[sdiy] Polysynths: 8 voice or 16 voice?

[cheater cheater]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2026 at 11:16 PM H.Sergio Alves via Synth-diy
<synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
>
> From a pianist point of view 10 voices are plenty.. ten fingers ten voices..
> From an experimentalist point of view 16 are enough but 24 would be great…
> From a producer point of view 1024 would be enough
> 😆

We're talking about a single instrument producing a single timbre.
When you're talking about "producer" and "1024 voices", you're clearly
thinking of having multiple different instrument timbres playing at
the same time.


> On Sun, 26 Jul 2026 at 22:07, Mattias Rickardsson <mr at analogue.org> wrote:
>>
>> > 8 or 16 voice. ... What do you choose, and why?
>>
>> Not sure, depends a lot on what to use it for. From a pianist's perspective 8 voices will not be fun, and even 16 can be limited.
>>
>> Personally probably 8, unless the price is low or it has other tricks justifying those 16 voices.
>>
>> > What markup would 16 voice have to be over 8 voice where you'll say
>> it's not worth it anymore? Ranging between 0% and 100%.
>>
>> This can depend a lot in the price. For a really expensive instrument your budget might be broken already by the 8-voice version, so 16 is out of the question regardless of the markup.
>>
>> Somewhat similar with a cheaper instrument if it's not very interesting - then why spend more to get more of it. (-:
>>
>> /mr
>>
>> Den sön 26 juli 2026 22:23Tom Wiltshire <tom at electricdruid.net> skrev:
>>>
>>> If you consider the actual cost of the voices as part of the cost of the entire synth, that more-or-less gives you your answer.
>>>
>>> The hardware cost of a synth is a *big* percentage of the final build price - the case, the interface, the keyboard, knobs, switches, etc etc. That's entirely the same between 8 and 16 voice. I'm not talking about the *final price* - that has transport and dealer mark-up and all sorts added on. I'm talking about the price to actually build the instrument, the price at the factory door.
>>>
>>> Then there's the development cost. That's the same too. Adding more voices once you've done the voice design is basically zero-cost, beyond the cost of the actual parts on the board. Writing software that can handle plugging in an extra eight voices is basic, so there's no cost there.
>>>
>>> In general, I think the extra that companies charge for the 16-voice version over the 8-voice version is far more than is justified by the actual extra costs of a 16-voice instrument. Whether that's because they priced the 8-voice version extremely competitively to give them a way in to a lower tier of the market, or whether they're simply increasing their mark-up on a "luxury" product, I dunno. But I don't see any technical reason why the two prices should be as far apart as they mostly seem to be.
>>>
>>> HTH
>>> Tom
>>>
>>> > On 26 Jul 2026, at 19:57, cheater cheater via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Let's say you're making/buying a polysynth. You can make it 8 or 16
>>> > voice. It's equally practical to do 8 or 16, it's not larger or
>>> > bulkier, the 16 voice costs 25% more, it doesn't do multitimbrality,
>>> > so there's only one sound coming out of it at any time. What do you
>>> > choose, and why?
>>> >
>>> > What markup would 16 voice have to be over 8 voice where you'll say
>>> > it's not worth it anymore? Ranging between 0% and 100%.
>>> >
>>> > Thanks!
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>>
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>
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