[sdiy] Polysynths: 8 voice or 16 voice?

[Mike Bryant]

  *
From a pianist point of view 10 voices are plenty.. ten fingers ten voices..

Not sure I agree with that.  Pressing the sustain pedal and playing fast you could have 20 or 30 notes audible.

________________________________
From: Synth-diy <synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org> on behalf of H.Sergio Alves via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
Sent: 26 July 2026 22:10
To: Mattias Rickardsson <mr at analogue.org>
Cc: synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Polysynths: 8 voice or 16 voice?

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
😆

On Sun, 26 Jul 2026 at 22:07, Mattias Rickardsson <mr at analogue.org<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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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