also w/ XITE-1.
I always loved Solaris for it's sonic variety and awesome sound, but it was not my choice for live work as it took too long to load a preset. For live work I used Prowave which is a simpler, live performance synth that has many of Solaris's sonic choices.
I wish others who recieved the BETA would comment on the extras which I don't get excited about.
I will comment on the analog treats I have whined about for the last 3 years.
First the best news.....Solaris is a monophonic performer now, and since it can do great big FAT leads w/ only 2 voices of poly, it can be used twice in a project now. One w/ 6 voice poly, and one for lead work.
That alone was worth posting.
But John has managed to incorporate the polyphonic and monophonic character of the Memory Moog, and the Oberheim synth series.
Each Oscillator can have it's own value of glide set. This makes creating analog poly pads very authentic, and leads are just overwhelmingly FAT and quite real.
It sure sounds like heaven to me and the new filters that were released for Prowave will follow, but the SSM Filter is in the BETA, and I was told by my fellow Brotha's that were at MESSE that Oberheims are in the hardware. OMG !! The days of old are surely here now.
The purpose of this was to mimic old analogs no doubt about that, but much more can be done than analog ever dreamed of now.
Notice each Oscillator has it separate glide amount. This means that between the chosen notes that the glide widens the sound and fattens it up so the Oscillators reach their target value at different times !! I am using just 2 Oscillators and the effect is VERY noticable. When 2 MM Oscillators and 2 CEM's are used the sound is nothing short of spectacular.
A short synth demo using 2 instances of Solaris will be posted in the music thread tonight.
Keep in mind this is only a small example of what John has done to version 5. The formant filters and many other enhancements are included.
But my dreams have been answered w/ the addition of the tricks mentioned earlier, and I can't explain where the creamy sound of the outputs is coming from, but something seems to have been re worked there also as my other pads just seem to be hotter than ever and drift around so nicely now.