There's really no rules when it comes to which VCO combination you go with! Having VCOs with different characters is nice for variety of sound and feature sets, whereas two identical (or very similar) VCOs will be better for doing more unified dual-voice sounds since the waveforms will be exactly the same. But the differences between, say, any two saw waves will be pretty subtle most of the time. I think the most noticeable thing would be how pure a sine wave it can make, since some are slightly buzzy and some aren't, but that's really down to personal preference and raw waveforms are just a starting point.
The Lorelei looks very nice, I've been curious about it but haven't tried it yet. It does let you do linear and exponential FM simultaneously, and it has some more unusual waveshapes and modulation options. The ALA bOSC looks like more or less a slightly stripped-down Ona without the sub-octave outputs or tri+square/saw+square outputs, with a normal coarse tuning knob instead of an octave switch. The Tiptop/Buchla 258t looks neat, the most significant downside I see is it would slightly limit the waveform options (top half morphs from sine to saw, bottom half from sine to square), but Tiptop/Buchla modules are pretty well liked and if you want to keep things simple it'd be a great pick.
The Intellijel Headphones 1U looks pretty good for about $70. I have a stereo in/out module from Intellijel and I'm happy with the build quality.
EDIT: Oh, one important thing to keep in mind with any oscillator is that if it has multiple outputs of different waveforms, you can use each of them as its own separate voice. They will all share one pitch and be affected by the same modulation, but you can patch more than one of them into a mixer to combine them into a more complex waveform (such as using a sub-octave square to add bass), patch one of the waveforms back into another input on the same module, or even split the waveforms into different sounds. If they're routed into two different VCAs triggered by different envelopes, they can play at different times.
If you're looking for a comprehensive tutorial, this series on Youtube helped me immensely. If you'd prefer to figure things out as you go, though, I totally understand. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... z-3N8HZyf_
The Lorelei looks very nice, I've been curious about it but haven't tried it yet. It does let you do linear and exponential FM simultaneously, and it has some more unusual waveshapes and modulation options. The ALA bOSC looks like more or less a slightly stripped-down Ona without the sub-octave outputs or tri+square/saw+square outputs, with a normal coarse tuning knob instead of an octave switch. The Tiptop/Buchla 258t looks neat, the most significant downside I see is it would slightly limit the waveform options (top half morphs from sine to saw, bottom half from sine to square), but Tiptop/Buchla modules are pretty well liked and if you want to keep things simple it'd be a great pick.
The Intellijel Headphones 1U looks pretty good for about $70. I have a stereo in/out module from Intellijel and I'm happy with the build quality.
EDIT: Oh, one important thing to keep in mind with any oscillator is that if it has multiple outputs of different waveforms, you can use each of them as its own separate voice. They will all share one pitch and be affected by the same modulation, but you can patch more than one of them into a mixer to combine them into a more complex waveform (such as using a sub-octave square to add bass), patch one of the waveforms back into another input on the same module, or even split the waveforms into different sounds. If they're routed into two different VCAs triggered by different envelopes, they can play at different times.
If you're looking for a comprehensive tutorial, this series on Youtube helped me immensely. If you'd prefer to figure things out as you go, though, I totally understand. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... z-3N8HZyf_
Statistics: Posted by theAnachronist — Sun Nov 03, 2024 1:53 am
