Yes, let's leverage his death for commercial gain. I propose an EDP Wasp color scheme

I cannot believe it's been nearly ten years already! This has to be their most successful synth ever, none of their classic Nova synths were on the market for this long.

Mmm. While not a classic Nova, the MiniNova is still going and about a year older than the BS2. Hard to guess which one sold more. I think the MiniNova has wider appeal, polyphony, effects, voice, like the eternal microKORG, but the BS2 has seen more updates to keep it on people's mind.

That said, of the two the BS2 is the one that I see has more likely to be replaced by a new model, to keep up with its own updates, people's wishes, and the times.

That would more than likely be the case however, the existing BS2 needs
a last update. It was brought to the attention of the forum by a poster
(Maffez) who did some modifications on their's that what was always thought
to be a sub-oscillator on the BS2 is actually a full-featured oscillator, identical to 1 and 2.
Not long after, there was an editor released to unlock the sub-oscillator to function in oscillator mode,
but it has to be purchased.
Novation should have released an update that unlocks full functioning of the third oscillator,
using on key entry as they did for key tracking, etc.
It could even be set to boot up in 3-osc mode.
That level of functioning (three osc, as opposed to two+sub) would have been more fundamental
and useful than "AFX mode"

Hi,

I would like to know if it is possible to mod the Bass Station 2 to make the Attack and Decay stages of the envelopes faster/snappier.

Currently, both Attack and Decay are too slow at their minimum values to make really percussive bass sounds. I don't mind lowering the max Attack and Decay times.

Is this even possible, or is this purely software based - thus not moddable?

If it is, does anyone know how and if a rookie like me can do it?

The envelopes are software generated, there’s no way to make them faster. Well, maybe if you overclock the CPU.

Then you'd have a Novation Soprano Station.

touche’. But those sopranos will have fast envelopes!

But isn’t there also some kind of hardware “slew” added after the actual software envelope output? Since it sounds kind of sluggish even with the lowest attack/decay values.. I can imagine they added that to smooth the digital (stepped) envelope output. They did the same with the filter cutoff: even when controlled externally using midi cc, the BS2 smoothes the changes to the cutoff.

So if this is the case, we might be able to mod that slew speed?

Change the envelope curve?
I don't find the envelope times particularly sluggish (compared to, say Sub37) and I can make snappy drum sounds no problem.

If there's ever a MK2, more control would be nice though..

I think the Bass Station 2 envelopes are plenty fast. They pop at the fastest settings.

There is a nice trick for extra envelopes if you are not happy with the ADSRs. You can set either or both of the LFOs to zero speed where they come to stop and then use the LFO delay as an envelope decay stage with a different curve from the ADSRs. You can also add LFO slew for some attack.

You can use that trick along with the ADSRs to access more range and also create multistage envelopes. You probably want to use the square wave and set the LFO keysync on to keep it consistent, but you could also set it to sample and hold mode to create some interesting variation.

Interestingly enough, you can use the LFOs as envelopes and with the latest updates, use the repeating envelopes as LFOs. I suppose that could be handy if you wanted an LFO with velocity control or something.

As I understand, the Delay ramps UP the intensity of the LFO (most obvious example, to introduce vibrato gradually). Are you saying that when LFO Speed is set to zero, the Delay instead ramps DOWN, thus acting as a decay?
That's a nice quirk, I don't understand why it'd work that way, but now I have to try it.

LFO acts as a static CV source at 'zero speed', so the modulation depth (positive or negative) will set the amplitude of the CV. The delay therefore sets the time it takes to reach the modulation depth.

I think it will work as an attack when applying positive modulation, but with negative modulation it will act like a decay.

Never thought about this though, will try! Thanks for the suggestion

Totally correct, thanks! What I wasn't taking into consideration is that in the BSII all modulation knobs have both positive and negative amount, but I always applied that only to the envelopes, never thought of trying it with LFOs set to zero.
Great find, thanks for the trick!

You’re right. I did some more testing now and I think the problem is elsewhere: the envelope to filter mod depth is too low, even at max setting. It does help to use this in conjunction with your LFO trick, but it is still cumbersome and also then you can’t use the attack of the envelope well anymore..

Would this be something we could change by modding the circuit?

I don't know much about modding circuits. There might be an analog slew of sorts that "corrects" the envelope, but finding it and soldering in different components wouldn't be easy. You could break things, and the results might not be great.

There is another trick for a faster envelope. If you invert the envelope to filter modulation depth and set the envelope sustain to full, you can use the attack phase of the envelope instead of decay for the modulation. That way the first phase of the envelope does not add any lag. Also I think the attack is usually faster than the decay phase.

It's kind of counter intuitive and still cumbersome, but once you get the envelopes set how you like, you can save them to a preset. Then use that as a starting point for other patches, where you don't mess with the envelope settings.

Really, the easiest solution for you might be to just get another synth. I've heard the Behringer Pro 1 gets a lot of praise for snappy envelopes. Plenty of Moogs and their remakes do too.

When you have another analog module, you can patch its output into the Bass Station input and then patch the Bass Station's headphone out into the modules external in. That creates a feedback circuit with lots of sound shaping possibilities. I do that with the Behringer k2 and it gets gnarly and fun.

Hi:
I was messing with the Arpeggiator and found that pressing Function + On (Arp On) changes from Srt to StP, and I can't remember what that means (I knew it at some point).
I can't find any reference in the manual or on-line.
Can you help me?
Thanks!

I believe that's how you send MIDI Start and Stop messages with the Bass Station 2. If you use the BS2 as your master clock then you can use this feature to start an external sequencer in sync with the BS2 arp. It's something they added in an update but for some reason don't mention in the manual.

ToyBox is correct, Function + Arp sends Start/Stop messages when using the arp or sequencer.

Function + Latch determines if the BS2 will send master clock or slave to external clock.

Considering the sub oscillator is actually a full fledged oscillator with gimped controls, did Novation ever mention adding "function +" for unlocking the full controls for it? Do I really have to buy a third party synth editor to be able to use it like a 3 Oscillator bass synth?

Well you can, press Function + coarse fine 4 tuning the suboscillator. The bs2 is the Swiss army monosynth. A future classic

That won't let me change the wave to saw wave or assign LFOs on it like you can do in Patchbase though.

Yeah it would be great if they would allow function + waveform button to switch between waveforms, as well as the tune range. Seems like a no brainer

I've set mine for dual usage, if you run it as carrier for the Behringer VC340 it's awesome, even just flipping thru the factory presets trying it with viocoder, I sold it once and bought it again, won't sell it again.

I was thinking that. Or better yet, If you use "function + Oscillator 1/2 switch", it could swap the oscillator controls to the sub oscillator instead.

Oh yeah that would be awesome indeed!

Hy,
Anyone had a problem where bs2 sends low velocity to midi out how ever hard you hit the keys? Sequencer sends out 127 point of velocity but on the keys i get max 80 points..
Thanx

No, sends same midi velocity over keys than my Arturia Keylab 49, not noticed any lower output.

Please excuse the self plug (promise this'll be the only one) but I wanted to share a collection of patches I've just finished for this bad boy.

"The Deep End" is comprised of Basses, Leads, Plucks, Duophonic Keys, as well as a few FX and Drum patches. These are a combination of some of my favorite personal patches I’ve created over the past 10 years as well as some new creations made specifically for this preset pack. I was aiming for some versatility but naturally gravitated toward sounds that I personally use, as well as more generally usable patches.







https://www.josephrusnakmusic.com/do...ion-ii-presets