G2 Challenge - Complex Oscillators

[exeterdown]

Hey all, I was thinking about this problem today and thought it might be a nice challenge to to put to the community.

Inspired by the Verbos Complex Oscillator, which I assumed would be another Buchla copy - but like the MakeNoise DPO this has its own sound. Very raw and untamed - like it has mistakes built into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAVJtEzyaYk

I'd love to see what everyone's take on a complex oscillator is - that is something that can be cut and paste into other patches. Can of course contain delay lines, filters and so on, but I'm looking at how to combine a few elements and create something unique from them.

It might sound silly but I'm almost trying to escape that 'G2 sound' - or at least get away from the 'out of the box', raw, clean, digital, oscillator sounds it produces.

Some great videos on complex oscillator theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQqXRSV8msA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ml72uqEhM

[Tim Kleinert]

DIY oscillators is a tough one because aliasing is constantly imminent.

Thus all my DIY oscillator designs (additive, wave-draw, hard-sync etc.) are based on the concept of generating the waveform at a fixed low frequency, and then performing band-limited re-sampling to the desired pitch. This doesn't eliminate aliasing completely, but limits it to harmonic aliasing, which is way less intrusive and actually can add a bit of spice to the sound.

Oscillators using BLEP processes are theoretically possible on the G2, but such a design would eat one DSP easily just for one oscillator. It wouldn't be much more than an "educational patch" for the experimental section.

Of course, if you don't mind aliasing, the sky is wide open.

cheers,
t

[exeterdown]

Getting schooled here, but this is great.

Any chance you can give me a bit more background or depth on aliasing or what the methods you've mentioned are?

[Electromagnetic Wave]

Hi exeterdown,

You need to have a look to a couple of this links/patchs mainly from Tim Kleinert :

[Tim Kleinert]

Sorry for not replying more swiftly.

Sincerely hope I didn't come across as condescending in any way, it isn't my goal to "school" anyone here. Everybody's opinion and artistic choice is valid.

The problem with a digital modular system is that aliasing is basically lurking at every corner. That's not a criticism, as digital modular environments have a tremendous amount of benefits. It's just important to keep it in mind and to prevent it where it matters, if possible.

Generating new and unusual oscillator waveforms via some kind of nonlinear waveshaping is potentially the worst offender here, that's why I mentioned it.

In terms of getting an idea of what it takes to generate anti-aliased classic waveshapes, I found this paper to be the easiest to understand, because it has a lot of neat graphs and visualisations. It will give you a good grasp of the inherent problems.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/3321831_Antialiasing_Oscillators_in_Subtractive_Synthesis

[Electromagnetic Wave]

Thanks for this paper Tim. I will read it carefully.

[Tim Kleinert]

[Electromagnetic Wave]