As usual, I was surfing around doing research and I came across this:
http://www.cgs.synth.net/tube/index.html
It looks like a very interesting type of synthesis so I emailed a friend of mine asking him to take a look at it and give me his thoughts to which he replied:
I'm hoping our resident gurus can take a look at it and give me their thoughts about this type of synth or possibly making just the VCO or VCF?It looks like it might be a fun project, but I would like to see three things:
A full schematic of the final project. This would show you just how complex the final product is.
A full parts list. Building this thing would be much easier if you had all the parts ready to use. Also, this would hint at complexity and time required.
A flow diagram of the synthesis engine. Just as a modern synth shows you it's capabilities. This one seems to be a simple amplified oscillator with a filter or two going through the beam modulator which by his description sounds like a distortion device. Maybe it's more than that, but soft clipping, folding the wave form over on itself is distortion. Maybe it's only clipping one side of the wave form and creating a more unique sound. I would like to see some drawn wave forms of this things output as the effect is applied.
Pros - neat project that could produce a somewhat unique analog sound. You get a little understanding about the synthesis. You may realize that there's no need to break synthesis down further than the oscillator level that you probably already understand (i.e. the black boxes used in signal flow diagrams representing oscillators, filters, and FX are representative enough of what's going on).
Cons - that sound may not be very usable, you'll burn many hours, and potentially never finish the project. It's not exactly going to be robust like a typical synth you or I own, either. You may make one or two bad connections somewhere and never get the desired results. The understanding may be lost in the complexity of the project.
Thanks!
