Page 2: Nonlinear Labs C15

The Base and Panel units can be separated and the Base unit played as an independent, preset synth.

In Use

I love the look of the C15 (which recalls the iconic Synclavier II ORK) when I'm playing it, although the view from the side is less attractive, and I like the fact that you can choose from four woods to best fit the look of your studio or stage rig. Playing it is also a pleasure; while I would have liked the Base Unit to incorporate pitch-bend and modulation wheels, the case, keyboard, ribbons and pitch stick all give the impression that somebody really cared about how the instrument would look and feel. Whether the programming system accessed via the Panel Unit will be widely liked is a different matter. The idea of stepping through related parameters using a button and then editing the chosen one using a single encoder was quite neat in the 1980s, but is much less so in 2020.

Whatever players think about editing the C15, I suspect that most will merely stumble across interesting sounds because trying to program complex timbres deterministically often feels like a job for a mathematician. There may be a small number of modules within Phase 22, but there's a huge amount of complexity and interaction available, and in addition to everything described here there are numerous facilities — parameter smoothing, patch morphing, undo trees, additional pages in the editor, and more — that I've had no room to discuss. Furthermore, patches will often collapse into noise if you don't keep a rein on things. But if you take the time to understand the system, learning (for example) how to obtain waveforms such as sawtooth and square waves, you can program strings, brass and some surprisingly organic patches alongside the myriad percussive, plucked, hammered, distorted, and twisty-noisy sounds at which the C15 excels. I even coaxed some pleasing lead synth patches from it, although the lack of portamento was a limitation. On the other hand, if you're looking for lush sounds or patches with complex modulation of tone and loudness, you can forget it. That's not what the C15 was designed for, and no amount of persuasion will cajole it into producing them.

You could make a case, therefore, that the C15 is an expensive way to obtain a constrained palette of sounds, but I don't accept that argument.

You could make a case, therefore, that the C15 is an expensive way to obtain a constrained palette of sounds, but I don't accept that argument. Some people will pay just as much for a second-hand Minimoog that they use for one thing, and the Prophet 5's inability to produce the sounds of a Logan string ensemble doesn't make it a bad synth. Perhaps a better observation would be that, for a similar price, instruments such as the Kronos and Montage can sound similar to the C15 and do much more in addition. Nonetheless, I suspect that you'll obtain sounds from the C15 that you've not heard before. The results may not always be musical, but they are often remarkable.

Despite its complexity, there are a number of other things about Phase 22 that I find restrictive. I can live without arpeggiators and sequencers, but I'm much more concerned by the fact that you can't shape the amplitude and tone of a given Branch independently, and that you can't use the Envelopes to shape the amplitudes of the audio signals presented to the output mixer or final output stages. Furthermore, the lack of conventional LFOs means that you have to use a Branch Shaper to create simple modulation effects such as vibrato, which often means that you have just one Branch available for signal generation. As for tremolo... forget it; the C15 can't create it. I'm relieved, therefore, that Stephan Schmitt has confirmed that many of these shortcomings will be addressed in future upgrades.

But the huge — and I mean huge — omission is the lack of MIDI. I understand the philosophy behind this; if you can't sequence the C15, you're forced to play it. Indeed, Stephan Schmitt told me that, "With MIDI keyboards and expanders, the studio becomes the instrument. I wanted the instrument to be the instrument — sit down, switch it on, and play." But so much of our musical lives is now bound up in multitrack sequencing, beat synchronisation, repeatability and tweakability that it's hard to justify its omission. Sure, you can treat the C15 like an acoustic instrument and, if necessary, edit performances in the audio domain, but I can't see that incorporating MIDI would have deterred players who want to use it this way. If there's a silver lining it's that, when unconstrained by MIDI wordlengths, parameter and controller values can be of significantly higher resolution, so things like velocity and aftertouch can be defined with much greater precision.

The Future

Despite its current limitations, the C15 has great potential because it has been designed to be upgradeable, and not just with minor updates. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the Panel Unit's control surface; its magnetic inlays are removable and can be replaced by new ones with different legends. Should the promised new sound engines appear this means that you could, in effect, give the synth a new panel to reflect its changed facilities.

During the course of this review, Stephan Schmitt was kind enough to let me see the development roadmap and, even without the introduction of new synth engines, this includes proposed improvements to the voicing, sample rates and latency, the addition of splits and layers, a monophonic mode, additional macros and destinations, extended parameter ranges, chord memory, improvements in the GUI, seamless patch changes, improved morphing, and more. It's an ambitious list, but one that should be within the range of the existing hardware and, therefore, of all of the instruments already sold. Other ideas under consideration include new models with extended keyboards, polyphonic aftertouch, and additional control capabilities. But however the C15 evolves, the Nonlinear Labs website promises that the company will keep existing instruments up to date, which is very much to the company's credit.

Conclusions

It's been a long time since I encountered a synthesizer that made me think 'wow, that's different!', but there are many aspects of the C15 that have surprised me. Given everything that Stephan Schmitt has achieved in our industry over the past 25 years, I think that he has every right to design and build something eccentric that ticks all of his boxes, if not yours. Inevitably, it will be lambasted by people who don't want to learn a new way to create sounds and who will never be able to play well enough to fully utilise its expressive capabilities, but there's nothing in the rules to say that all synths should cater for all tastes; the C15 is a unique synthesizer that simply happens to be very strong in some areas and very weak in others. Sure, it's not cheap, but it has immense character, so a handful of players are going to love it from the outset. Others will consider buying one because it's so different from anything else that they own. But I suspect that most of us will stick with what we already know. It therefore remains to be seen whether there is a place in our lives for the C15.