Amos Gaynes posted this last night on Gearslutz; deserves to be a sticky.
you can absolutely get a pure square wave on the continuously-variable wave knob of the voyager / LP / sub phatty. But you have to know what it sounds like and use your ears; it won’t do it for you.
crank the filter all the way open so you can hear the maximum harmonic content. adjust the wave knob to be near to a square. turn the knob slowly and listen.
A true square has only odd harmonics, while the not-quite-square wave to either side of a pure square has some even harmonic content.
so as you are slowly turning the waveform knob, listen for the point at which some of the high-frequency harmonics get weaker, drop out, and then get stronger again as you keep turning the knob.. turn the knob back to the magic point at which those high-frequency harmonics are at their minimum… voila, perfect square wave.now, adjust your gain staging for the effect that you want. clean square? keep your vco level down a bit (50% or less on the Sub Phatty)… saturated square? crank your vco level and use overload / multi drive to taste.
After that you’ll want to program your envelopes… want real minimoog snap? 50% sustain, 0 attack 0 decay… on the Sub Phatty add a tiny bit of Hold time to the EG to emulate the clipping of the minimoog’s envelope attack…
in short, there’s tons of stuff you can do to get different sonic characteristics.
The number one most important thing to remember is that the moog Wave knob is NOT calibrated to where the picture of a square wave on the dial gives you a perfect square wave. You have to dial it in yourself. Don’t rely on the graphics, use your ears.
Original thread: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/9077382-post5.html