Greetings Randy and all,
Regarding Aalto's powerful output (love it), I'm utilizing a vu-meter/gain-trim plugin with a variable dBFS setting option (Hornet VU-Meter) to "position" Aalto as much as possible, without resorting to compression techniques, in it's operational "sweetspot". Does anyone know the output of Aalto? I started using the analog era's classic setting of -18 dBFS = 0VU, and I've gotten good results, but I'd love the setting to be dead on accurate if possible. Thanks for your time. Cheers.
As you've noticed Aalto can generate signals a lot hotter than 0dB. These are not problematic in themselves. The oscillator generates signals up to 0dB. Then the filter is capable of adding a lot of gain through resonance. In a hardware synthesizer, this extra gain would typically be clipped in the output stage. In Aalto I left it unclipped with the reasoning that you might want to clip it in your own way to add your own choice of color.
If you want the attenuation with no kind of coloring, you can use the input knob to Aalto’s OUTPUT module and turn it down until your signal is within the range you want. This knob is just a multiply, so there isn't really a special range where Aalto’s output is best. I think the choice is more about what you are feeding it into.
I think the range of -18 you are using is a good choice that will make the most of a lot of software processing including the mix bus.