MARS Vacuum-Tube Synthesizer: The Most Aggressive Modern Synth I've Ever Tested

video upload by Vulture Culture

0:00 Intro Jam
2:17 Mono Mode & Basic Oscillator Shapes
4:16 The Vacuum Tube Filter
7:49 Duo Mode / Polivoks-Style Duophony
8:47 Poly 1 Mode / Korg Mono/Poly Behavior
10:47 Ensemble Mode & Supersaw Sounds
14:14 LFO Shapes, Retrigger & One-Shot Mode
17:31 Sample & Hold Filter Modulation
20:16 FM Synthesis Overview
29:00 Pros & Cons
37:43 Closing Thoughts

"What happens when you build a vacuum tube-based hybrid synthesizer in a Soviet space lab and send it back from the future? Today we’re demoing, reviewing, and explaining MARS from Eternal Engine Electronic Musical Instruments — one of the strangest, most beautiful, and most aggressive modern synthesizers I’ve ever played.

MARS is often described as a four-voice polyphonic tube synthesizer, but architecturally it’s more accurately a paraphonic synthesizer. The four digital oscillator voices can be played across multiple notes, but they all share the same tube-based filter and vactrol-based amplifier. That puts MARS more in the tradition of instruments like the Korg Mono/Poly and Formanta Polivoks than a conventional analog polysynth.

In this video, I walk through the full architecture of the Eternal Engine MARS: the digital oscillator section, mono / duo / poly voice modes, pulse-width modulation, ensemble mode, FM synthesis, modulation matrix, envelopes, LFO, sample & hold, the gorgeous Nixie lamp interface, the resonant vacuum tube filter, and the asymmetric tube overdrive that gives this synth its raw, snarling character.

This is not a safe, polite, modern analog synth. MARS is boutique, unusual, heavy, beautifully built, and absolutely vicious when pushed. The tube filter and drive section give it a sound that feels alive in a way most modern synthesizers don’t — somewhere between vintage analog synth, industrial bass machine, experimental sound design box, and Soviet sci-fi artifact.

If you’re into industrial music, EBM, darkwave, synthwave, experimental electronic music, vintage synthesizers, boutique synths, tube distortion, paraphonic synthesis, analog filters, FM basses, PWM pads, or Polivoks-style aggression, MARS is worth hearing.

I also talk through who I think this synth is actually for — and who should probably pass on it. Because while I absolutely adore the sound, MARS is not a cheap “do everything” synth, and it’s not trying to compete with mass-market analog polysynths. It’s a character instrument. A monster. A special machine for people who want something truly different."

MARS Musical Audio Research Station Iris Farfisa Bontempi - Ares Software

video by Museo del Synth Marchigiano

You can find an additional post from 2012 featuring the MARS Synthesizer here.

"In this video we demonstrate how the Ares software allows you to program the Mars card, Isa card inserted in the computer, connected via Scsi connector to the Ics816 audio output card.

The Musical Audio Research Station (MARS) is a programmable specialized digital machine for real-time audio applications which has been entirely developed by the Italian Bontempi-Farfisa research institute IRIS.
The MARS workstation is composed of:

• one or more sound boards, called NERGAL connected to one or more audio units;
• a PC running the graphical interactive development environment called ARES.

The first version of MARS, which has been presented at the ICMC92 was running on Atari computers.

The sound generation board is a full size standard IBM ISA card running at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz.

The board may be divided into three main sections: DSP, control and mixer sections.

The DSP section contains two dedicated IRIS DSPs called X20 with their respective program and sample memories. These DSPs are memory mapped onto the microcontroller memory area.

The X20 is a fully programmable DSP. Its architecture is highly parallel and allows pipelined operations.

Its internal arithmetic is 2’s complement fixed point with a 16 x 16 bit multiplier and a 24 bit arithmetic and logic unit.

Each X20 has two blocks of internal data memory which may be addressed in parallel. It also contains a 512 x 64 bit words of external program memory, and may access to external sample memory. The sample memory is supported by SIMM modules with 4 up to 32 megabytes of DRAM.

Each X20 provides four audio input channels and four audio output channels. The audio signals are managed on 16 bits. The X20s may be used in parallel or in serie, by sending the four outputs of the first one to the four inputs of the second one.

The control section is managed by a proprietary real-time operating system, called RT20M, running on a MOTOROLA MC68302 microcontroller. The RT20M manages all the MARS objects described previously, and all their interactions with the DSP section, the mixer section and the external world. It also controls any communication through the three ports available on the board: MIDI, RS232, and a special parallel one for high speed connection to the PC’s ISA bus.

The mixer section controls a set of predefined audio mixing operations among boards and audio units.

Each board have one connector to/from the audio-unit, and four connectors (two inputs and two outputs) which allow multi-board links. This last feature allows to create a MARS boards network with a parallel, a serial or a mixed configuration using one or more audio units.

Two types of IRIS audio units are available for NERGAL: low-cost and professional.

The low-cost unit is a small external box (1/3U) with two monophonic input lines, four monophonic output lines, and one stereophonic headphone output.

The professional audio unit is a 2U standard rack module. It is modular and may pilot up to 8 input/output analog channels and 8 input/output digital channels. Each unit can be shared between two different NERGAL boards."

1996 MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) Synthesizer

KEYS 5/1996 Max 3.0, MARS (IRIS) Realtime Sampling + Interview

KEYS 5/1996 Max 3.0, MARS (IRIS) Realtime Sampling + Interview from Jochen Bohnes on Vimeo.

"Die Klänge sind von der Begleit-CD des Magazin KEYS vom Mai 1996. Sie sind ausschliesslich mit der MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) erzeugt worden. Ich habe einige Bilder und Texte der MARS hinzugefügt." Googlish: "The sounds are from the accompanying CD-KEYS magazine of May 1996. They have been exclusively with the MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) is generated. I've added some pictures and texts of the MARS." Update vi Jochen in the comments: "... more about MARS: bohnes.de/mars.html (Translation soon)" Googlish here. Update via elgauchoandres in the comments: "If Giuseppe (Peppino) di Giugno was involved I guess that was a very unique piece. For those who doesn't known di Giugno he developed the 4X system for the IRCAM with Hal Halles (of the Halles synth fame) I wonder if the MARS was a mini 4X? references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_di_Giugno http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogitec_4X http://mustudio.fr/?p=75 http://m.matrixsynth.com/2010/04/mr-braska-visits-mustudio.html [Jochen Bohnes is also a well-known personality, see the about page at bohnes.de.] " Update via jbfairlight in the comments [new post here with Googlish translation]: "For me the MARS (Musical Audio Research Station) system looks like a ISPW (Ircam Signal Processing Workstation) and less powerful ;) Look this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaCR-hYwyw and also It should also read the "ISPW" category (in french) : http://mustudio.fr/?cat=31"