In an e-mail from Rene for the owners of the P1 he addressed the HOT nature of the P1 among other things. Here is a tip that makes a lot of difference if you are suffering from clipping.

Rene uses a compressor on synth tracks. I suggested that this was a very dance oriented approach to keyboards. He reminded me that a compressor was almost a requirement on the old analog mini's and OB's. He is dead correct in this. He also kicked himself because he had put a compressor into the P1 during the initial design but skipped it because of complexity it would cause in the interface.

Now we have a synth that runs ultra-hot but sounds great. I, for one, don't want him to back it down.

So, until Rene gets us a built-in compressor put one on your P1 tracks and get those transients in control You won't be sorry.

I agree as well!
I'd much rather have a good, strong output signal that I can control with a comp if need be, than have one that would be too weak.

Well... I do agree that running through a compressor is probably the best thing to do here, however, what I mentioned to Rene about this is that some of the patches hit the input of the compressor (0 gain) at over +13db, which still seems a bit excessive to me.

Also, I don't know if anyone else has had the experience of creating a Pent.1 sequence, adjusting the output for a quiet patch like "Stellar", and then exploring the other patches, only to have a BLASTER like "Subsonic Growl" come up and nearly blow your eardrums (and/or speakers).

Overall, I still think the output could be taken down a bit (3dB?), and maybe have the patches looked through to try and equalize their output levels.

On the other hand... Maybe it's just that my whining needs to be taken down a couple dB.

Using a compressor on a synth is a great idea regardless of what style you play (I'm a rock n' roller myself ) It just makes them fit better, and makes them that much more powerful sounding.
My favorite synth right now is Big Tick's Rainbow 2 (can't wait for version 3!) but the first time I tried out the demo I really wasn't impressed at all. I thought what it did was neat, but the sound was a little weak, and if I turned it up, it just clipped. Then I put a compressor behind it and it came alive! Now it easily competes with some of my kurzweil patches in terms of power (I still use the hardware stuff too).
I'm rambling now, but compressors = good

At the end of the day I'd rather have Pentagon run a little hot than risk TOO MUCH compression.

I take Tufif's point about rock music, or britnell getting his ears blasted off, but compression does kill off nuance and sensitivity. There's a balancing act here. So I prefer to have the option.

Pentagon is probably the only synth I've got that doesn't need additional compression to sound fat.

It's amazingly fat already (yum yum)

New users just have to learn good Pentagon habits, like automatically reaching for the gain slider before loading a new preset ... (((-:

I always had to do this with my old ARP.

btw just put together a finger picking guitar patch. Will pass it on soon

One last thing: Does anyone know where the exp/lin or lo/hi quality buttons are?

I completely agree.

swayzak

exp/lin button doesn't exist yet (I hope for it)
you just Ctrl-Alt-Right click anywhere in the screen to toggle between Lin and Exp modes.

hi/lo q is under the voices # ! hq nq

by me I rarely use compression, as the kevvvv said it kill nuances, I rather compress the master mix, but it's a matter of kind of music, genre, I guess

thanx liqih ... appreciated.

I'm looking forward to the manual when it comes out. There are so many sides to this machine that everyone who uses it seems to come out with something new. Delightful situation.

here's a finger picking patch for anyone who wants it.
http://www.rossiterandco.com/files/finger%20picking.fxp

Anyone else got any patches to throw into the pot?