UAD PolyMAX - This thing is Sick

[Uncle E]

For the filter I wanted a vintage SSM 2040. However the original chips were nearly impossible to find. Luckily the chip has been resurrected by SSI is the form of the 2140. I built a prototype filter on breadboard using that chip.

Kind of a shame that he didn't use a vintage SSM. If you listen to the synths that use that chip, they all have a similar kind of congested sound. Prophet-5's didn't have that sound, although that could be due to other things. FWIW, Polysix, SX240, and K3 used different SSM's and also didn't have that congested sound.

[_leras]

After a short demo of the PolyMAX this morning I decided to take the chance and freedom to give you my five cents on this. I may go into details in another post.

Over and out – and one love.
Benjamin

Thanks very much for all the information.

I have to laugh. I'm struggling to demo this ... can't seem to activate a demo anywhere, and as card owner it seems a bit pointless to start a spark demo.

[whassup]

What a lame business practice.
Only to demo with a "You have to decide for one of our two subscription models which will be automagically yours after 14 days" if you don't cancel the sub?
Obviously they don't need my money that badly that they care to treat me with respect up front.
Not looking for a rotten insurance subscription here.
Good luck playing the super elite for some more time. Vurt's signature.
But yeah, native now. Why? Got that.
Black Friday, tons of gooood alternatives. Besides an overcrowded plugins folder. Pf...

[_leras]

Yes, quite annoying - but I'd probably wait for a sale to buy anyway. I did pick up the UAD synth Opal at 50% of in their current sale.

It's a pretty good consolation!

[Modular Manfred]

asking someone if the grape is sour because they cannot afford something, aside from being a baseless assumption, is considered somewhat crass in polite circles.
whatever the reason it was brought up doesn't matter

Indeed... Only a complete P.O.S. would bring something like that up...

Personally, I respect anyone who's got a job and works hard for themselves and their family. Whether that's behind a counter serving fast food or cleaning windows.

Im sorry for hijacking the thread but I missed out this post and cannot resist to address your response as I find it absolutely insulting. Why do you imply that I dont respect anyone whos got a job and works hard for their family? What does it have to do with this topic? Why do you think that you have the right to make up lies about my core values and how I think of people who serve fast food or clean windows?

You dont know whether or not I was behind the counter serving fast food or perhaps had been on the streets? Or how hard I worked for my family.

I tell you what, the only people I dont respect are the ones who call others P.O.S without knowing anything about them.

The point was not your or my financial situation. Just the simple fact that when we cannot have something, it is easer to comfort ourselves that its not worth it anyway. This was a rant for a possible explanation to why you would be so ignorant when multiple people are telling you that an audio interface is not a dongle, you still think that everyone else is stupid and you are right because its a dongle. Thats just your problem, if you think it is. Learn to differentiate your potatoes from your onions.

And just to say mate, only somebody really messed up would wish to someone to get a flesh eating virus (to die?). You cannot possible know what one or their family might have been through.. And Im the cretin.. Maybe use your brain next time, cool dude.

[Robmobius]

asking someone if the grape is sour because they cannot afford something, aside from being a baseless assumption, is considered somewhat crass in polite circles.
whatever the reason it was brought up doesn't matter

Indeed... Only a complete P.O.S. would bring something like that up...

Personally, I respect anyone who's got a job and works hard for themselves and their family. Whether that's behind a counter serving fast food or cleaning windows.

Im sorry for hijacking the thread but I missed out this post and cannot resist to address your response as I find it absolutely insulting. Why do you imply that I dont respect anyone whos got a job and works hard for their family? What does it have to do with this topic? Why do you think that you have the right to make up lies about my core values and how I think of people who serve fast food or clean windows?

You dont know whether or not I was behind the counter serving fast food or perhaps had been on the streets? Or how hard I worked for my family.

I tell you what, the only people I dont respect are the ones who call others P.O.S without knowing anything about them.

The point was not your or my financial situation. Just the simple fact that when we cannot have something, it is easer to comfort ourselves that its not worth it anyway. This was a rant for a possible explanation to why you would be so ignorant when multiple people are telling you that an audio interface is not a dongle, you still think that everyone else is stupid and you are right because its a dongle. Thats just your problem, if you think it is. Learn to differentiate your potatoes from your onions.

And just to say mate, only somebody really messed up would wish to someone to get a flesh eating virus (to die?). You cannot possible know what one or their family might have been through.. And Im the cretin.. Maybe use your brain next time, cool dude.

Not to die... That would be a terrible thing to say. More just to become horribly disfigured or something.

[Uncle E]

Thread lock when?

[Robmobius]

Thread lock when?

Hopefully soon. Because I don't think he gets my dark sense of humor or understands irony or sarcasm. Having said that, I'm only dishing out what he served to me in the first place.

