[sdiy] How Many Oscillators?

[harrybissell]

Michael Boracci wrote:

> Thanks Harry, <snip>
> Would you recommend any particular design?

Hah... not on your life.  There is some tradeoff between sawtooth
cores (relaxation oscillator, basically) and triangle cores (integrator /
schmitt trigger).

The two designs I'd be most interested in trying would be Ian Fritz's triangle
VCO core
and Don Tillman's Trapezoid Through-zero oscillator.

In practice, I've used the Aries 314 VCO (triangle core with sawtooth synch'ed
to it)
and the EFM VCO3 (a Moog Rogue clone iirc) and the VCO4d (a Moog Prodigy clone
iirc).  Both work well (modified heavily in my case) but are not state of the
art as far as
ultimate performance is concerned.

I hear the MOTM VCO is very stable (says daddy Paul Schreiber). Maybe he'll be
sending
me one soon for an independant study :^P   <bfg>

The oscillator stability issue is one major reason for the rise of the DCO....

H^) harry

>
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: harrybissell [mailto:harrybissell at prodigy.net]
> Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2003 5:05 PM
> To: Michael Boracci
> Cc: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] How Many Oscillators?
>
> Hi Michael (et al)
>
> The oscillators are probably the most complex, critical modules in a
> synth... and the
> most expensive.  Two or three is a trade off of price vs performance
> (two oscillators
> are 'twice' as useful as one... after that diminishing returns come into
> play)
>
> If you have a large number of oscillators...plan on using a VERY stable
> design... or having
> some form of computerized "auto-tune" function to manage the tuning
> problem
>
> H^) harry
>
> Michael Boracci wrote:
>
> >  Dear Friends,    I am planning a modular synthesizer and drawing some
> > functional diagrams. In the process I am trying to determine how many
> > oscillators would be practical. I have seen common synthesizers with
> > two and three oscillators each with a few different choices of
> > waveform. In terms of practicality versus sound shaping properties is
> > it unrealistic to design around six or even eight oscillators per
> > voice?I would appreciate any feedback in terms of existing
> > synthesizers out there that I might use as a reference.Thanks,Michael
>
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