I really like some of the warm sounds I get from my DN (I fall into some super fuzzy thick stuff sometimes) but the challenge I often have is that creating these sounds can often eat up the 2 LFO’s, leaving you with no real modulation sources. It’s always a disappointment when I select a lush preset and find that they’re already used up, that should be illegal.
If wish the DN had more LFO’s
I know it would be sort of blasphemous but a cool thing for a future DN update would be to have machines that cover basic waveshapes - that bake some of that stuff in (i.e. pitch warble etc.) - it could still use the FM engines etc. I don’t expect it not to, but it could present a slightly different interface that makes working with those sounds more intuitive, and also harder to immediately break into glassy territory if you tweak the wrong setting slightly. I always feel like this guy when I’m sound designing on the DN:
But I appreciate that’s asking for something it isn’t, so I’m not sure that’s really all that likely. In some ways that’s what a Syntakt is…
There are definitely many defined sounds in the mix. These are good variety-packs of analog type sounds. Also, some of the washy stuff comes from effects, which can be easily dialed back.
That said, if the sounds in the demos don’t speak to you, that’s okay too. And if you want to start from the fundamental analog-type waveforms, that Virtual Analog Wave Kit (around post 22 in this thread) might be for you.
So this is a bit of a brazen question, but does anyone know how the VA wave kit patches were made? It’s one of those things… I don’t expect the author to talk about it to protect their interests, but to me it’s the kind of how-to knowledge that should be freely shared.
Specifically, I’m curious about how the instability was achieved. I sometimes get a convincing unstable VCO sound, but it’s a fluke, and buried in too many parameters to work out the principle.
It’s sort of the one* missing ingredient in my approach to doing VA stuff. I talked about the oscillators, and hinted at using feedback for lpf. (If you combine that with the actual lpf, you can make different super punchy filters. Try this with 1-cycle exp decay lfo → fb on your mono-synth style patches.)
There is also the wave-folding stuff. I’ve used it a bit, and it opens up a lot of territory (including various kinds of high-quality noise —the 0Hz fundamental is a game-changer), but I have no intuition built up in this area and when I get a cool tonal patch I always wonder if it could have been done easier/better without dark magics. Even when I suspect not, doubt remains.
*Edit: I’m an idiot and forgot that I haven’t looked into PWM yet. I think I saw a post somewhere here talking about it though so it isn’t on my list of DN mysteries.
Literally a fundamental frequency of 0Hz. Turn the ratio offset to -1 and you get no output on that operator except what happens when it is modulated. Boop, no fundamental. Edit: I should be clear. The fundamental frequency f₀ is still present in the following example, and even louder than the other frequencies in this example, it’s just not super duper loud.
(That post mentions -.5 with a .5 coarse ratio but we can just dial in -1 and leave the coarse ratio at 1 now.)
If you want a clear demonstration, here is the same (slightly round) saw patch with the carrier set to an overall ratio of 0, and then to 1:
Scopes:
0:
1:
Other than the carrier fine ratio (offset), all settings are the same on both versions. No filter, no drive, no effects.
This isn’t a secret weapon for saws. If you want this without magic tricks, do it the alg 8 way. I haven’t checked the spectrum, but they sound identical and the waveform looks good to the old Mk I. But carriers add fundamental frequencies in addition to whatever modulations happen to them. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s bad.
I don’t mean to hijack the thread (I don’t rely want to open a new one …) but talking about analog, Frap tool dropped a playlist with sounds of their new quad filter ( ) an amazing piece of gear. I find all track sounding great, I like this kind of sound, FM, ping filter, distorted sine, filter sweep etc …
Also I was thinking about picking up a Digitone as a 4 tracks + 4 midi track groovebox. To my hears, after listening to some digitone demo, I would say that there is nothing the digitone can’t do here .
Sure but I don’t want to pollute it, I don’t want to compare an eurorack module and a muti timbral FM synth. Different use, ecosystem etc …
But I can see some similarity in the sound and wanted to get a bit more insights from the forum.
Some of the examples are using FM on Cunsa itself, and some are using the Brenso FM oscillator. Brenso has through-zero FM, but they said they tried TZFM for Cunsa but could not make it work to their satisfaction. (Frap Tools have pretty high standards, which pays off.) TZFM is tricky to get right for analog, but pretty straightforward for digital (I have read this, I’ve never tried to implement either myself).
A new Digitone is only slightly more expensive than Cunsa, which as Eurorack goes is large and expensive. I am a big Frap Tools fan, and even I am not sold on this one yet. I think it has a niche market. Digitone, on the other hand, I can wholeheartedly recommend; it does so much more and does it all well. It transcends clichés about FM being cold and glassy.
) an amazing piece of gear. I find all track sounding great, I like this kind of sound, FM, ping filter, distorted sine, filter sweep etc …