[sdiy] Linear response VCOs?
brianw
brianw at audiobanshee.com
Mon Mar 23 02:11:27 CET 2026
Thanks for mentioning the Pro-One DAC, Olav, because I had not looked at these details before (and I own one!)
Which aspects of the Pro-One DAC design do you consider to be clever?
Choosing an 8-bit DAC, but only engaging the upper 6 bits?
Stealing the 6-column 8021 Port 0 outputs from the keyboard matrix to double as DAC parallel data inputs?
Calibrating a laser-calibrated DAC, where each step used is normally 40 mV, so that it actually has 41.667 mV (one quarter step)? *
Placing a CPU between the keyboard scan and the VCO input, so that sequencing and transposing are simple to achieve?
[Further Ramblings]
I believe that reading multiple notes from a keyboard for polyphonic voice assignment requires a CPU. At the very least it requires matrix wiring of the keys, some sort of digital scan, and a method to deliver a unique pitch CV to a selected voice. That's probably extremely difficult without a CPU unless the voice assignment algorithm is baked into the logic design. I think that explains why most polyphonic synths use both a CPU and a DAC, even though nothing requires that they (CPU & DAC) can't each be of benefit on their own.
I'm excluding duo-phonic keyboard wirings that can read both a low-note-priority and a high-note-priority CV from the same set of keys for a two-voice architecture; and I'm excluding full-polyphony keyboards where each key has a dedicated voice. Those designs do not require a CPU, of course.
The Pro-One is a bit of an exception, here, since it's monophonic but still has a CPU to read the keyboard. One side effect of this is the ease with which a sequencer with transposition can be implemented. I suspect that the fact that the Prophet 5 was designed (in 1978) before the Pro-One (in 1981) meant that they were already familiar with using a CPU to scan a keyboard, so the fact that it wasn't necessary for a monophonic keyboard was moot. They just used the technology that they already knew, and enjoyed the advantages that come with that design. In fact, I recall that Dave Smith came up with the idea to use a CPU at a time (1975 for the Sequential Circuits Model 800) when the synth industry was not doing that.
Brian
* Note that the AD558 DAC incorporated laser-trimmed resistors. Normally, the Vout, Vout-sense, and Vout-select pins are all shorted together to produce exactly 10 mV per step in full 8-bit mode. By placing a resistor and trim pot in series between Vout and Vout-sense, I assume that the Pro-One tweaks this to 10.41667 mV. Then, using only the upper 6 bits of the input, this can output in steps of 41.667 mV, up to 2.635 V total. I haven't figured out the gain of the 3280 + TL082 op-amp pair, but they might double that voltage to the expected half step resolution.
On Mar 22, 2026, at 3:44 PM, Olav Kvern wrote:
> The Sequential Pro-One is another mono synth with a DAC. I still think that the way it's done is clever.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ole
>
> On 3/22/26 7:12 AM, Michael E Caloroso wrote:
>> > Correct me if I'm wrong but old synths using DAC for CV were all
>> > polyphonic.
>> If it was programmable using solid state memory, it had DAC with MUX/ S&H. Not limited to just polyphonics.
>> Oberheim OB-1 monophonic was programmable and used a DAC with MUX/S&H for CV. Released in 1977.
>> Moog Source was another one, released in 1980.
>> MC
>> On Thu, Mar 19, 2026 at 7:14 AM Roman Sowa wrote:
>> Correct me if I'm wrong but old synths using DAC for CV were all
>> polyhonic. That means a lot of CV sources needed. So they used S&H and
>> muxed DAC. To have PWM with fast enough response to feed MUX and
>> S$H, it
>> would have to run at enormouse frequency, not suitable to affordable
>> technology back then. And putting separate counter as PWM generator for
>> every CV is much more expensive, and takes more space than DAC-MUX-S&H.
>> Back then if you wanted a timer, you got 8253 offering 3 timers in one
>> package, and I'm not even sure if it had PWM mode at all.
>> Roman
>> W dniu 2026-03-18 o 21:39, Mike Bryant pisze:
>> > Does anybody know why these old synths didn't use PWM/PDM
>> techniques ?
