John Bowen Solaris – a life’s work
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John Bowen Solaris Synthesizer
Polyphony?
Concerning the instrument’s polyphonic potential, a precise assessment is difficult. We have no exact information on
how many voices the Solaris has. But speaking from practical experience, there are hardly too few voices. Notes may
be capped when playing fat clusters if release time is set to a maximum of 20 seconds. Obviously, polyphony depends
on processor performance (… the power plant inside the Solaris consists of six state of the art third-generation
SHARC DSP processors).
“Even with a complex program utilizing all four oscillators, four filters, four mixers and healthy doses of modulation,
you can still expect 10 note polyphony!” (
You will probably have little reason to fully realise the Solaris potential at hand. A two- or three-part sound will
generally fulfill all of your needs. As a rule of thumb and in my opinion, the Solaris will place 10 to 20 voices at your
disposal. When I asked him, John was more cautious: “… for now it is fixed at 10 voice polyphony.” (John Bowen)