[Modular Manfred]

Thread lock when?

Hopefully soon. Because I don't think he gets my dark sense of humor or understands irony or sarcasm. Having said that, I'm only dishing out what he served to me in the first place.

[/quote]

Indeed... Only a complete P.O.S. would bring something like that up...

Personally, I respect anyone who's got a job and works hard for themselves and their family. Whether that's behind a counter serving fast food or cleaning windows.
[/quote]
Whas this ironic or sarcastic?

UAD being too expensive was dark sense of humour as well. Did you understand it?

[v1o]

Please forgive me if this has been posted already..

Some background by UA..

https://uadforum.com/community/index.ph ... ost-432973

The link also contains an image.

Hey everyone, I'll start with the way in which PolyMAX was derived from classic Prophets, Oberheims, and Jupiters. Warning: there will be some serious nerding-out in this post .

A lot of the classic polysynths used the same chips for the cores of their modules: Either the Dave Rossum designed SSM chips or the Doug Curtis designed CEM chips. Wikipedia has a great reference as to which synth used what: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEM_and_SSM_chips

For the filter I wanted a vintage SSM 2040. However the original chips were nearly impossible to find. Luckily the chip has been resurrected by SSI is the form of the 2140. I built a prototype filter on breadboard using that chip.
IMG_3821 (1).jpg


I only diverged slightly from the datasheet. There was a secondary schematic that featured gain compensation when you turn up the resonance, but the resultant resonance characteristics were too different from the old polysynths. I then messed with resistor values until I found the most musical result.

For the oscillator, I referenced a Rossum Electromusic Trident, which uses SSI 2164s. Its waveforms are very clean and nearly identical to Opal's, so that part was straightforward.

Unlike Opal, PolyMAX features a VCA model. This is based on a vintage SSM 2164 using the straight-up datasheet circuit.

For the envelopes, I chose the CEM, which is the most commonly used polysynth envelope. Even the Memorymoog, which has a ladder filter, still uses the CEM envelope. It has a very musical pseudo-exponential curve.

So the target was extremely Rossum-centric. FYI: Rossum Electromusic and UA are very tightly affiliated, as Dave moonlights as an engineer at UA. UA is also invested in Rossum Electromusic. It is such a pleasure to converse with Dave, and I miss the pre-covid days when I could just walk down the stairs and chat with him at HQ.

With all that in mind, during the final dialing-in, I asked myself "what if the most musical result and the most authentic result were two different things". I switched from "shooting out" to "taste tests". I included CEM and Ladder filters along with PolyMAX in its existing state. People really liked the sound of my analog prototype, but there were some aspects of ladders, and some aspects of the unfinished PolyMAX that people liked better. The final filter is more of a cross between an SSM and a Moog, and the top-end of the VCA was opened up a little.

More divergence Opal "chassis" is voice-to-voice variation and the oscillators are a little more drifty. It's vintage and modern at the same time.

One area where PolyMAX completely diverges from analog is the FM. The FM is different from Opal in that it's not DX-style phase modulation, but linear FM, which is the basic paradigm of the FM in most analog synthesizers. However, there are some serious shortcomings to analog FM that were deliberately not modeled. Analog oscillators have a tendency to have very unstable pitch when modulated. I could go deeper into this subject on request. The bottom line is applying "perfect" linear FM to well-modeled analog oscillators is an awesome, very musical sound.

So what we ended up with is an instrument that's "voiced" the way a piano or other acoustic instrument is finished off.

rsp

I like the fact that they actually built analogue circuits on a breadboard to prototype their synth.

[Robmobius]

UAD being too expensive was dark sense of humour.

[trusampler]

zzz

[ghettosynth]

This thread needs some popcorn...



So, I dunno, I watched the video; I think that you can pretty much do all of that with Omnisphere, no?

[kmonkey]

Yeah...few pages later still no real tangible samples, patches, or screenshots of what exactly is "better" with this UA synth, when questioned and tried to be compared to decade-old releases.

All you get is "sounds better to me when I listen to it on youtube"...

Priceless. Going outta here.

(to repeat: I have it installed here...it is an ok synth. Actually, it's above marginal. But free U-he Tyrell or Super 8 can top it easily. While paid releases such as Repro or I don't know...Serum?...they destroy this..don't bullshit me with 24khz tones or clinical phase differences seen only on analyzers)

[_leras]

Thread lock when?

Hopefully soon. Because I don't think he gets my dark sense of humor or understands irony or sarcasm. Having said that, I'm only dishing out what he served to me in the first place.

You're trolling, and being quite mean.

UAD has never been a favourite on kvr. The guy just suggested a reason why that might be. I think you're taking it slightly out of context on purpose.

Things with iLok are also not popular here...