Arturia is to be commended for a very good upgrade.
The sawtooth sounds noticeably more rich now. I've been experimenting with brass sounds using just one osc. and it sounds great.
Gone is the intermodulation jumpiness that I noted when low notes are zero-beat tuned. Now it sounds smooth and analog-sounding.
One nice detail is the oscillator on/off switches now engage silently. (It used to pop loudly if a note was sounding.)
The voice card trimmer panel is nicely done. I would only mention that it might be better to have zero in the center of the trimmer's range so that a card can be tuned above or below reference. The workaround for this currently is to turn the master tuning pot slightly flat.
The ribbon now works properly in Sustain I mode. In this mode, the ribbon only affects notes which are held down. Try this: Engage sustain, set a long sustain time with the slider, select Sustain Mode I. Now hold a note and bend the pitch with the ribbon (or external MIDI pitch wheel). Release the key, then release the ribbon. The sustain decays at the bent pitch even after the ribbon returns to zero. Very good.
The character of Initial Pitchbend is improved. It sounds more like the original now. The only thing is, you have to hit keys with full velocity to get the full range of the bend. Should the lever have a slightly greater range so you don't have to hit the keys so hard?
The chorus sounds great! Very much like what I hear on the end of the Alaska intro.
The ring modulator sounds much different from 1.2. I'm reserving comment until I work with it more.
I really appreciate 1.5 being released for Mac OS 9. I didn't expect it this time, so I am grateful.
Again, CS-80V 1.5 sounds very good. More importantly, it sounds closer to a CS-80 than before. Bravo, Arturia!
