Been messing around with my Tempest and I realised that while I get to create bunch of great sounds on AR, dual VCO doesn’t have pulse or square wave at all, nor classic wave shaping and shape interpolation as , say, any Sequential oscillator does. Furthermore, dual VCO does contain many modes, but many sound very similar, as you go further into ring mod and fm territory. Couldn’t they just provide us with basic waves instead 50 combos out of which 1/3 is never used?
Any reason square was excluded? It is a great beefy waveform for a low end.
I am not complaining, I love my AR, but I just wonder how come this was designed like so, that not a signgle machine has a square wave.
The oscillators are analog, and not all analog oscillators are designed to have all possible waveforms available. These waveforms are produced by additional circuitry that takes the core oscillator waveform and shapes it into different ones.
I assume that the ones you want are not available because the analog circuitry (originally intended for drum sounds, not traditional subtractive or full featured synthesis) did not include any shaping for square or pulse waves. Keep in mind that the DVCO machine was added years after the original voices were designed.
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You could work around that by using single cycle waveform samples. In fact, some are provided in the factory content folder.
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IIRC DVCO with ring mod can sound squarish, I didn’t try to get an actual square, just noticed while tweaking knobs. Might worth trying.
But single cycle waves sound great through that lovely AR filter. 
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Yeah I know, but again - Tempest was made back in 2013? I cant understand why they would they offer two types of sine wave and not a simple square. i am also aware of the evolution of machines, i had both mk 1 and 2. I get dual VCO was added in firmware 1.3 but i cant believe that both oscillators dont have at least triangle and square in conjunction with saw and sine.
I have no shortage of these, and yes there is square in factory content as scwf, but still, I thought I can get some beefy square from the oscillator itself. It was more of a technical question to myself than a workaround search, but i appreciate the reply:)
True, it does sound squarish, but a bit dirtier.
As i said before, I dont mind nor I lack single cycle wave forms, i love AR filter too, I was just wondering/ thinking out loud
There are a few different voice topologies in the Rytm, but they are all designed with specific drum synthesis in mind. The DVCO machine was, in my opinion least, Elektron’s effort to wring out all the functionality they could from a circuit designed for percussion. To compare: try to get a square wave out of an 808 or 909 kick drum. These are analog voices but their voices were designed specifically for drums. In this comparison, your Tempest still wins.
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Yes you are.
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Cowbell is 2 square waves.
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Great! Cowbell for the rescue! Now that you mention it, I`m pretty sure I´ve used itl for some lead type sounds in the past. It´s no feelgood Rolandish square, but the detune can get pretty crazy…moa cowbell. 
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No I am not. I am asking a very logical question, without any mall intent. i love AR, but I wonder how come that one of the most popular high end drum machines doesn’t have a simple square wave generator. Read into it as you like, up to you.
808 is basically a sine wave with different filter and amp envelope settings.
909 is triangle based tone, but still very simple.
so I get what you are saying, and I agree.
Also, I am aware of the build difference - while Tempest is basically poly Evolver packed into drum machine, AR machines are dedicated for quicker and narrower design of the specific percussion. I love drum synthesis, it is lots of fun and extremely educational for anyone to expand their perception of synthesis and behaviour of various waves across frequency spectrum.
Those early analogue drum machines would usually combine sine, saw and triangle with noise to get any percussive element.
Well done, i totally forgot that is the case.
When it comes to the Tempest, it actually lacks an analog sine wave. You’re only going to get that through the digital osc (single cycle samples) or by self resonating the filter. So neither has it all. 
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Actually, you have perfectly good analogue sine wave in a resonant filter. you turn 4 pole on, crank resonance and get a sine wave. then , you can set keyboard tracking to play semitones.
Literally the same as on REV2.
It is true that most of the DSI/Sequential synths lack sine in OSC sections but that’s because their filters self oscillate.
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I think they should open up the cymbal or cowbell architecture more to make a new square wave machine, the way they did with the DVCO. I want my coveted Metal Beat sound, made of a cluster of tuned squares
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As mentioned, the Tempest as well as the Rytm have self resonating filters. The issue I’ve experienced with the Tempest is that the filter can fluctuate between the 6 voices, so at times that sound you want in a kick or tom is not reliable. For this reason, I’ve used one of the two the DOSC sine waves and had very good luck. On the Rytm, the self resonating filter is sometimes oddly slow to respond and can vary drastically depending on how often it is excited by the impulse. If you’re looking for a nice clean sine wave based percussion sound, the 3 tom pads offer that up quite nicely. I’m pretty sure the analog circuit for those is based on a self resonating filter principal.
yeh true, but i really dont need rytms filter sine wave - we have enough in oscillator modes. Still its fun to bounce filters, always.
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Dual VCO seems to be able to be coaxed into a square-like waveform using the CFG param.
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