Wasps, DCOs, OSCs and Bill Clintons pants?

[Don Tillman]

   From: "Bjarne Nillson" <bnillson at hotmail.com>
   Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 18:49:03 PST

   >>What is a true DCO ? - a good philosophical point.

   First of all, there are nothing wrong in using the divide 
   N value counter as a oscillator(ex 8253).
   In fact it do behave allmost like a odinary VCO regarding to
   the upper frequency range where it starts to track badly,
   just like a odinary VCO does. :-)

It's nothing like an ordinary VCO.  You can't add portamento, you
can't modulate it with an analog signal.

And if your divide-by-N counter oscillator can't match the pitch
accuracy of a 1940's Hammond Organ, what's the point?

   Now, the discussion starts to be interesting,
   What is a VCO and what is a DCO???

Some time ago someone on this forum posted a list of about a dozen
different ways to build a hybrid/analog VCO.  It was very interesting
in made you think about all the different ways to apply the
technology.

   Lets compare a P5 and a JX3P, the P5 have a CPU driving a DAC
   who outputs a voltage to set the pitch of the oscillator.

   Now, we can for sure call this a DCO??
   Nooo?? Yes offcourse,a Digitaly Controlled Oscillator, right!

No.  There's nothing intrinsic to the oscillator itself that's
digital.  Why try to cover up the true nature of the sound producing
process with jargon?

  -- Don