>> >
>> > LS-TTL or CMOS feeding a comparator into an analogue integrator
>> gave 12
>> > bits performance at audio frequencies even in the 70s so CVs good
>> enough
>> > for tuning would have been easy.
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > From: brianw
>> > *Sent:* 18 March 2026 19:02
>> > The Prophet 5, Rev 1 and Rev 2, use a 7-bit DAC made from hand-picked
>> > resistors. There is a note in the Service Manual that you should *not*
>> > replace these resistors because of the challenge of matching a new one
>> > to the network. 1 LSB is calibrated to 1/12 V (0.0833 V) for easy use in
>> > 1V/8va scaling. CV ranges from 0 V to 10.583 V (127/12), but the Prophet
>> > 5 only uses the lower 6 bits for pitch, limiting the range to 5.333 V
>> > maximum and thus 5 octaves. All CV were 7-bit, but the pitch combined
>> > coarse and fine with the scale of the DAC changed so that there were 64
>> > steps in the coarse range plus another 128 steps in the fine range. This
>> > wasn't quite as accurate as a 13-bit DAC, but still quite accurate for
>> > the time.
>> >
>> > The Prophet 5 Rev 3 simply used a 16-bit DAC, but maintained the
>> > firmware design with 7 bits per CV, so the pitch did not enjoy a full
>> > 16-bit precision. The 13-bit pitch values still have 16-bit accuracy,
>> > though, just not 65536 steps of precision.
>> >
>> > One thing to note, Mark, is that a 6-bit DAC has an LSB that's 1.56% of
>> > the total range, so 1% resistors would be quite awful. Then there's the
>> > fact that a 1% error in the MSB could throw the whole binary scale off
>> > enough that the values are not monotonic (i.e. an increase in the code
>> > could actually cause a decrease in voltage!). A 7-bit DAC has the LSB at
>> > 0.78% so you definitely need better than 1% precision. These
>> > manufacturers were not making a custom resistor array so much as
>> > hand-selecting individual resistors that were matched well across the
>> > whole group.
>> >
>> > Today, not only are 1% resistors more readily available than they were
>> > in the seventies, but you can even get 0.1% tolerance resistors at a
>> > reasonable. Still, that doesn't even get you to a full 9-bit DAC. This
>> > illustrates how impressive DAC chip technology is. One of the fasted DAC
>> > chips I've designed with can run at a sample rate of 125 MHz (yeah, MHz,
>> > not kHz) based on current switching rather than voltage, but it stops at
>> > 14-bit precision because the smallest current is only 0.0061% of the
>> > largest, and it's difficult to be precise enough at such a large scale
>> > factor. Larger DAC precision requires a different technique than
>> > binary-weighted digits. Fortunately, there are many ways to implement a DAC.
>> >
>> > Brian
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mar 18, 2026, at 4:34 AM, Tom Wiltshire wrote:
>> >> Roland had form for this. SH-101 uses a simple DAC built from a few resistors too.
>> >>
>> >> Like Roman said, it doesn't really make sense nowadays when DACs are cheap, but it was worth it then.
>> >>
>> >> Tom
>> >>
>> >> On 18 Mar 2026, at 11:31, mark verbos wrote:
>> >>> Like a TR-909.
>> >>> But, surely it is cheaper to use 1% resistors rather than a custom resistor array made.
>> >>>
>> >>> Mark
>> >>>
>> >>> On Mar 17, 2026, at 18:44, David Manley wrote:
>> >>>> It's interesting to see how PAiA's John Simonton solved some these issues in the 1970's by having a custom laser trimmed resistor network built for their 6-bit "Equally Tempered DAC" to be used with linear VCOs. See the bottom of the schematic on page 18, the resistor values are on the last page.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> https://paia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/8780pgs.pdf
>> <https://paia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/8780pgs.pdf>
>> > <https://paia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/8780pgs.pdf
>> <https://paia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/8780pgs.pdf>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> As is typical for PAiA a very low cost solution: build your
>> own DAC with a few components.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> -Dave
>> >
More information about the Synth-diy
mailing list