UAD PolyMAX - This thing is Sick

[vitocorleone123]

Doesn't bother me, I just turn it up to compensate.

Just as one does with a hardware synth.

My SE-02 with the SE ladder filter loses volume when the resonance is increased. Just turn it up.

My OB-6 loses volume depending on the filter setting (middle areas). Just turn it up.

PolyMax loses volume when the resonance is increased. Delete!! Actually, it's a great synth for quick and easy analog things, like a lot of people would use a Prophet for, or a classic Juno. PolyMax sounds great.

[LFO8]

Doesn't bother me, I just turn it up to compensate.

Just as one does with a hardware synth.

Except with hardware you can operate with 2 hands and software you're controlling the paramaters with a mouse? Hence unnecessary cumbersomeness that can easily be programmed around since it's software.

[Uncle E]

In case anyone is making these critiques thinking UA will listen, they won't. It's their way or the highway. I can possibly imagine them adding MIDI Learn some day, given that it affects all their instruments, but there's no way they're adding bass or volume compensation to the PolyMAX filter.

[LFO8]

In case anyone is making these critiques thinking UA will listen, they won't. It's their way or the highway. I can possibly imagine them adding MIDI Learn some day, given that it affects all their instruments, but there's no way they're adding bass or volume compensation to the PolyMAX filter.

BURN THEM!!!

[zerocrossing]

the extreme volume drop when adding resonance is killing it right away for me. gui is neat and tidy.

Agree. I like the synth for what it is and it's sound, but that to me comes across as a bug rather than a desirable feature.

I just fired up my Nina (24 db transistor ladder low pass filter, kind of Moogish) and Polymax, cranked up the resonance, tuned them identically, and they have the exact same drop in the fundamental.

That’s how those filters behave. I’m not saying that you should like it, but there’s a reason why they’re constantly copied and regarded as one of the best and most iconic filters.

Well enjoy your polymax then.

I had a couple of voyagers, schippmann ebbe und flut, I think 30+ different 5U modular VCFs and so on. Strange that this polymax is the only one I instantly skipped using and never turned off the minimoog due to volumeloss when using the resonance. Guess I got faulty ones back in the day..
But seriously...
Like I said it is just too much, not realistic at all. The only synth I had that acts this way is an Alpha Juno, that one loses a lot of volume when adding reso.

I cannot enjoy it like it is, great that you can.

I literally put it up against an actual transistor ladder filter and got identical results, and you ignore it and say, "unrealistic." That's called "confirmation bias." It's absolutely "realistic." Just to prove you're talking out your butt hole, I checked PolyMax against the transistor ladder in the PolyBrute as well. Same. I checked PolyMax against the Model D clone filter in my ATC-X. Actually, not the same. The Model D clone actually brings down the fundamental a bit more.

So, go ahead and name drop as many synths as you feel you need to make yourself feel like you know what you're talking about, but it's not working on anyone but you. Anyone who's actually spent some time with a classic 24 db ladder filter has experienced the same behavior that PolyMax emulates. Of course, not all filter topologies do this. The Steiner filter in the PolyBrute does not. My Dominion 1 actually has bass compensation too, as does the Prophet 6.

So go ahead and not like that type of filter. There's no law that says you have to like it. I searched to see if the one in the Voyager had some sort of compensation built in, and I couldn't find anything, so it's probably safe to assume it behaves the same way but you were so in love with it that you didn't notice it. PolyMax has issues, IMO, but none of them are related to how it mimics an analog synth or general sound quality. Smooth aliasing free self resonating filter, oscillator sync and FM, even all the way up to C6. Not many plugins can boast that.

Where it falls down is in a general lack of features. One LFO? What? Where's my 3rd mod envelope!? How a plugin doesn't even respond to aftertouch in 2023 is beyond me, but I guess a lot of people who grew up with classic analogs never used aftertouch and they must be PolyMax's target audience. So, it was a nice freebee, but Opal is far superior.

[zerocrossing]

FYI, since I brought up Opal, while it does the same transistor ladder bass drop off thing, you can compensate by having filter 2 a high pass with resonance turned up.

[Uncle E]

How dare you mess with perfection!

[LFO8]

How dare you mess with perfection!

[andy-cytomic]

u-he does it. If I may paraphrase Urs, I think he said the filters that don’t compensate bass sound better, and that the bass compensation itself is what messes them up.

Of course, maybe UA messed up and went too far. I don’t use a lot of resonance with poly synths so I didn’t notice.

A 4 pole cascade filter with global feedback (eg Moog Transistor Ladder, Jupiter-8 OTA etc) will naturally attenuate the frequencies below the cutoff as resonance increases. This can be compensated by increasing the input volume, or by increasing the output volume, or a combination of both. Depending on how this is done, and where the non-linearities occur in the circuit it can change the tone of the filter - which is actually an important part of the sound of some filters.

As an example in the JP8 filter there is partial compensation through the resonance OTA, which changes the frequency response of the resonance signal before it hits a non-linearity, which changes the resonance tone considerably. This means the resonance doesn't get drowned out as easily by large input signal levels:



In digital it's trivial to increase the input volume to the filter automatically with resonance and it will be equivalent to turning up the level knobs on all the oscillator inputs together, which would not change the tone of the filter since the resonance path remains untouched.

Also I really don't think the synth geek crowd at KVR is the target audience for the PolyMAX. They are deliberately keeping things as basic as possible for their customer base, which I think is the right decision from them.

[Lbdunequest]

If you can make great sounds with this synth that means the filter is great. End of story.

[drunken jesus]

Presets aren’t very great but it’s simple to program, one weird bug I noticed is the filter cutoff and master volume were linked thankfully I had the volume low

Typically I’ll make patches in savihost but having the gain jump to 100 every time I go to adjust the cutoff is really odd will have to see if it does the same in a daw

[idoru97214]

If you can make great sounds with this synth that means the filter is great. End of story.

Epilogue - and if you can't, then this synth sucks. The end. Again.

( ^ I am kidding)

[Lbdunequest]

Presets aren’t very great but it’s simple to program, one weird bug I noticed is the filter cutoff and master volume were linked thankfully I had the volume low

Typically I’ll make patches in savihost but having the gain jump to 100 every time I go to adjust the cutoff is really odd will have to see if it does the same in a daw

Are you drunk?

When you initiate fillter cutoff either its low pass or high pass it naturaly lowers the output amplitude. So in this case every synth has a bug. It just physics.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Presets aren’t very great but it’s simple to program, one weird bug I noticed is the filter cutoff and master volume were linked thankfully I had the volume low

Typically I’ll make patches in savihost but having the gain jump to 100 every time I go to adjust the cutoff is really odd will have to see if it does the same in a daw

Were you using MIDI control of any kind? The MIDI CC's are hardwired and can't be changed. So if you assigned a MIDI CC to control a filter macro parameter in your host for example, and that same MIDI CC was also hardwired to the volume control, you'd get one CC controlling both.

[pdxindy]

If you can make great sounds with this synth that means the filter is great. End of story.

You can make great sounds with a DX7. That means it must have a great filter too