I recently purchased this little synth from DOEPFER Musikelektronik and thought I would give a run down of my initial thoughts on it.

The DOEPFER Dark Energy is a 100% analogue semi-modular monophonic synthesizer. What is very handy about this little unit is that is also has a MIDI/CV converter built right into it! The MIDI/CV converter can also run over USB, so essentially we have a completely analogue synth the can be controlled dircetly from your PC or Mac.

At first glance this is a fairly simple synth. 1 oscillator, 1 low-pass filter, 2 LFO's, 1 ADSR envelope, and ofcourse the VCA. However it has a few little tricks up it's sleeve that you might not expect. For example, the LFO's have a "Low/Medium/High" switch for LFO frequencies that extend right up into the audio range and right down to over a minute at their lowest setting.

While some might be put off by the fact that this synth only has one oscillator, let me assure you it sounds HUGE. Not only that, but the pluse width modulation on this synth sounds great. By modulating the pulse width on the oscillator you can achive a much richer sound characteristic, similer to a unison type effect.

Another little trick is that by turning the filter resonance up completely (into self oscillation) you can achive a sine wave oscillator. It takes some careful tuning of the filter cutoff frecquency, but thanks to the included note tracking it is possible to use this a lovely tonaly playable sine wave sound.

One feature I would really have liked to see on this synth however is portamento. It is possible that by patching the CV2 output (MIDI pitch bend) into the VCO F front panel socket pitch bending can be achieved. However in most cases this is not an entirely workable substitue for portamento.

Overall this is a great sounding synthesiser for it's price (398 EU). The single oscillator (and the PWM) sounds great, the filter is amazing, and extra features like filter FM, ultra fast/long LFO and envelope settings, and external audio input make this a worthwhile and unique synth.

Here is a short little track I made using the Dark Engery. All tracks are raw Dark Energy - Except the kick drum (it's a sample) and one of the synth lines has a slight ammount of delay on it. No compression or EQ was used.

 NA (Dark Energy) by Noir du'Soleil