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Doepfer | Dark Energy II

Description

The lack of availability of the Curtis CEM3394 complete-synthesizer-voice-on-a-chip led to the Dark Energy's demise, announced in February 2012. Instead of discontinuation, Doepfer sourced new chip designs and released the Dark Energy II. The new model looks almost identical to the original on the surface. But Doepfer did a lot of redesigning under the hood.

Gone is the triangle waveform, replaced by an inverse sawtooth and the filter is a 12 dB/octave multi-mode affair (instead of the 24 dB lowpass of the Dark Energy I), continuously variable from lowpass, through notch and highpass to bandpass.

The filter mode knob replaces the linear FM control found on the original Dark Energy and the XFM control on the II allows for positive or negative envelope/LFO control of the filter cut-off. The VCA has an exponential scale instead of the combined linear/exponential scale of Dark Energy I.

The sound of the Dark Energy II clearly differs from the Dark Energy I (mainly because of the redesigned filter) with a more punchy and tighter sound.

BrandDoepfer
ModelDark Energy II
DeviceSynth
TypeDesktop
Engine TypeAnalog
EngineVCO
Voices (max)1
Oscillators1
LFO2 LFOs, triangle/square waveforms, capable of audio-rate modulation
Engine Detailed1 VCO Waveforms - saw, inverted saw, square/pulse with PWM
Filter (VCF)24 dB/oct lowpass, continuously variable lowpass, notch, highpass, bandpass
Envelope (VCA)1 VCA, 1 ADSR envelope with mod to VCO, PW, VCF cutoff and VCA
SequencerSix note memory, direction is in the order the notes were entered
Keys0
Key typeN/A
VelocityN/A
AftertouchN/A
MidiI (DIN and USB)
CV-gate4 CV 1 Gate
Produced:2012 - 2012
Legend: Obvious Y: Yes, N: No, N/A: Not Applicable
VCO Voltage Controlled Oscillator DCO Digital Controlled Oscillator
LFO Low Frequency Oscillator Sub Sub Oscillator
VCF Voltage Controlled Filter VCA Voltage Controlled Amplifier
Velocity As with a piano, the harder you hit a key, the louder the sound, unlike most organs which always produce the same loudness no matter how hard you hit a key. Aftertouch Pressing a key after you activated it. Channel Aftertouch, no matter which key, it will send a Channel message. Poly Aftertouch, sends the pressure per key instead of the whole channel.
Values for OSC, LFO, Filter, Envelope are per voice unless stated otherwise.

Manuals, patches etc.

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