[sdiy] Last question about LFOs

[Kyle Stephens]

I'd just poke around with your existing gear and see what's the highest and lowest you think you'll need practically and go with that. There's plenty of mods for existing synths to expand their LFO range up and/or down, so as a builder you have opportunity from the get-go here to tweak to what pleases you. There's always having a switch for a high or lo range too.

Seems just a mater of taste and what you'll be using it for. Sub-hertz frequencies in the range of minutes per cycle may not be useful, and some things start to get diminishing returns with too high a modulation index - though like most things synthy, your millage may vary, and one man's noise is another's nirvana.

(But isn't everything just narrow-band noise ;) ? )


_Kyle

--- On Tue, 4/7/09, David G. Dixon <dixon at interchange.ubc.ca> wrote:

> From: David G. Dixon <dixon at interchange.ubc.ca>
> Subject: [sdiy] Last question about LFOs
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 11:05 PM
> Well, my custom-designed
> shape-shifting triple LFO works perfectly, and the
> LEDs are happily blinking away.  However, I'm not sure
> about the capacitor
> values I chose.  I selected 10 uF (non-polar) for the
> "long" cap and 33 nF
> for the "short" cap.  This way, the long durations
> range from about 4
> minutes to just less than 1 second, and the short durations
> range from a few
> seconds to about 2.8 ms (360 Hz).  I wanted a small
> amount of time overlap
> between the two settings, and I achieved that. 
> However, there isn't much
> useful "low frequency" range in the "short" setting, as the
> thing becomes an
> oscillator less than halfway along the rotation of the rate
> pot.  I'm
> thinking I might want to swap out that 33 nF cap for 100 nF
> or maybe even
> 330 nF.
> 
> Hence, my question: Is there a "standard" or "accepted"
> range of frequencies
> for LFOs, and barring that, what is the typical maximum
> frequency of LFOs?
> 
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