Hi. I'd like to know whether Madrona Labs's sine core oscillator design is inspired by some Buchla design (a digital one? or is there any sine core VCO? I've only heard of triangle and saw core) and whether anyone knows of any other software synthesizer with sine core oscillators.
The sounds of Aalto's oscillator are Buchla-inspired but the algorithm design is not. Having a sine that's waveshaped into square / saw probably leads to some commonalities, but I'm not trying to emulate the circuit.
I don't know of other soft synths that take the same approach of waveshaping a sine, but there have got to be some out there. The magic is really in the details and fine tuning.
Alright, thanks. I've checked pretty much everything out there and I don't think there's anything with the same basic approach (publicly available, at least). In any case, I know that the concept means nothing without a good implementation (the "details and fine tuning"), and yours is obviously excellent.
not really similar, but the PolyKB has the very cool morphable oscillator modelled from the original v.rare synth:
http://www.xils-lab.com/pages/PolyKB_Development-challenge.html
That PolyKB demo is pretty cool. I have always thought their oscillators sounded good in the AKS clone etc.
Aalto avoids aliasing in oscillator FM by calculating what aliasing harmonics would appear, then backing off on the index to reduce them to a certain level. You can hear this pretty easily in that high notes have a sort of threshold of mod index after which they don't get any more gnarly. It occurs to me that the same calculations could be used to treat hard sync as a kind of instantaneous FM. I also have some papers around on hard synching sines. Stuff to try for Aalto v.2 or future products!
The heart of Aalto is the one that is inspired by Buchla Design. This sound is malleable and alive made with dynamic calculation.
I dont' think there are software like that but I think it is really hard to find if ever there's available.