Complex analog voice
With several Eurorack Modules analog sound synthesis can get very complex with many patching possibilities
Audio wave mixing
Mixing different wave forms at audio levels can generate many unusual tones. Such audio synthesis is often referred as amplitude modulation as it only changes the wave shape without affecting frequency of the sound.
Integrated voltage controlled wave mixing in our VCO module
Our oscillator is equipped with voltage controlled wave mixing that can be modulated with any of the waves from the same other another oscillator.
Apart of wave mixing CV our oscillator comes equipped with dedicated wave mixing knob that affects the balance of wave mixing modulator changing the shape if the output waveform.
Wave modulation CV in our dual VCO Euorack module is equipped with precision wave folder to make sure that modulation wouldn’t stop when wave mixing CV and knob sum exceeds 5 volts.
Wave mixing using voltage controlled linear crossfaders
Voltage controlled linear crossfader in our quad VCA module can also be used for wave mixing. They are designed for smooth mixing between two wave forms at audio speeds using dedicated CV inputs.
For more audio complexity the resulting wave form can then be patched to FM inputs generating a wide range of unusual tones.
These audio tones can be modified by changing the frequencies of the oscillators, also modulation the gain of audio mixing CV, adjusting wave mixing balance knob etc.
Ring modulators
Ring modulator is designed to multiply two wave inputs. Mathematically it is the same as multiplying two numbers from -1 to 1. If both numbers are positive or negative – the resulting output will be positive otherwise output will be negative.
Multiplying waves generates complex smooth tone with its own specific character. For best results most often sine waves are used otherwise such synthesis can generate extremely harsh tones.
Ring modulated output can also be fed to FM inputs to generate a wide variety of interesting tones.
Audio wavefolders
Wave folding is another way to modify waves to increase sound complexity. It accepts wave input and CV which controls signal gain set to very high maximum level. If signal gets over +5V or -5V threshold its gets bounced back to go the other way never exceeding the threshold. This way the wave becomes more jagged with high frequency harmonics increasing depending on the gain CV.
Soft and hard sync
Sync inputs allow synchronizing the two oscillators. If these oscillators have different frequencies the oscillator that is synced generates waveforms that are reset before the finish smoothly.
Hard sync resets that waves from zero making harsh tones while soft sync makes the wave go backwards at the reset point creating smoother wave forms.
Complex feedback interactions
If we use one of these audio modulation techniques and patch the resulting output back to the same oscillator we get complex audio feedback interactions which can produce unexpected and often very unpredictable results that are very interesting to experiment with.
For example if we patch wave mixing from first oscillator to second oscillator and then patch the output from the second oscillator to the first wave mixing output starts to modulate the oscillator that modulates the wave mixing creating non linear feedback. Same goes to ring modulators and any other type of synthesis that gets fed back to the modulator.