Hello,

Many of the old analog synthesizers had the possibility to 'sync'
their VCO's. Now I don't see the point of syncing VCO's, I mean
if the two VCO's are running in phase, you could also just use
one VCO, because there will be no 'beat oscillation'. So what is
the purpose of syncing VCO's ?

Another question: How can you sync VCO's if they run on different
frequencies ? (In my opinion it is only possible if they run
1:2, 1:3 ... or 2:1 3:1 frequency ratio).

In csound, all oscillators that run at the same frequency (or at
a multiple 1:2, 1:3, 2:1 etc) are synced inherently, right ?
Or is there more to it than what I think ?

Hi,

I'm not totally sure about this, but I think that the purpose of syncing
oscillators was to enable the spectral content of the resulting sound
to be altered by changing the frequency of the slave osc while the
pitch of the sound is the same as the master osc. The frequencies
of the oscillators don't have to be harmonically related. The synced
oscillators start their cycles at the same time and the cycle of the
slave is reset when another master cycle starts.

I'm not sure how it's implemented in old analogs.

Timo

On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Thomas Huber wrote:

> Many of the old analog synthesizers had the possibility to 'sync'
> their VCO's. Now I don't see the point of syncing VCO's, I mean
> if the two VCO's are running in phase, you could also just use
> one VCO, because there will be no 'beat oscillation'. So what is
> the purpose of syncing VCO's ?