[sdiy] Polysynth considerations

[Jim Patchell]

I am in the progress of doing the same thing....although these two boards:

http://www.noniandjim.com/Jim/pictures/vco.jpg

http://www.noniandjim.com/Jim/pictures/vcf.jpg

were layed out and stuffer about 20 years ago now... :-)

I have five of each...so I was planning on doing a 5 voices, which I 
felt would be plenty, plus the more electronics you have, the more 
headaches you will have getting it all working.

The parts used on the boards are:

CEM3340, CEM3330, CEM3350, CEM3360, and CEM3310.

I was going to use a backplane connected to a 6502 based micro processor 
board...but if I ever get around to finishing this, I will probably use 
an ATmega128 or 2561.

By the way, these are probably the last PC boards I did by doing a tape 
up....(that was not done with CAD).  I remember that they were a real 
pain in the neck to do.  When you are doing a tapeup, if you don't plan 
well, sometimes you run into a tight spot...which I did...I sure love 
using CAD a lot more...

-Jim

Nicholas Gregorich wrote:
> I am interested in building a polysynth or two with my recently acquired 
> CEM chips. I am having a really basic problem: deciding how many voices 
> I need/want.
> 
> I've owned and played a fair number of synths, but I never stopped to 
> think how much polyphony I use. I am not much of a player, more of a 
> programmer, so my technique does not depend on the number of voices 
> available.
> 
> I rarely grab two hands of chords, but I do like long-release pads. 
> Voice stealing can actually be useful in these types of sounds, for 
> example 16 voices of Andromeda with long release can turn very mushy.
> 
> I did not plan to include anything fancy like splits or multi-timber 
> controls but I could be convinced otherwise. I guess I don't use these 
> features enough to implement them.
> 
> There are a couple duophonic synths out there, but that would be too 
> limiting. A few 4 voices too, this might be the lower limit of 
> "acceptable" polyphony. There's a certain famous 5 voice (who's newest 
> sibling has 8 voices) and a lot of 6 voice synthesizers. I don't know of 
> any 7 voicers, but quite a few synths have 8 voices.
> 
> So I guess I'm looking for some insight. Do people find the Jupiter 4 to 
> be short on voices? How about the Prophet 5? There are so many synths 
> with 6 voices, but are they noticeably more useful than a 5 voice? Eight 
> might be too much for me.
> 
> Nick.
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