A Dream Synth for Players and Sound Designers !
There's a world of sounds waiting for you to discover them in the new Poly Evolver keyboard synth! This amazing instrument comes from the mind and hands of Dave Smith, the creator of the legendary Prophet 5, the Wavestation, the first soft-synth in the world, and one of the driving forces behind MIDI. The Poly Evolver is a delight for keyboard players and sound designers alike!
Related Videos: Poly Evolver Keyboard
- Four complete Evolver synths in one case, with a unique personality
- Unlimited expressive control with 5-octave keyboard plus knobs and switches
- A real analog synth with DSP control
- Wave sequencing and more with four independent analog sequencers
- Stereo audio inputs for processing external signals
Four Evolver synths, with a unique personality
Fans of the Dave Smith Evolver have been asking for a polyphonic version, and the 4-voice Polyphonic Evolver responds to those requests in a big way. Each of the 4 voices are a complete Evolver synthesizer, which not only provides backwards compatability with a monophonic Evolver, but also allows a number of cool features to play with. Overall, the Poly Evolver, while retaining all of Evolver's wild capabilities, has emerged with its own personality. Many sounds that sounded great on the monophonic Evolver really shine when played polyphonically - this is a real pad-monster machine!
5-octave keyboard plus knobs and switches
The Poly Evolver Keyboard is a player's dream! Its 5-octave keyboard is semi-weighted for playing ease and has velocity and mono aftertouch sensitivity. And with 77 endless-turn knobs and 59 switches, you have virtually unlimited control over filters, resonance, pitch any parameter! The Poly Evolver also responds to MIDI control messages. Plus, you can chain up to five Polys together for up to 20 voices of polyphony.
A true analog synth
The Poly Evolver offers everything you'd expect from an analog synth and more! Sure, you can use it to recreate legendary sounds from the past. But you can also use the Poly Evolver to generate never-before-heard sounds and patterns. The analog electronics for each voice consist of two identical (Left/Right) synth sections, each with an analog waveshape oscillator, a 2/4 pole resonant low-pass filter, and a Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA).
With a digital brain
Surrounding the Poly Evolver's analog electronics is a high-speed Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that both pre- and post-processes the audio signal. Since the DSP also computes the control voltages for the analog circuitry, it can handle a wide range of modulation with high precision. The DSP provides audio functions such as the Digital Oscillators, Envelope Follower, the Peak/Hold detector (and associated external trigger generator), High-pass filter, Distortion (with noise gate), Pan, Delay, and Hack. It also handles the Poly Evolver's tuned feedback, and the additional Delay feedback paths. All the modulation calculations (envelopes, LFOs, routing, and so on) are DSP-controlled.
Four independent analog sequencers
Each of the Poly Evolver's four voices has its own sequencer. This allows some great wave-sequencing applications by gating sequences polyphonically from the keyboard. Each voice also has its own effects, such as feedback, distortion, and delay, which enables completely independent processing of each voice for a super thick sound.
Stereo audio inputs for processing external signals
The stereo audio inputs on the Poly Evolver go to all four voices, each of which can select to process or ignore the external signals, so you can do quad parallel processing of any audio source. Or, since there are stereo outputs on each of the Poly Evolver's four voices, you can route the output of one voice to the input of another voice for some interesting effects.
Once you play a Poly Evolver, you'll immediately hear what's missing with all those soft and virtual synths - real personality and individuality.The Poly Evolver is much more than an analog retro synth. It starts with the benefits of true analog design, and then goes well beyond with the tightly integrated digital features. You get all the old stuff plus an all-new sound - check it out!
Dave Smith Instruments Poly Evolver Features:- Four-voice analog/digital synthesizer
- Five-octave semi-weighted keyboard, 77 knobs, and 59 switches
- Four oscillators in total: two analog, two digital
- Analog oscillator waveshape are sawtooth, triangle, saw-triangle, and pulse (with voltage-controlled analog pulse-width modulation)
- Digital oscillators feature 96 wavetables from the Prophet-VS and 32 user-loadable (via MIDI) wavetables
- Digital oscillators get trashy as the frequency gets higher, as with the original VS
- Hard sync on the analog oscillators
- FM and ring mod on the digital oscillators
- Separate Glide per oscillator, with two glide modes
- Real voltage-controlled analog low-pass filters - not digital recreations
- 4-pole/2-pole switchable filters, fully resonant (in 4-pole mode). Two separate filters, one for the left channel and one for the right
- Analog Voltage Controlled Amplifiers (VCA), one for each channel
- Dual digital 4-pole high-pass filters (one per channel) can be placed before or after analog electronics
- Stereo audio inputs; noise generator
- Envelope Follower and Peak Detect from External Input to use as modulation sources
- External input can be used to gate envelopes and/or step the sequencers
- Three snappy ADSR envelopes.
- Four LFOs (sync with sequencer and MIDI)
- Dual (left and right channel) tunable feedback loops; modulate frequency and amount
- Delay with 3 taps, each with separate time and amount modulation. Syncs to sequencer/MIDI. Normal feedback and additional feedback path through analog filters
- Distortion! Digital, one for each channel, can be placed before or after analog electronics
- 4 Banks of 128 Programs for 384 total Programs - dump to/from MIDI
- 16 x 4 analog-style sequencer - syncs with MIDI
- Extensive modulation capabilities, including audio-range modulation. Bipolar (+/-) modulation
- A bunch of MIDI stuff
- Internal controllers and DSP chips can be reprogrammed via MIDI, for easy feature additions
