Voltage Modular gets a SEM emulation and polyphony
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Cherry Audio SEM for Voltage Modular · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio SEM for Voltage Modular · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio Poly-SEM for Voltage Modular · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio SEM for Voltage Modular · Source: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio has pulled a SEM out of their Eight-Voice emulation and dropped it into their Voltage Modular Eurorack environment in both mono and polyphonic versions.
Synthesizer Expander Modules (SEM)
With a little bit less fanfare than the amazing Eight-Voice synthesizer they’ve released at the same time, Cherry Audio has developed their SEM emulation into a patchable virtual Eurorack module for Voltage Modular. Based, of course, on the Oberheim Syntheszier Expander Module (SEM) they’ve added a Noise source and a square wave LFO option and peppered the interface with patch-points to hook into the rest of the modular environment.
Cherry Audio SEM for Voltage Modular · Source: Cherry Audio
As with the Eight-Voice they got award-winning synth designer Mark Barton (MRB) to do the emulation on the 12 dB/Oct state-variable filter with lowpass, highpass and notch modes.
Voltage Modular has an extensive polyphonic patching system and so they’ve decided to add a version of the SEM with 16-voice polyphony. They are imaginatively calling it the Poly-SEM.
Cherry Audio SEM for Voltage Modular · Source: Cherry Audio
It feels like Voltage Modular has taken a bit of a back seat since Cherry Audio has been pushing out some quite remarkable standalone software instruments so it’s good to see it getting some attention. At $29 for the two modules it’s great value for money.
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6 responses to “Voltage Modular gets a SEM emulation and polyphony”
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You can’t really say that Voltage Modular was put in the back-seat, The sound modules for the DC-106 and soft ARP where made for Voltage Modular first – and than transformed into standalone softsynths – this time they have just publiched them in sync.
It’s precisely for those reasons that it feels like this. It’s like they developed these instruments for VM and then had a brainwave to reach a wider audience by doing them as standalone synths. For a moment it felt like they were going to ditch VM for the brighter pastures of VSTis so it’s good to see them bringing them together.
At least it’s pc lol.
“a bit of a back seat since”…… It’s only natural that they now dedicate their focus and time to some other synths, especially when they can separate each into two products (Standalone and Module) with minimal time and fuss. All their standalone synths have found their way into Voltage except for the Surrealistic. So to say that VM took a bit of a back seat is something I don’t understand. Voltage is already better than sex, pizza, coffee and chocolate put together, so what’s the deal with that remark?
I agree – but I’d swap the pizza with a Cointreau
Well I think people can feel differently about things. The remark was simply that Cherry Audio were all about Voltage Modular, it was their only thing, developing at a pace, regular updates. And then they built a Juno voice for it….. and then nothing much happened after. What did happen was we got a bunch of standalone synths. So, to me, watching as I do, it felt like they hit on this awesome idea of releasing proper VSTis and so put all their efforts into that for a while…. and so VM took a bit of a back seat. There’s no malice in that sense, no criticism or pointing of fingers, I was purely remarking on how it’s good to see some movement back in VM. You can almost imagine a team meeting where they said “great, that’s a couple of super synths we’ve got there now get your arses back into VM – oh and while you’re at it get one of those SEMs in there.” That sort of thing. I find the pushback really interesting – it really wasn’t a criticism. Thanks for the comments.