The polyphony is specific to each software synth, and some of them depend on your CPU power and amount of RAM. They might make these adjustment accordingly. If you have enough ram and a strong enough processor, some synths might go up to 1024 notes per instance, some might set your polyphony to 256 notes etc. D!J!X! _____ From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Lawlor Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 8:40 PM To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] software synthesizers and polyfony Hello. I've traded in my kurzweil pc3 and am considering a Dave Smith Instruments poly evolver which doesn't have very many menus, if any at all, has 78 knobs and 57 switches for real-time control of every parameter. This is the sort of thing that will probably suit me best because of that hands-on feel that is so important for my being able to create and shape sound. Here's my question. I'm told that this board can also be a midi controller for software synths like dimension pro and since the board itself has only 4-voices of polyphony, do the software synths have their own internal polyphony or do they depend on the number of voices from the midi instrument controlling them? The best way around this polyphonic limitation, as far as I can see is to just do a lot of audio tracking in sonar, which for ambient and space music, probably isn't as dependent on things like quantization since a lot of the sort of stuff I want to venture into either isn't very melodic or is driven by arpeggios. Having said that, I have written a good bit of melodic stuff that uses more natural sounding instruments, thus my questions about polyphony related to soft synths. I like the natural sounds and orchestral rom in the kurzweil but since having two boards isn't an option for me right now and the pc3 doesn't have all the cool electronic sounds and it's got too many menus, especially since I like the instant gratification of turning a knob or hitting a switch and hearing something different that could inspire further creativity, this is why I'm considering this other synth. Thanks for your thoughts on all this. Scott