The Expressionist, a review

[Rob]

For years now my old CV synths were used for sample fodder.  But no longer,
and I'm one happy camper about it. I finally got myself a midi to CV box.
I've waited all too long to get one, but by doing so I really lucked out. I
got an Expressionist.

There are many fine midi to CV boxes out there I understand the Kenton
products are suppose to be very good, but I still opted for Encore's
Expressionist. I've been hearing many good things about the box. It's price
seems a bit steep and that's what kept me from getting it right away.  I
kept getting other things.  I mean for the price of this box it's not hard
to find something else that seems more useful or glitzy at the time. That
said, the 600 frog skins that the Expressionist will set you back are well
worth it, and here's why.

Hardware

It comes in a single space 19" rack mount.  Powered with a wall wart (the
only real issue I have with the machine, but it's understandable once you
know a little bit about the company). On the front you'll find a huge back
lit display, five buttons and a power switch. On the back are 16 1/4' jacks
for CVs and Gates, midi in and out, din sync, 1/4" foot switch jack and the
power connector. Pretty straight forward, but with some nice touches.

One of the nice things is that all of the 1/4" jacks are secured with
fasteners.  Most machines made these days slime out and just mount the
jacks on the circuit board and expect them to hold up. Which they don't.
With the Expressionist they are properly mounted and I'd expect them to
last a very long time.

The power switch on the front is a big deal too.  Who enjoys reaching
behind your rack, or not even having one?  Both of which tend to save the
manufacture money and keep the price down, but both are a royal pain in the
back side for the user. The Expressionist has a power switch and it's in
the right place.

Inside there's a 68k of some sort controlling the whole machine.  A great
choice for such a box. It's got power for days for this job and isn't
likely to ever be bogged down by the requests of the user.  Many boxes made
these days put the cheepest processor in the box that they can get away
with and that is fine for 80% of the uses of the box.  The manufacture
saves money and the box is cheeper.  But then when you push those boxes you
get timing errors.  Timing errors are the bane of beat oriented musician.
With the 68k the Expressionist wont have this problem.

The mother board is layed out with separate power supplies for the
processor and the analogue circuits.  This is important because it keeps
processor noise from effecting your CVs.  Again this costs more and most
manufactures wont include this on their machines.  What effect does this
have on using the box?  Well you don't have to worry about sending a
command to the box that will cause a voice that you are holding to go out
of tune.

The D/A convertor on the Expressionist is 16 bit. This allows for smooth
control of your voltages from -3 to +10 volts, more then 32,000 steps. I
don't know what the other midi to CV boxes are using (I'm sure you can find
out though), but this seems to be yet another place where the Expressionist
has done the job right.

The code for this machine is all in an FPGA, meaning that you can down
load, from Encore's website (http://www.encoreelectronics.com), the latest
version and lode it in via Sysex. They've already done two updates this
way, and I understand that a 3rd is in the works.

I could go on about the hardware, but I'm sure you are getting the picture.
This thing is built right. It's made to be a quality product.

Software

Yeah there's a whole mess of software in this box and I'm just going to
touch on a few things real quick.

The whole user interface has been given a lot of thought. For instance the
buttons have great debounce code. This means that they don't double trigger
when you press them. After many years of use this becomes even more
important as the switches start to fail, and yes all switches wear out.

The buttons also repeat as you hold them and will speed up if you hold them
for a moment.  Very nice indeed, but there's more too.  Hold one button and
tap another will take you to the end of the allowable values.  Very trick.
There's more here too, but you get the idea. Somebody though about using
this box.

There are cool things like setting up a poly synth. CV offset and
rescaling, for those old machines that you don't have time to recalibrate
or fix. Split modes. Support for both Arp and Moog style gates.
Programmable LFO's that can be modulated on the fly. Various continuous
controller support. 100 programmable presets. Two modes of glides with
different timing features. I mean this box has a lot going for it.

Gripes

OK, yeah I like this box a lot.  That said there are a few things I'd like
to see.  I hate values that don't use real world units.  If there is a
value that takes 30 seconds then say so.  Don't tell me it's value 99. This
is a small issue, but it makes things a lot easier to use in the real
world.  One that can also be added pretty easy once the machine is working.
So this is on my wish list for this machine.

Pitch bend only goes 1 octave.  This seems a bit arbitrary to me.  One of
the great things about a CV synth is that there is no real difference from
a voltage received from a pitch bend or a new note.  So you can have some
really wild pitch bending going on. This would require some boundry code,
but it's something that could be implemented.

The wall wart, I hate, but Encore is a one person shop.  Every thing is
done by one guy.  The hardware, software, testing, shipping - every thing!
So taking the wall wart rout saved him lots of FCC and UL hassle.  So I can
deal with it. Everything else about this box screams out quality so I can
cut him some slack here.  Slack I wouldn't cut say an Alesis or Roland box.

Conclusion

Would I buy one? Yeah I already did. Encore is known for making quality
products.  The Expressionist does them proud. If you are serious about what
you are doing and want some serious control over your CV machines then this
is the box.

-Rob-

Secret Secret
http://secret-secret.com