From UTF-8 Sent Thu, Dec 20th 2018, 22:53
From UTF-8 Sent Thu, Dec 20th 2018, 22:53
Hi, Some of you might remember my recent Yamaha CS30 vs CS30L -thread. Well, I ended up buying a CS30L, which I got a few weeks ago... And what a great synth it is! Amazing possibilities! Here are some comments: -The whole synth is, in my opinion, actually quite easy to use, and it's not that time consuming to set up new sounds, and I find it easy to understand what to do. I did study the signal flow from the block diagram of the manual very thoroughly before buying the synth and that probably helped. However, it's very difficult to understand the synth without the manual. The synth itself simply lacks a lot of the information on the signal flow and that can make it very confusing. They should have put some information on the signal flow on the panel... -The ringmod is great and surprisingly the mode where the LFO is one of the input signals is also useful. Used sparingly, it's possible to make sounds that sound slightly "broken" but still musically useful. The other mode (where instead of the LFO the sine wave of OSC1 is one of the input signals) is also, of course, really great and can be used for harmonious sounds, leads and basses etc. -The portamento seems to be of the "constant time"-type, thus a jump of two octaves or a semitone takes the same time, which is just great! This is unlike the Yamaha CS20M, which has a "constant speed"-type portamento. This synth is really great for all sorts of cool aggressive buzzy/funky/droning/biting/bandpass sounds. Totally different example of the analog synth sound compared to, let's say, the "traditional" Moog sound. The CS30L is the synth you want to use when you want to program the sound of the last droning warning sound of a spaceship when the crew has already died long time ago. However, there is one thing the CS30L can't do: sound like my old Yamaha CS20M. I already promised to sell the CS20M (which I had nearly 20 years and which was my first analog synth) to my brother and I was shocked to find out that the CS30L really has a completely different sound. Some people did mention to me that the "wooden Yamahas" have a different sound, but I didn't listen to them... However, problem solved, I just bought a Yamaha CS40M also... But that's another story ;) Oh and the question: on my CS30L, the volume of the VCF1-HP-input is very low on VCF2, I mean compared to the other two inputs on VCF2 (the saw and square of OSC2). I'm sure I had the correct settings... I guess I'm correct in supposing the volume shouldn't be very low? The VCF1 highpass -sound has OK volume when taken from the VCA1-input. Based on the schematics, I'm suspecting a bad switch on the VCF2 input, although it's kinda weird that the problem is so consistent. I gotta open the synth when I have the time... Cheers, Antti