THE AVIATOR.
I designed the Aviator to provide those of us that like analogue synthesizers with a very flexible unit capable of producing a wide variety of sounds at a sensible price. To do this I selected things that I liked from various of the classic synths to come up with the best compromise. I owe a great deal to Vincent Clarke, (he had AVIATOR number 1) for his valuable input to the final design.
From the outset it was decided that a semi- modular approach gave the best flexibility, ARP 2600 I hear you cry! There are no presets but most things have a normalised routing which means that all that is required is a CV and Gate source.
A total of 44 minijack sockets are located at the bottom of the synth allowing access to the individual sections of the unit and also allowing the user great flexibility.
The Aviator is a 5U 19 inch rack unit, There are 3 VCOs based on the very stable CEM 3340 ICs which provide Square, Sawtooth, Triangle, and Sine waveforms. A Voltage Controlled LFO also provides these four waveforms and the fact that it is Voltage Controlable means that you can create those classic Jarre cascade effects quite easily.
There are a total of 3 VCFs, two multi mode (just like the SEM module), and one 24dB Lowpass. The 24dB low pass filter can be switched in instead of one of the multi modes so in reality you can only have two filters working at any one time.
The fact that Band pass, Low pass, Notch, and High Pass modes are available allows far more flexibilty in sound creation than the current trend of only offering Low Pass filtering. The 24dB Filter is included to allow MOOG type sounds to be reproduced.
Each of the two filter sections has a dedicated ADSR type Envelope Generator and a VCA. The two VCAs are normally controlled via a third EG.
White Noise, Sample and Hold, PWM LFO, Glide, External input, and two more VCAs (that makes 4 in all) are also available.
With the minimum of patching it is possible to make VCO3, VCF2, EG2, and VCA2 into an independant synthesizer allowing duophonic operation with Multi- Mode Filtering!!
