Lyle Four Voice Vanilla Synthesizer by muSonics

You might recall muSonics Lyle featured in previous video posts here on MATRIXSYNTH.

The following are some addtional details and pics of the system in via muSonics.

Lyle is a four voice Vanilla Synthesizer with a polyphonic envelope generator system, four voice mixer, MIDI allocation, and utility modules. It is the first polyphonic modular synthesizer with master control of time and timbre since the Oberheim Four Voice, whose circuits it is based on.

Anyone can throw four voices in a box and call it a polyphonic synthesiser, so what makes Lyle so special?

The Polyphonic Envelopes network has its own set of 8 envelope generators, bringing the system total to 16. Its EGs are normaled to the filters, oscillators, and output amplifiers of the system. The Vanilla Envelopes are still available and can be patched to interrupt the Polyphonic Envelopes.

The Polyphonic Envelopes control module is the only one of 7 in the network which is on the front panel. It gives you attack, decay, and sustain control for the VCF and VCA EGs, amount controls to route the VCF EG to the VCF and VCO modulation inputs, and an offset control for the VCF EG to the VCF modulation input (think global filter cutoff.)

There have been a few stabs at aggregate polyphony since Tom Oberheim built Lyle Mays and Pete Namlook their favourite synthesizer, but no one has done this.

Another nice feature of this instrument is the Vanilla Stereo Mixer, which not only gives you level and pan for each voice but also an additioinal gain stage to overdrive if you wish, bringing the total number of manageable gain stages (and potential distortions) to four per voice.

The instrument can be operated without any patch cables on the front panel. MIDI control and audio output happens on the back of the instrument. Patch points are for timbre authoring beyond the default patch, similar to an ARP 2600.

The module complement includes:

- 4 Control Distributor
- 4 Vanilla Modulation
- 4 Vanilla Oscillators
- 4 Vanilla Filter
- 8 Vanilla Envelope
- 4 Vanilla Mixer
- Vanilla Stereo Mixer
- Polyphonic Envelopes (8 additional envelopes)
- Japanese Modulation
- Transistor Logic
- Active Multiples
- Active Attenuators
- 4 MIDI Interfaces plus polyphonic MIDI allocator

Lyle also includes a road case, which is required because there is no other way to ship it assembled.

Lead time of 6 months or so. I need to finish the backlogue of current orders first.

The deposit is 50%. When your instrument is ready an invoice for the balance and shipping will be generated.

A page of demonstration audio and video is at https://musonics.com/lyle_videos.htm

If you're interested in purchasing Lyle please visit https://musonics.com/ and it can be found at the top of the page.

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What is The Vanilla Synthesizer? It's Ready, That's What

via the STG Soundlabs/muSonics Electronic Newsletter:

Is it The Vanilla Synthesizer or the muSonics TVS?

I started working on this project a year and a half ago.

Originally my thought process was to make a new American format synthesiser that could be sold as modules, kits, and bare boards. I was concerned about the future of the format, and I felt a new line of basic modules and infrastructure at a variety of price points was important. I still do.

STG Soundlabs was a failure because I made things that ultimately the eurorack market simply did not want. Yes, I sold some, and will continue to maintain the line as best as I can, but it's very hard to find photos of eurorack installations with STG Soundlabs modules in them, but rare to find a nice big man-sized synthesiser without my modules in it.

Another thing I wanted to do was teach myself how to do my own engineering. It didn't start that way, but it became that way. I'd been a hardware product developer since 2005 but never actually laid out a circuit board. That is no longer true, and I've done things beyond this project that I haven't even talked about.

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muSonics Lyle: Deep Note

video upload by suitandtieguy

"Deep Note on Lyle, the first properly polyphonic modular synthesizer since the Oberheim Four Voice.

If you have a Moog One, the preset is TK-421 and yes I programmed it. (the very competent marketing department wouldn't let us tag authorship in the patch description.) Page McConnell, you're welcome!

This was a bit more rough-and-tumble than that preset, but might be cooler. It uses polyphonic glide AND envelopes, and I had to do this over and over again to set the voices up to start on the right notes and get the timbre where I wanted it. Amos had to update the firmware for the MIDI-CV modules so the glide time was long enough!

The envelopes are used on 3 of the voices to spread them an octave, a fifth, and a third. the upper voices start on G below middle C and the lower voices start on G above middle C.

I referred back to the score that was published back in 2018 and approximated the notes, but there just isn't enough oscillators to do the whole thing.

There are enough to make it sound good though.

I still used the new Sony camera but recorded it via SDI with one of my Ki Pro recorders because the audio inputs sound MUCH better and it records in Apple ProRes format which Digital Performer can handle without conversion. This is a really cool setup and is so easy to crank this stuff out with. Expect more."

muSonics Lyle vs Continuo - Too Short for Oktoberfest

video upload by suitandtieguy

"This is an eight stage sequence of dyads within a minor 7th chord from the Continuo. It's in E minor and gets modulated to the fourth a couple of times. It's not a composition, it's just a demo.

I really like demonstrating this instrument without any patch cables at all but decided to use each voice's sine LFO to slowly modulate their filters, attenuated by the Control Distributor and fed into the secondary control input of the Vanilla Filters so they're still getting pitch voltage from the sequencer and modulation from the Polyphonic Envelopes.

The curve ball I throw into this is taking the left pulse wave from voice one and sending it into the clock input of Transistor Logic's flip-flop. The data input is normaled to the negative output of the flip-flop so with this simple routing it becomes an octave divider, but since it's a logic module the output is 0-5V. This is fed into input two of the Vanilla Filter of voice one, and partway through I turn that knob up so you can hear it, bringing in a four note bass element."