Red Sound Darkstar
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Using DSP analog modelling, the DarkStar delivers 8-voice polyphony with two oscillators per voice, faithfully recreating classic analog sounds. The built-in joystick is assignable to filter frequency and resonance or to oscillator mix and ring modulation. There's pink, white and blue noise generation and 2 external inputs. Featuring all the essential 'hands-on' synthesizer parameter controls, DarkStar is housed in a desktop style case.
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User Reviews of the Red Sound Darkstar
- Submitted by spit + smudge from Savannah, GA (214 points) on Mar 17, 2003
- Great little synth(I have the XP2 version serial number 00007!) there are definate improvements from the previous version. Never had the opportunity to work with the older version but i'm sure those improvements were worthwhile. For 0 it was worthwhile considering all its features and abilities. Midi is definately a plus, use it solely for my power electronics project. Only beef is it sounds digital at times, there are tricks to hiding that on the otherhand.
- Good Points: 8 note polyphony with 5 unique voices(all of which can be used as long as you dont cross the 8 note polyphony limit) nice assortment of LFO shapes, nice speed(i love FAST), great filter section(which can be used to manipulate an ourside source!) Too many to list.
- Bad Points: No keyboard yet there is an audition button to hear your sound(for just 1 voice though.) GOOFY presets not even worth playing with.
- Price Paid: US$300.00
- Purchased At: musicians friend
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- Submitted by Karl from Cambridge, MA (24 points) on Sep 4, 2001
- This thing is really, really fucking cool. For one thing, it's cheap, and it does most of the stuff that thousand-dollar analog modelling synths do (think Virus or Nord Modular). It's also fairly easy to learn; it's made so you can tweak each paramater in real time. The dedicated knobs send out MIDI control messages, so you can record and play back your knob twiddling, or use the front panel knobs to control other synths (those with softsynths will find this valuable). There's fairly extensive routing options. LFO's can be synch'd to a MIDI clock. Audio ins allow external audio to be routed through the envelope generators and filters, and mixed with one of the oscillators via the joystick. There's also an upgrade kit (about US) which turns the machine into a vocoder; haven't tried it yet. But all around, I'd say it's the best thing going for a noise artist on a budget.
- Good Points: Easy to use, especially live; decent routing options; MIDI controlled knobs; can make amazingly grating sounds; CHEAP
- Bad Points: Knobs are not continuous; could have more routing options (audio oscillators can't be used as a control source, for example); somewhat limited polyphony (big deal); no sequencer or keyboard.
- Price Paid: US$350.00
- Purchased At: Guitar Center (on sale)
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