Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

"Pretty much every patch I listened to on the A6 had a kind of buzzy 
nasal character (not necessarily _bad_, but who knows it might be  very 
annoying after a while). "


I don't want to get into an extended discussion of the A6 here because it is 
an evolver list. Just to say, it is a deep synth and many preconceptions 
arise from people not understanding how to use it properly.... not 
surprising as it takes weeks, months, years to figure it all out. 
Especially, do not judge the A6 from factory presets, the mixer levels on 
most of them are very wrong, leading it to sound overdriven, harsh and 
pinched. Partly becuase of its comprehensive pre and post filter mixing the 
A6 had a VAST range of possible colors and textural possibilties from both 
the VCOs and filters - more than any other analogue I've ever heard, it can 
emulate moog, roland, oberhiem characteristics pretty well and much more 
besides, it even does some things I've only heard from an FS1R or virus, it 
also emulates vintage string machines, EPs etc very very well. You can also 
control tuning in different ways and thus radically tailor the character of 
the synth. Hey, its an extraordinary synth with extraordinary routing and 
modulating possibilties... The filters are quite lovely and extremely 
flexible, and I've never heard anyone diss then anywhere actually! They can 
sound soft or hard, you can do pretty much what you want with them (not as 
flexible as VA obviously, but better sounding)... its unbelievably lush and 
articulate if you want it to be, hard and cutting if you want that..

as for the envelope question, they can be set very fast if u want them, so 
fast that there is an audible click when they come in (i.e. too fast) so 
there is no slow envelope issue with the current A6 software... again there 
is huge flexibilty here, far more than most synths offer, you can even 
adjust the envelope speeds separately for filters and pitch individually for 
each patch!

The A6 fx are generic (a design afterthought) and in no way creatively 
integrated into the signal flow  in an evolver/nord g2 kinda way... but it 
has decent enough (alesis wedge) verb, chorus etc which the evolver lacks. 
On paper the A6 sequencer is more flexible than the evolver in that more 
modulations are possible, but the evolver has some unique tricks (eg 
sequencer routing to fx modulation) and is considerably funner to use. For 
me this makes the Evo seq in fact more creative in practice.

BUT one thing the A6 cannot do is sound anything like an evolver! :) I think 
an a6 and a polyevolver would make a VERY good team for making almost every 
poly analogue sound under the sun

BTW I have an evolver and an A6, but not a polyevolver, my judgement is 
based on the fact that the polyevolver will sound pretty much the same as 
evolver. If I am wrong about that some of my judgements will not stand.

Richard