Solaris Core by John Bowen - Introduction Offer until April 7th!

[Holger Drenkelfort]

Many, many thanks to Loren and Ron who did important work on the presets sounds and the manual! <3

[Liquid EDGE]

The bladerunner pads in the LP-Solaris core 2026 bank are absolutely sublime!!!! I was just playing that sound for at least an hour yesterday while “floating”

Is this lorenOA76 work?

[LorenOA76]

Thank you very much
Yes it's my design Presets

loren

[Liquid EDGE]

Thank you very much
Yes it's my design Presets

loren

An epic tune is brewing!!!!

Thank you. Got my creative juices flowing.

Big thank you to all involved.

I love scope.

Thank you John Bowen and Holger on releasing this synth.

Big up to Ron Ractive.. great sounds as well. Not very well named…

[Holger Drenkelfort]

[shayart]

Great news

Thank to all the involved

[Sounddesigner]

Finally got a chance to toy around with the new Solaris Core and the plugin certainly is impressive. At 96khz Samplerate i mainly Just used presets and all but one worked just fine, and the one that did'nt only gave a minor error message that was easy to get rid of.

It has some 3D body and fatness to its sound so no need for a lot of Unison Voices like many other synths. VERY clean and detailed sounding with a smoothness to it that i've always loved about SCOPE synths in general wich allows for more aggressive sound designs. I have'nt really tested Note Polyphony and i know that this is the only flaw of the synth, but i generally should'nt need much polyphony just great sound . The sound is killer and certainly a new benchmark standard with pre-built synths ITB. The Activation was simple. I'm in love!!!!!

[jkr]

I am impressed by the new solaris core plugin that is now running on my xite-1 without any severe problems (e.g. no crackles so far). It sounds great.

I've been experimenting with some of the included sound patches since last weekend. The patches are incredibly helpful for exploring the instrument's versatility. Thanks to the sound designers! I prefer rich analog brass sounds, similar to those of the Jupiter-8. I'm working at 48 kHz and am happy with the number of Solaris voices (typically 16, sometimes more distributed over more than a single instrument instance).

Understandably, loading a single patch usually takes quite a while. I'm wondering if there is a way to play pre-made Solaris Core patches through a kind of lean Solaris Core playback engine - similar to the pre-configured Vectron sounds that can be played in a lean manner using the Vectron player.

In any case, I'll be using the Solaris Core's filter functions to generate unique impulse responses for my guitar profiler.

[Spielraum]

yes, I fully agree with you, the sound plays the music to my ears, and not necessarily scales up and down melodies with 10 or more fingers... As a producer, I always have to force my jazz musicians to rein themselves in...hihihi
"because good sound also lives from the time between the notes!

[Bud Weiser]

... the sound plays the music to my ears, and not necessarily scales up and down melodies with 10 or more fingers... As a producer, I always have to force my jazz musicians to rein themselves in...hihihi

Well ... please show in which productions you used these "jazz musicians" and who they are,- just because when I hear demos or see demo vids w/ SCOPE,- these are sequenced pattern music always.

And "scales up/down" is not what I´d call melodies at all, regardless of more or less than 10 fingers.
Scales ARE important because they define/specify voicings and alterations of chords and when you are a musician, music theory isn´t your enemy.

Sound alone is not what I´d call music,- I´d prefer calling it noise then.
Doesn´t mean clever arranged noise won´t be music per sé, but I´d differentiate in the same manner I´d do when talking about painting a picture or creating a collage.

Machine generated patterns, may these be looped arpeggiator or step sequencer stuff, are just only audio clips once rendered. Snippets like samples that wil be arranged along the timeline of a DAW app.

Composing a tune, arrange it for a (given) lineup of musicians, record from scratch, mix, master and make it a valuable piece of music is a different task for me.

YMMV

"because good sound also lives from the time between the notes!

good music does too !

Bud

[nebelfuerst]

Sometimes, I want to hear a song over and over, just because there is some fascinating instrument in it.
Part of that fascination is often generated by the variation of a single sound by someone tuning many knobs over time.
Combined with a short, good riff, some songs with that recipe are addictive to me in the techno/progressive/minimal universe.
This for sure isn't the glory example for music theory, it's rather a sound design experience... similar to Didgeridoo sounds..

Scope synths are able to address the fun of observing the variation of a sound during a (boring ?) loop, which a classic classic instrument can't do.
I also like classic instruments, but for songs in a different part of the music universe.

[Holger Drenkelfort]

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

Great to hear Solaris Core is running smoothly on your XITE-1 without crackles, that was the main reason we started this amazing project: releasing Solaris Core for the community.

Glad all of you are exploring the presets as well, we’ve put so much love into this project! And yes, they were designed to showcase the full depth and character of the instrument. Solaris can definitely get into Jupiter-8 style brass territory with the right patch design.

Regarding polyphony: yes, you can definitely get higher polyphony on specific patches, but it really depends on the complexity of the patch and how DSP is distributed across the system.

About patch loading times, yes, that’s currently one of the trade-offs. Solaris Core is quite complex under the hood, and loading a patch involves configuring a large DSP structure. These are architectural limits we have to work within.

