Tuesday 22 November 2011

Planning the synth

I want to build a synthesiser. There, I said it. After years lusting after and admiring Yamaha's mid-late 70s analogue beasts such as the GX-1 and CS-80, I've decided to build something inspired by those same machines in both aesthetic and sound.

Probably the most notable thing about both the GX-1 and CS-80 is that they are polysynths. Mine will not be, for the simple fact that polyphony is very tricky to implement in synthesisers with as complicated a voice structure as the Yamaha models. Here's a list of features/specifications that I have in mind. These are all however subject to change based on further research.

  • Monophonic
  • 61-note keyboard (salvaged)
  • Two independent voices with global modifiers (as in the CS-80)
  • 1 On/Off Pulse wave with independent PWM per voice
  • 1 On/Off Saw wave per voice
  • 1 Noise source with level slider per voice
  • 2 12 dB/oct resonant filters in HPF -> LPF configuration per voice
  • 1 Il Al A D R filter envelope per voice
  • 1 ADSR VCA envelope per voice
  • Independent voice octave selectors
  • Voice 2 detune lever
  • Global brightness (vcf cutoff) and resonance levers
  • Global keyboard scaling levers for brightness and volume
  • Global sustain slider (increases vcf and vca release time on both voices)
  • Sub-oscillator with selectable sine, ramp up/down, square and noise waves, affecting pitch, vcf, vca.
  • Three presets per voice, selected by panel buttons and stored on passive resistor network cartridges (GX-1 style) that can be swapped and changed
  • [possible] CS-80 style ring-mod section with Attack, Decay, Depth, Speed, Modulation
  • [possible] Switchable reset/continue envelope retrigger response
  • [possible] monophonic aftertouch
That's the idea so far, more snippets to come.

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