[sdiy] Polysynths: 8 voice or 16 voice?

[Benjamin Tremblay]

16 sounds impressive but I don’t know how important it is. What I do know is 4-voice doesn’t cut it. 8 voice would have been plenty in the digitone but the temptation to use multitimbrality was too strong. 
So I would say an 8 voice poly was a lot in 1987 and it’s a lot now. 32 voice multitimbral was not enough in 1987 and it’s not enough now. 

Benjamin Tremblay

> On Jul 26, 2026, at 5:41 PM, Rainer Buchty <rainer at buchty.net> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 26 Jul 2026, H.Sergio Alves via Synth-diy wrote:
> 
>>> From a producer point of view 1024 would be enough
> 
> You missed the part about "it doesn't do multitimbrality,
> so there's only one sound coming out of it at any time".
> 
> So 88 voices would be enough to achieve full piano behavior, 127 if you want to go full MIDI note range.
> 
> From a practical perspective, 8 hence are probably ok, unless you insist of playing 4-chords with long release time and no voice-stealing.
> 
> But at just 25% cost increase compared to the 8-voice model, as outlined, let's go 16, just to be safe.
> 
> Rainer
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________________
> This is the Synth-diy mailing list
> Submit email to: Synth-diy at synth-diy.org
> View archive at: https://synth-diy.org/pipermail/synth-diy/
> Check your settings at: https://synth-diy.org/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
> Selling or trading? Use marketplace at synth-diy.org