Someone pointed out on YT that what PM brags about figuring out how to fold are in fact not clean saw and square waves. You can see them when Nick quickly passez over the waveforms on the oscilloscope. Strangely, he doesn’t spend a lot if time looking at the waveforms when he usually does.
This should not take away from how capable this unit is at creating timbres. Just maybe not the miracle they touted.
Also no PWM. And yeah those generators should get into audible.
Sound wise I love it truly and being put off by slope speed seems a little pedantic, even more so considering my rack’o’crack that could be employed to crank it up when needed.
As a self contained ecosystem there is more than enough to be experimenting with though and I’m finding it almost too much to not fold myself (no pun) and pre-order… 
This is absolutely true, the images of oscilloscopes are very clear that there is a different waveform created and I think this “marketing term” was coined in the introduction video for the Kickstarter campaign. There Micheal Johnson loughs and talks about the “it folds the unfoldable”, and both start loughing 
In many interviews Richard Nichols explaines that the true function of the warping is to get a waveform, which has nearly the same tonal characteristics as the traditional and then put that through wavefolding.
… just in defence of PM … this said … I wouldn’t call it “bragging”
Having the VRL a couple of weeks now, I can tell that it’s not only as good as the various reviews on YT told us … IMO it’s even better. It delivers a beautiful unique melodical and musical sound.
Okay it can screech and sound metallic as well, but I can confirm that there are patches to create sounds, which could be from some organic sources somewhere in a natural environment.
And … it’s an instrument … not only a source of sounds It begs to be played.
i wholeheartedly agree.
Guys. Please stop. I don’t need this. 
(don’t stop)
How’s the build quality?
the build quality is stellar.
it is built extremely well.
The only thing missing from this VRL is a carry handle on the top!
How are people finding their VRL now that it’s been in the wild for a while? Is it a keeper?
Definitely yes.
What style do you use it for? I’m interested in ambient textures.
Well, I got it, because it’s a “laboratory”. I use it for the unusual. I use it as West-Coast style instrument.
After some hours of getting my head around I started to let my ideas flow. There are patches, which sound like Richard Nicol said. We could play them in the nature and it would sound like they belong there. Well not all the time … one of my patches would sound like Toucans in an European wood …
Haha, cool! I recently got an Arp 2600FS and I’m finding I can get some very experimental laboratory sounds out of it, so not sure if it would overlap a bit too much with the voltage lab. I’d like the west coast flavour though 
Definitely yes …
Definitely no …
The ARP is based on subtractive synthesis and the VRL comes with a complex oscillator, which can do FM/AM, waveshaping and wavefolding. IMO both synths can’t copy the sound of the other, because the electronics to create the sound is so different, that the outcome is very different as well.
You should check out some YT videos on Buchla-esque (Buchla 200e, Music Easel, Serge, Make Noise DPO, VRL etc.) or west-coast synths and compare this to your ARP and you will see … or better … hear the differences.
I made this with it
I did record a pretty little piece into the morphegene, but those sounds were sourced from the VRL, the bass and “bird” sounds came from a live sequence of the VRL. (I don’t have two labs!). I fed both of them into a reverb and then recorded to tape. It can certainly do pretty. It can also horror sound track as well.
If any of you cats are using the VRL with an FH-2 and an expressive controller of some kind, I’d really be interested in hearing about it. I’m also interested in knowing how solid the pitch tracking is over a wide octave range, and how stable the oscillators are.
Cheers!
Thanks for the share, that’s really nice!
I’ve been able to muck about on one of these a few days a short while ago and it was serious fun.
The Laboratory moniker is deserved. Now my mind is still racing about the possibilities self patched, it truly is an ecosystem capable of spawning many unknown species and environments.
This deserves to be a classic, the features packed in although crowded allow one to really explore the ‘limitations’ of the system and I for one would love to be able to use it on a daily basis. Fitting a scope into the bottom right would be most useful I feel.