Using the filters to generate impulse responses for a guitar profiler is a very creative approach and that’s exactly the kind of use case where Scope & XITE-1 flexibility really shines.

Thanks again for your support and feedback, it’s very valuable at this stage.

Best,
Holger

[dante]

Wasn't aware that there was a dedicated XITE installer for Solaris Core. But I will be testing it for sure, since now I no longer have PCI cards, only the XITE-1D. And I will run it at 96Khz also.

When I tested it in 2013, I was getting decent poly @48Khz on the cards
https://www.scopeusers.com/ScopeRise/is ... l_mast.htm

Its not hard to set up a small playable preset bank for Solaris or Solaris Core :
1) Turn polyphony down to 1 voice then browse till you find a preset you like
2) Turn things off until you can raise poly to as high as it will get or that you want.
3) Save it as a new preset.
4) Build up a bank of half a dozen or so and just stick to those. If you can browse through those without setting poly = 1 you know you've got it good.

I had some sounds set up at 96Khz - even if you can only get 1 voice - that's valid to have a mono synth. Anyway I will test with the new XITE install.

[valis]

"For songs in a different part of the music universe"

If Holger doesn't steal that, i am going to. With permission of course

Sometimes, I want to hear a song over and over, just because there is some fascinating instrument in it.
Part of that fascination is often generated by the variation of a single sound by someone tuning many knobs over time.
Combined with a short, good riff, some songs with that recipe are addictive to me in the techno/progressive/minimal universe.
This for sure isn't the glory example for music theory, it's rather a sound design experience... similar to Didgeridoo sounds..

Scope synths are able to address the fun of observing the variation of a sound during a (boring ?) loop, which a classic classic instrument can't do.
I also like classic instruments, but for songs in a different part of the music universe.

[LorenOA76]

Hello all friends,

I wrote a review for the Solaris Core 2026 release, and I hope it will be helpful for all users.

The Solaris core is truly stable and rock solid on the XITE-1/D. Following Dante’s comments, I tested stability and usability at 96 kHz with all my presets included in the LP-Solaris Core 2026. They were able to reach between 4–6 voices of polyphony on my XITE1. As Holger mentioned in the forum, patch complexity directly affects both loading time and the maximum number of voices you can achieve.

To verify this, I went through all my 128 presets one by one. While browsing at 1 voice, everything runs smoothly, and in practice, 4 voices are consistently stable. In many cases, it can even reach 6 voices at 96 kHz without issues.

Most importantly, the Solaris core sounds absolutely amazing. The UI is brilliantly organized and represents a clear evolution compared to Solaris v5.

For me, this is a must-have for every XITE-1/D user!

loren

[yayajohn]

Hello all friends,

I wrote a review for the Solaris Core 2026 release, and I hope it will be helpful for all users.

The Solaris core is truly stable and rock solid on the XITE-1/D. Following Dante’s comments, I tested stability and usability at 96 kHz with all my presets included in the LP-Solaris Core 2026. They were able to reach between 4–6 voices of polyphony on my XITE1. As Holger mentioned in the forum, patch complexity directly affects both loading time and the maximum number of voices you can achieve.

To verify this, I went through all my 128 presets one by one. While browsing at 1 voice, everything runs smoothly, and in practice, 4 voices are consistently stable. In many cases, it can even reach 6 voices at 96 kHz without issues.

Most importantly, the Solaris core sounds absolutely amazing. The UI is brilliantly organized and represents a clear evolution compared to Solaris v5.

For me, this is a must-have for every XITE-1/D user!

loren

Not to rain on anyone’s parade here; I’m just tying to figure out whether buying this is the right move for me.
I have a 32bit Scope PCI machine specifically for running Zarg, samplers, sequencer etc. All the things that Scope Xite 64bit broke.
I remember when JB introduced the Solaris Core (I think Dante was largely responsible for communicating with John for that) and he explained it as merely a stripped down version of the Solaris synth to tackle the SAT connection challenges on the Xite and reduce the DSP load.
So my question is has there been any update to the original programming or are we basically looking at just some new presets?

Dan

[dante]

Well done on the PDF LorenOA76 !

[Sounddesigner]

@yayajohn.. Solaris Core probably should not be the name of this new plugin since there was a older plugin named Solaris Core. This new release is NOT the old plugin it IS THE SAME ALGORITHM AS THE ACTUAL HARDWARE SYNTH ITSELF. The only common trait with the old Solaris Core is the name most other things differs. Sounds better, runs better on XITE-1, different presets.

Different sound means different synth to me. I had the big version Solar 5 and it did not even load on XITE-1 at 96 khz, was not coded for the newer SHARCs S-C used.

@LorenOA76 , Thanks for the presets and info! Testing at 96khz samplerate is a great test for all users, cause if a plugin runs pretty good at 96khz that means it likely will run GREAT at 44 khz. Not a lot of Voices at 96 khz but decent for the DSP Chips size and limitations of the Platform, plus its solid and stable, sounds beautifully amazing, wich all equals decent for 96 khz given the situation. It should be GREAT at 44 khz.


EDITED

[dante]

Ok, not the old plugin - a new one ! Definitely need to try it then.

[valis]

Xite owners having a version that works with less SAT management is a good thing, glad to hear people are happy with this.