The SSI2144 reprises the SSM2044 of legacy chipmaker
Solid State Micro Technology, which many believe to be the best-sounding analog synthesis filter IC ever produced.
The SSM2044 is a classic 4-pole lowpass filter chip, as used in a large number of great synths, including the PPG Wave 2.3, the Korg Monopoly, Polysix, and Trident, Seil Opera6 and others.
Interesting, same chip as the Waldorf M uses… implementation here is bound to be quite different with no resonance control, its absolutely a buttery smooth filter when the resonance is low and saturates super nice on the M. Also a very pure sounding filter to play in self oscillation.
Still haven’t gotten my shipping notice perhaps I missed out on the first batch. *just got an email back from them saying they got more orders than expected and mine should ship out this week or early next week
yeah, it would have been kind of nice for it to have stereo on the return/output though just to have the wet/dry knob right there to control it… I dunno it doesn’t bother me much I have other things going to stereo effects and what not but it would have been kind of handy. I suppose they would have had to implement a stereo drive also, no matter what they did I suppose people would be asking for 1 more feature, just the nature of the thing.
I was thinking maybe they could route the pitch in through the midi channel and use the config app to set up a quantizer on the midi pitch out? Idk but would be sick.
You can switch between 5 pitches by routing the lfo to different oscillators I believe, as long as it can go audio rate. The lfo can switch between four and oscillator b can switch pitches between is pitch and a sum of it and oscillator a should give you five pitches… no way for it to cycle automatically though as far as I can find… still useful though if it can go audio rate.
The idea would be that the S+H and/or LFO (and/or whatever else) would provide a CV signal to use as a pitch cv signal. But it would be unmusical without quantization.
I suspect you could get some interesting stuff with tuning in the Envelope B as a pulse burst getting the fall rate to land musically and then using the midi lfo as a clocked square wave lfo to transpose that musically at a rate that gives a good variation to the clock triggering the envelope burst. Maybe then feed that into the sample and hold and dial in a rate that captures interesting patterns for pitch. You could even mult the pitch signal maybe use one for sample and hold and have that go to the main oscillator and then the other going to VCOB doing through zero FM or something… would have been kind of nice if you could have made that triple lfo be square waves though, the divisions would have given some good potential for sequencer like effects, still you could be using it for rhythmic volume modulation or what not.
I hope that the midi converter lets you turn portamento / portamento speed on off via midi cc like there midi 1U does, really fun to sequence midi and lock stuff like that… I get the wanting to do the self contained system patching but if the midi converter is as nice as the 1U I don’t think people will be at all bothered controlling it with midi.
Since I’m guessing there are people with actual lives not stalking both MW as well as here for Cascadia info, I thought I’d upload a pic of a very useful post Intellijel just made re: some questions folks have had that I think I’ve seen here as well.
From that post
“Also of note: The S&H trigger in, SYNC A, SYNC B, ENV A GATE and ENV B gate are all comparator based and can be triggered by a variety of waveforms including the triangle LFOs and the Slew/EF outputs.”
That definitely opens up triggering options for self contained patching.
I’ve seen a lot of folks wanting to treat it that way but I think it’s a bit dangerous, not least of all because you’d inevitably want to augment it with eurorack anyway
I’d be quicker to compare it to semi-modulars like the M32, Neutron, Taiga, Arp etc. - it’s essentially a single mono voice with no effects and fairly limited modulation, I don’t think it’d stack up well against most modular setups. It’s definitely an affordable way to get these ‘modules’ though, and could act as a good starting point. And of course works perfectly well as a standalone mono synth. It tempts me mostly as an uber-sh-101, but my 104hp modular has 3.5 voices and a bunch of stereo effects so to get to that point you’d probably need to double the price anyway so it starts to look less cost effective.
you beat me to it! I’m Cassilda&Carcosa on mod wigglers.