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the concept of evolver is to generate new sounds that, well, evolve. sounds that change, subtly or dramatically. look back at the prophet-vs and korg wavestation as previous
examples of instruments that are never static. and, i have to admit, analog still has a warmer, more natural sound, partially because it is never perfect; it has that natural slop. yes, there are some very cool
digital synths out there also; even some that mathematically emulate analog synths have a nice edge to them. i don't think analog is always better, or that digital is always better; they're just
different.
so, evolver has the analog components, and also some digital components. i'm trying to generate new sounds via the interaction of analog and digital electronics. best of both worlds. i've always liked feedback
in synths, so there is extensive use of tunable feedback in evolver, interconnecting the digital feedback loops with the analog electronics. i like sounds that blow up, predictably or not. when sounds blow up
digitally, it can hurt your ears - i've done that enough times designing the soft synths! however, when evolver goes ape, the analog circuitry actually keeps the signal in line just enough that the result is
wild sounds, not pain. plus, the feedback constantly moves, and differently in each channel (each channel has their own independant feedback path), giving some very cool stereo ambience to the
sounds.
products :
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dave smith founded sequential circuits, the premier manufacturer of professional music synthesizers,
in the mid-70s. in 1977, he designed the prophet-5, the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument. this revolutionary
product was the world's first polyphonic and programmable synth, and set the standard for all synth designs that have followed. the
prophet instruments played a major part in the recordings of all popular music styles, and are still prized by musicians today.
dave is also generally known as the driving force behind the generation of the midi specification in 1981-in fact, he coined the
acronym. in 1987 he was named a fellow of the audio engineering society (aes) for his continuing work in the area of music synthesis.
after sequential, dave was president of dsd, inc, an r&d division of yamaha, where he worked on physical modeling synthesis and
software synthesizer concepts. he then started the korg r&d group in california, which went on to produce the professional
musician favorite wavestation products and other technology. he then took over as president at seer systems and developed the world's
first software based synthesizer running on a pc. this synth, commissioned by intel, was demonstrated by andy grove in a comdex
keynote speech in 1994. over 10 million of his second-generation software synth have been sold, which was licensed to creative labs in
1996, and is responsible for 32 of the 64 voices in the awe 64 line of sound cards. the third generation is the world's first first
fully professional software synthesizer, reality, released in 1997. reality was rated the highest of any synth by electronic musician
magazine.
now he's designing hardware instruments again with the evolver and poly evolver synths.
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