From gstopp@fibermux.comFri Oct 13 10:58:11 1995 Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 10:51:34 PDT From: gstopp@fibermux.com To: analogue@hyperreal.com Subject: Sonic Six About the Sonic Six: The thing looks like a gee-tar case. When you open it there's a 4-octave keyboard in the lower half and the control panel in the lid. The panel is laid out, left to right, as follows: Generator X/Y Tone A/B Mixer VCF plus Contour Articulator Speaker Apparently this machine was intended for use as a portable educational tool for teaching the principles of music synthesis (yeah right). Notice how somebody got the bright idea to use names for the sythesizer functions that were "easier to understand" than the cryptic terminology that those snobby rocket-scientist synthesists use: LFO X/Y VCO A/B Mixer VCF plus Envelope Generator VCA Speaker The thing is way under-enveloped, having only a single AD/AR (switchable) that is shared by everything. I could go into extreme detail but suffice it to say that among the less common features are: * Voltage-controlled LFO's * Duophonic keyboard * Microtonal scaling adjustment for VCO tracking of the keyboard * Real (not EXOR gate) ring modulator with mic pre-amp * Direct output mixer so the VCOs can bypass everything And for the circuit-mongers out there: * Elevated chip temperature exponential VCO's * Moog ladder filter (3046-based) * 3080 VCA's (2 in series, 1 for envelope, 1 for final out ala Minimoog) * Moog hi-frequency oscillator resistor divider keyboard (ala Micro, Multimoog) The two adjectives I usually use when talking about the Sonic Six are "interesting" and "goofy". Gotta love it. - Gene gstopp@fibermux.com ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Stan Ostoja-Kozkowski Has Left The Building Author: geoff@apanix.apana.org.au (Brains) at ccrelayout Date: 10/13/95 8:49 AM Does anyone here actually have any specs on the ol' Six? It was a garish monster with large, clunky slide switches everywhere, and if memory serves, vaguely Minimoog-like in architecture.