Paula Maddox
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I’ve been looking for a Parva, and with used prices being pretty close to the preorder price, I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring for a Caladan. I’m also finding myself unreasonably excited over the prospect of an OPL3 card 
Not going to lie, though. Feels a like a Schrödinger thing to put down money on a synth that may be either four or eight voices. I think maybe I’ll step away from the rollercoaster of day by day development uodates and just be pleasantly surprised by whatever is delivered.
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I was trying to understand the number of voices myself. I was thinking (at least for the analog stuff) it was one voice per card and there’s eight slots, so that’s eight voices total? If that’s correct, I was assuming the pre-order was four voices if you got the four-card version.
I can’t pre-order one myself right now, so if it turns out to be a great synth, then I’ll just have to pay a bit more when I can.
Sure, she designed the 002 which I owned and was great, but hasn’t been with Modal, in many years which I think is a failed company literally and otherwise. Just say Paula Maddox designed it. She has done many other projects that have nothing to do with them.
Yeah, one voice minimum per Parva card, but he states in that latest video that he’s hoping it’s possible for 2 voices per card. So 4 Parva cards could potentially be 8 voices if I’m understanding correctly.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Two would be nice, but I’ll work off the assumption it’s one per card. I’m looking forward to seeing where this synth goes. Some other things are higher on my wish list, but this is one to watch for sure.
I’ve been blowing hot n cold as to weather I should order.
The OPL3 card is mentioned but I have a Twisted electrons Blastbeats.
The SID card is mentioned but I have a Twisted electrons therapsid.
The 303 card is mentioned but I have an Avalon on order.
I have a room full of synths, what is Caladan going to give me what I already havn’t got?, thats a question I’ll have to keep asking myself today before the offer ends.
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a room full of less synths. that’s a big positive i see about it - a consistent workflow to work with different sound engines.
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Thats where I differ, the one box that does everything maybe isn’t my thing?
I love my studio and like to invite people over to have jams, no good everybody hovering over one box.
But there again, if that one box is good………
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I’d just wait if you don’t have a high demand for it specifically There will be used ones.
I’m on the other end where I only have one table dedicated to all things music and having a single class-compliant usb audio box with a bunch of synths in it would be amazing for my workflow.
(note: I’m not sure how the class-compliance will shake out. I’m pretty sure I understood right that it’ll allow multitracking of the 8 cards. I’m not sure if you will be able to use it as an audio interface to output signal after processing those 8 cards)
I hope it stays 8 stereo outs instead of mono outs, they said they could change it.
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Yeah. I don’t really get the obsession with balanced audio outside of stage pianos. It’s a nice-to-have, for sure. But if ports are limited, more channels are nicer-to-have.
That said, 8 balanced outs still gives a ton of routing options. I imagine it would only be a problem if one had 8 cards, wanted to assign a timber per card, and used each card’s DSP to do something stereo. Which feels pretty edgy.
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I have been outed as an edgelord 
I see this as a multitimbral ambience box (especially with the endless encoders with visual rings) and this was exactly what I wanted it for. Something I used to do on the MC 707.
Bringing together all the different flavours with different cards would be a dream, everything altogether in one box.
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I meant that using it in such a way would be an edge case, not that someone who wanted it would be an edgelord
I’m realizing I’m making a lot of assumptions here, though. For one, I’m assuming outputs are assigned based on parts. And it only has 8 parts, so you wouldn’t ever be able to have more than 8 outs (like, even if they stayed stereo jacks we still wouldn’t be able to get 16 dual-mono outs out of them because we’d still be limited by the 8 parts). But I don’t think they’ve given details about this yet, so really just hypothesizing on my part.
On the other hand, most of my synths are mono without the FX, anyway. And if I were using the individual outs, I’d be sending them to external FX, so at first blush mono looks perfectly suitable. But lots of overlooked things here — not the least of which is the even the original Parva had the ability to modulate the pan and spread of its oscs. No reason to think the new version (and other cards, if made) wouldn’t also have stereo uses apart form DSP.
So not so edgy after all! I really hope they’re able to stay stereo.
But I’ve clearly taken the speculation bus a stop or two further than I’m comfortable with, post preorder. I’ll shut up now and wait patiently.
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I left the live stream the other day thinking I heard that it was the case that poeple who ordered would be contacted prior to shipping about the cards they want but maybe I heard what I wanted to hear. I am not sure I need 4 Parva cards - or maybe I do, who knows, would like to hear them. What sold me was the OB X/Jupiter/Drum Synth card possibilities so I am hoping that I will have the option to either get one or 2 of those or delay until they are ready.
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The Caladan dev expressed interest in getting u-He Zebra and Diva running on their hardware and u-He basically said they were game!
The mere technical possibility of this alone is tantalising, very interesting for what might come in the future. Finally a viable alternative to the DAW and laptop for VSTs.
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When he mentioned CLAP in the stream my one and only hope was for Diva. Hope this works out 
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Exciting details on the OPL3 card: Looks like it’ll have 4 Elka Synthex filters on it routed so you can play the card as a 4-voice poly with filters, or get a lot more polyphony if you route multiple voices through the same filter:
Extremely cool stuff. I’m also excited to see what the remixed Parva card is like. There was talk of fitting 2 voices per card. I’m hoping the remix will make the card a workhorse for percussive synthesis and analog polyphony.
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Gotta say this thing is getting more interesting… Excited to build my own franken-synth once a bunch of different cards are available for it.
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This confuses the heck out of me. OPL3 does 6 4-op channels (in addition to either 6 2-op channels or 3 2-op + percussion). Limiting it to 4 voices and using two OPL3s to do it (for stereo, I imagine?) seems off. But I guess if you can run the voices through a single filter paraphonically (and just keep the filter wide open) then no harm no foul.
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