Voices (Synth)

General

– In Music Synths referred to as to How Many Harmonics will be Available 

– often you can Influence the Spreading of the Individual Voices in the Stereo Field with an Additional Parameter (a Simple “Width” or “Widening” Parameter)

– as a Sidenote, a Organ Would have Needed 32 Foot Pipe Organ to Generate a 16Hz Sound, but that would have been too many as there was Not Place for such a Big Organ

– So they created the Illusion of such a Low Tone by adding Upper Harmonics to the Lowest Tone with a 16 and 10 /1/2 Foot Pipe Organ to Trick your Mind with adding Overtones from the 10 /1/2 Foot Organ to Fill missing Harmonics

Synth Voices / Polyphony

– the Term “Unisono” means “Together”, so it Starts with 2 Voices (1 Voice is Not Unison)

– Synths have their Limit on the Usage of the Unison Feature, Related to Maximal available Voices

– some Synths Provide a Number of Settings to Influence the Behaviour per Voice

– often a Synth also Features its “Voices Settings” where you Specify with How many Notes the Synth Operates in General 

– basically, Playing 1 Voice with1 OSC Costs you 1 Voice and Using the OSC in Unison Mode Costs you 2 Voices

– often a Maximum of a Unisono of 1 per OSC gives a perfect Result, which for 3 OSC will Fatten the Sound 3 Times the Original (i.e. you will Not Benefit Sound-Wise from more Unison Amounts)

– Regarding the Limits, if a Synth has 10 Voices and you Set Unison to 10, the Synth can only Output Mono 

– or say you have Maximal 6 Voices and you Want to Play a 3 Note Chord, you can Unison only 1 Time

– Notice that some Synth have “Super-Saw” which just per se a Unison Mode Oscillator Type

Voices / Polyphony Example

1) Say the OSC is Capable of “6 Times Polyphony”

2) This means a OSC has 6 Voices available, i.e. you can Play Maximal 6 Notes at a Time per OSC

3) If you then Set a OSC to Unison Mode (Dual), you Lose 1 Voice, i.e. you can Now Play Maximal 5 Notes at the a Time

4) But for the OSC you have Set to Unison Mode, the Benefit is that any Note you Press Comes in 2 Voices which Detuned to Each other by the Detune Amount you Set it to

5) On the other Side if you Play a 3 Note Chord on a “6 Times Polyphony” Synth, you could Set Unison to Maximal 1 

– Each Note of the 3 Note Chord Needs 1 Voice More which is 1+1, 1+1, 1+1 = 6)

6) So if you would Set Unison to 2 and Play a 3 Note Chord, you theoretically would Need “9 Times Polyphony” 

– Each Note of the 3 Note Chord Needs 2 Voices More which is 1+1+1, 1+1+1, 1+1+1 = 9)

– in this Case the Voices are usually Taken from the Previous Played Keys, Hence Not the Full Sound you would Expect it to