[sdiy] Sine-wave VCOs?

[john mahoney]

> > I suspect folks have not gone that way in the past
> > because sines have almost no harmonics and
> > uninteresting in subtractive synthesis. ...

Yes, for a subtractive synth, there's little reason to make a VCO that
produces only sine waves. The goal is to have many different waveforms
available.

A cool application of sines is in the CS-80, where you can mix an unfiltered
sine with the output of the VCF. This adds the pure fundamental, e.g. for
adding bass power without adding upper harmonics.

True additive synthesis and DX-style FM are best done digitally, IMHO. The
Kawai K5000 provides something like 2 sets of 64 sine waves per note, and
Kawai developed custom digital chips to make this cost effective.
--
john