From dfevans@barrow.uwaterloo.caThu May 25 00:27:56 1995 Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 00:21:53 -0400 From: David Evans To: ipcress Cc: analogue@hyperreal.com, elgersma@wright.aps.uoguelph.ca Subject: Re: Siel Cruise ipcress wrote: > > Can anyone tell me about a synth called a Siel Cruise. A guy I know wants > to sell me one for 500 dollars Canadian. Is this a good price? What are > these synths like? > Thanx for your help... Ipcress > A friend of mine has a Cruise; he used to be on AH but I think he bailed a while ago. I've only played with it a couple of times. It has three sections: bass, strings, and horns or something like that. The bass section is a pretty standard analogue synth (can't remember the polyphony) where you can choose a bunch of waveforms---32', 16', etc., combine them, add some other stuff, run it trough a filter...the usual. It sounded nice and squishy as I recall. The strings and other section dodn't impress me much; I don't remember much about the sound since I was also playing with an SH-5 controlling a Minimoog and that was filling more of my concentration. I do recall there were these odd switches called "animate" that seemed to make no difference. There were four sounds in each of these lead sections that you could turn on and off individually (so you could layer all of them) and some envelope controls as well, I think. You can decode which part of the keyboard (upper and lower) control which sound source. It has these truly groovey levers that you use to turn things on and off. It's sort-of like the portamento switch on the Juno 106 except about an inch long with a rubber knob on the end. They sort of flop on and off. I don't remember any interfacing capability, but there may be some. It has a pitch bender, is rather big, and looks quite nice. $500 Canadian? No way. I'd pay maybe $250 if it was in perfect shape, but that reflects my current lack of need for yet another VCO-VCF-VCA synth, but then the last time I said that I bought a Poly-61 the next day, so take it for what it's worth. -- David Evans dfevans@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca Computer/Synth Junkie "Default is the value selected by the University of Waterloo composer overridden by your command." Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - Roland TR-707 Manual From tilt@uni-paderborn.deTue May 30 10:16:00 1995 Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 10:33:01 +0200 (MET DST) From: Bertil Munde To: ipcress Cc: analogue@hyperreal.com Subject: Re: Siel Cruise > > Can anyone tell me about a synth called a Siel Cruise. A guy I know wants > to sell me one for 500 dollars Canadian. Is this a good price? What are > these synths like? > Thanx for your help... Ipcress What are $500 Can. in US. currency? Ok, I got mine as a birthday gift from my parents who gave DM 200 for it. ( what is about $US 140 ). This is too high for US pricings on analogue synths, but OK for european overpriced standards. To the machine itself: It seems to be the brother ( maybe sister ) of an ARP product ( OMNI? ) and the poly-part is said to be marketed also as the Crumar Orchestrator(???), but these informations are to be confirmend. the architecture Keyboard: 4 1/2 octaves ( from mind ), fixed split-point in the middle. Tone Generation: 2 Synths in one. Poly Section: Octave Divided DCO. Seems to have single Filter with Multi-Trig of single ADSR 4 Main Presets: Brass, Strings, Piano, Accordion-likes. These Presets are divided in 2 or 3 Tone-Color presets, Mostly high and low, Strings can be percussive, brass can have ( urgh ) resonance (splat). This gives a total of 10 tone colours, which can be combined freely. Main drawback: they can not be mixed seperately. Modifiers: Sort of. There is a small ADSR/Filter section, Some Presets enable some of them, A/D for Strings, A and Cutoff for Brass, and so on. Sound: Gives some mellotronish strings, a fair good piano. and is a bit slim in its sound. Mono Section: 1 DCO. About 15 Presets of waveforms combined with fixed filter/ADSR settings. These presets can be changed to some general waveforms ( Mostly Saw ) at different pitches ( from 32' to 4' ). When being in this free mode, the ADSR/FILTER can be accessed in whole. Filter: No Keybord Tracking, no seperate LFO depth, no ADSR depth. Very basic. Early resonance gives wierd effects. There seems to be some low-bit digital control hidden inside. You can hear steps when moving the slider. And you can trick the slider by setting it just on the edge between to steps. Gives great distortion. Sound: Great. Real Basic, big balls, not very flexible. Good for bass and lead-lines. NO CV/GATE ! Keyboard: Can be split in the middle to have MONO/POLY Section on different keyboard sections. MONO can have Lowest/Highest Note Priority. Mine has been modified to have all cominations of keyboard-modes accessible, ( for example: UPPER - MONO; LOWER - MONO/POLY ) but this is a MOD! . General: Totaly performance oriented instrument. Sliders. Flip - Buttons with little weights under the cover to have fast and exact flips ( this is crazy, you should see this technique realized in a SYNTH ) Every active controll has its on LED, you see what has effect even on darkest stages ( they light the whole panel ). It is not rich in its sounds, the poly section has a touch of being cheesy, but i like it nevertheless, because i do performance oriented music with it. It is large, heavy, has the mark of an italian design group on it, has even designed keys. It has NOT the synth-possibilities you would expect from an analogue ( even if it looks like to have them with those flip-buttons) It is, as said before, very basic in sound and capabilities. No memory. I hope my english wasn't too bad, if there are questions left, please email. I have the ( multi-colored/A3) schematics, the mod schematics and the ( 2 page, How to turn it on ) users-manual in 20 languages and the ORIGINAL TRANSPORT BAG. bertil