Cherry Audio Unleashes Lowdown Bass Synthesizer

[Examigan]

I believe IIRC the Taurus pedals were going to be part of a Moog system called Apollo that also had two keyboards. The Polymoog was part of it too but they ended up being separate products.

[Mr Arkadin]

Does this have anything unique going for it? Could you not get similar bass sounds from a SH 101 or Pro one emulation for example?

This is where the Hz/V information comes in and why it's different to V/oct synths. I read one article that said that part was a bit mythical and actually it was something to do with the VCF/VCA AC coupling. In any case, whether you notice or care about such differences is down to each user.

[Mr Arkadin]

I believe IIRC the Taurus pedals were going to be part of a Moog system called Apollo that also had two keyboards. The Polymoog was part of it too but they ended up being separate products.

Nearly. The system was Constellation, Apollo was the Polymoog prototype, and the Lyra lead synth doesn't seem to have any equivalent.

[Flip64]

Yeah... I mean, if you're really into Synthesis then this kind of stuff is your meat and potatoes. The Taurus has the reputation it does for deep bass due to this scaling, if you're really interested in the sound then this is important, isn't just random specs being thrown out to sound good.

Didn't the Taurus II have the nickname of 'Rogue on a stick' or something?

Yeah, it was an all 1 piece thing I think? Control panel on a stand with the pedals fixed underneath. Prob seemed a good idea at the time...

[Examigan]

@Mr Arkadin- Ok thanks. I knew I was close at least.

[plexuss]

Earlier in the thread a person complained about people who were concerned about how software synths compare to their hardware origins. I asked if they knew why people complained (and didn't get an answer). I think you've identified the reason: hardware synths usually go through a lot of testing with musicans to tweek them so they are as musically useful to as many people as possible. It's not sufficient to design a circuit on paper, build it and be done. These are instruments and so they must be accepted by musicians and hence useful to them. This is likely one reason why some people are concerned about how close as software emulation is to the hardware - does it capture the same special character that the original has that so many people found useful. This is not a bad thing. But not all people will care about this. Let those that do, care and stop complaining about it. YMMV

[NikkiA]

I believe IIRC the Taurus pedals were going to be part of a Moog system called Apollo that also had two keyboards. The Polymoog was part of it too but they ended up being separate products.

Nearly. The system was Constellation, Apollo was the Polymoog prototype, and the Lyra lead synth doesn't seem to have any equivalent.

The multimoog was pretty much what was left of the Lyra after a couple of years of further thought and refinement via the micromoog - it's about as close to the original as the 203 polymoog is to the Apollo (and certainly closer to lyra than the 280 polymoog was to apollo).

I don't think anyone has done a multimoog emulation, although there's at least one synthedit level micromoog emulation

[rsaintjohn]

BTW, your friendly neighborhood marketing guy made in error when detailing the specs in the original post. Since that particular bullet point became a topic of discussion, I wanted to point out and fix my error:

It should be "It used a Hz/V oscillator scaling...," not "Hz/oct."

And thanks to sin night for the clarification earlier as to why that scaling has significance in this product. It's a good example of the expertise that Mark brings to projects like this, and why I need to be more careful when I write my copy!

[imrae]

I wonder why devs feel it's necessary to include obscure descriptions like this in their ads?

"It used a Hz/oct oscillator scaling (instead of the more conventional volts/oct oscillator scaling), allowing the detuning amount to remain constant across the range by minimizing the phase cancellation of two oscillators playing simultaneously."

Unless I was a scientist working at the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, all that jibber jabber, which was obviously written to impress me, makes no sense.

If it's any consolation, I am a scientist working at a big facility and it doesn't entirely make sense to me either.

I think it's saying that the "detune" control lets you detune each oscillator pair by Hz, rather than cents. This will give beating that has a regular speed like an LFO, rather than getting faster at higher note pitches.

The last part makes no sense to me because any detuning will result in the same amount of phase cancellation on average.

[Aloysius]

I am science.

[Erik_Lucas]

I'm here. Anything you want to know, I'll tell you, but first I'll answer some stuff that gets asked all the time.

1) Is the code reused? No. Both the Mini and Taurus are so bizarre in some of their circuitry, everything was written from absolute scratch to capture the weirdness. Likewise with most of VM900 and VM2500. Some non-critical code is always going to get reused. If I have a wheel, there's no need to invent one if it's not going to make any difference.

2) Do you do circuit / component modeling? Yes and no. Component modeling, absolutely not. Circuit modeling, yes. The software produces its results by doing the same things the circuits do.

3) How can you sell these plugins for so little? There's two ways you can make money with products like these. You can sell it for $150 to a few people that really really want it and can afford it, or you can sell it for $39 to way more people, make the same $$ (or maybe more), and make many more people happy. Cherry has wisely and kindly chosen the latter. It has nothing to do with quality or how long anything takes to develop. Remember, we are a family of synth lovers over here. The standards for quality are extraordinarily high.

4) How can you come out with so many products so fast? There's more than one of us, and the more you do it, the easier it gets.

I'll be glad to answer any other questions you might have.

--mb

I very much liked reading this. Thanks Mark.

[zzz00m]

I'm here. Anything you want to know, I'll tell you, but first I'll answer some stuff that gets asked all the time.

1) Is the code reused? No. Both the Mini and Taurus are so bizarre in some of their circuitry, everything was written from absolute scratch to capture the weirdness. Likewise with most of VM900 and VM2500. Some non-critical code is always going to get reused. If I have a wheel, there's no need to invent one if it's not going to make any difference.

2) Do you do circuit / component modeling? Yes and no. Component modeling, absolutely not. Circuit modeling, yes. The software produces its results by doing the same things the circuits do.

3) How can you sell these plugins for so little? There's two ways you can make money with products like these. You can sell it for $150 to a few people that really really want it and can afford it, or you can sell it for $39 to way more people, make the same $$ (or maybe more), and make many more people happy. Cherry has wisely and kindly chosen the latter. It has nothing to do with quality or how long anything takes to develop. Remember, we are a family of synth lovers over here. The standards for quality are extraordinarily high.

4) How can you come out with so many products so fast? There's more than one of us, and the more you do it, the easier it gets.

I'll be glad to answer any other questions you might have.

--mb

I very much liked reading this. Thanks Mark.

I really hope that the Cherry Audio "doubters" read this...

[Dirk Diggler]

Well done and just a fantastic emulation!

Having owned a set of Vintage Moog Taurus pedals way back to '79, and I can say this captures the vibe of the real deal. So nice to have a modern VST3 version. This feels so much better than any of the previous VST's and samples I've tried.

For the price there should be no hesitation needed.

The filter control pedal is spot on and really is a key useful feature. The standard button presets are great, and the panel synth controls sound like the recordings I have from the early 80's sounds I created no problem.

Again well done Cherry Audio, well done!
Dirk

[steveyt]

Lovely. This sounds just the job for those 70s Italian horror synth soundtrack requirements.

[cherryMitch]

Wow! That's terrific bass!

Super obscure vintage SNL reference FTW!