Hmm… I watched Marc Doty’s first video about the oscillators, and couldn’t help but notice that all the waveforms seem to suffer from some kind of pronounced noise or aliasing, even in the lower registers. That’s concerning. It was particularly noticeable on the square wave. I hope that’s just an issue with the prototype and not otherwise inherent to all production units. That would be a nonstarter for me. And here I really wanted one of these… Damn it.
Cheers!
2nd video
Don’t get the comment about aliasing, as the focus of the video is on the analog oscillators. I thought aliasing only happens, by definition, in the digital domain. Maybe it’s just noise, whether it’s “sideband” as the Youtube commenter claims, or something else.
I only meant to use the word “aliasing” descriptively, because anyone familiar with synthesis is likely to know what that means in the timbral sense of the word. It’s difficult to otherwise describe the sound of a given sonic anomaly when you can’t be sure what’s actually causing it. I certainly didn’t intend to make myself look ill-informed… Although at times, that’s easy enough to do (smirk).
Cheers!
You and I posted around the same time, lol. I was referring to the Youtube comment rather than yours. Also, your comment was about the first video, whereas my comment was about the comment in the 2nd video.
I admit there’s still a little bit of the (very mediocre) engineering student left in me. Our EE professor ground it into our heads that aliasing is one of the issues associated with digital sampling. That’s about the only thing I remembered from that class - got a D the first time, and a C the 2nd time.
Yeesh! I just watched Doty’s third video, and it seems that distortion/sidebanding/aliasing issue, whatever the cause, is present on the digital side as well. Not good. There is some crackling present in Nick’s video too, although that sounds like clipping to me. Regardless, someone at Dreadbox needs to address this. I’m still hoping it’s something that can be fixed. I really like this concept, but it’s gotta perform if I’m to get one. Cheers!
Part 3 - Digital Oscillators… My unsubstantiated theory is that the digital oscillators were added to increase the max paraphony from 3 notes to 6, so from that perspective the digitals having the same waveforms (except wavetable) as the analogs makes sense. However, only one wavetable sound is featured, so perhaps he is intending to make another video focusing on the wavetable stuff.
I guess that’s one advantage of having hearing damage from being locked up in a gym with ridiculously cranked PA blasting hip hop and whatever for our 9th grade dance… plus attending countless harsh noise, punk, metal, etc. shows - my ears aren’t as sensitive to whatever noise is going on with the Medusa oscillators.
I’m more intrigued by the fact that we seem to be on the exact same schedule. You’re not by chance sitting at your kitchen table having your “morning” coffee at 4pm are you, because that would be some crazy coincidence (smirk)?
Cheers!
About to have dinner with a glass of wine, actually. Then final practice before driving up to my bandmate’s place to work on music.
Round-robin oscillators in Paraphony Mode 1 is neat
Paraphony Mode 2 is featured here:
One filter for all voices, so it’s technically paraphonic, but there are Individual envelopes per oscillator, which delivers the articulation you’d expect from a fully polyphonic synth.
This interests me more than the upcoming Moog polysynths. True story.
i hav a nyx and its nice for lush reverb stuff.
hopefully my erebus diy will work if i finish it.
So, I just got word back from Marc Doty about the rather pronounced noise inherent in all the oscillators, both analog and digital… According to Dreadbox, that’s just how it is, and how it’s going to stay. Yeesh!
And with that, I’m out. Not acceptable. What a shame, I really wanted one of these.
Oh well, what can you do (shrug)?
Cheers!
I’m guessing Doty himself seems to like the oscillators, noise and all. Otherwise, no Knobcon 2018 appearance to demo this thing.
Either than or they’re paying him tons of money to do it, LOL
I’m still interested in this thing, but have to admit that the new Radikal Technologies Delta Cep A and the new Yamaha also sound great. Just have to decide what I want more - the expressive grid-controlled synth, the hybrid paraphonic module that sounds great with pads, or the conventional looking keyboard with FM-X engine
“Locrian makes me laugh”… 
He’s mystified by “S. Locrian” which is probably the Altered Dominant scale, aka “altered scale”, aka “Super Locrian”. Sounds exotic, but it’s typically used for soloing over the Hendrix chord (dominant 7th#9) when one is bored of just wanking a blues scale or minor pentatonic.
I think Marc is just a “glass half full” kinda guy. To be honest, I’ve never heard him say a bad thing about any synth, bless his optimistic heart (smirk).
For me though, this particular anomaly is a deal-breaker. Pth…
Cheers!
“S. Locrian - I don’t even know what that is… something in Japanese…”
Oh man I’m still laughing at that one.
Supposedly Nick Batt will get his next turn, umm, at bat!
If I reject this thing (for the time being, hehe) it’ll be because of my vacillation between wanting to play a synth like I play guitar or violin, and wanting to use the synth in a more “meta” manner - the most typical approach being a sequencer or arpeggiator.
Thomann say they have the Medusa available immediately: