It says in the Aalto manual regarding the voices:
"Since they are controlled by the common patcher UI, and one set of dials, the patch created for each voice is identical. But the signals that flow through each voice’s patch can be very different. Thus, each voice is separately controllable, in timbre, modulation, and all of its parameters."
I assumed that the oscillator for each voice was set by one set of controls and would therefore sound the same. Does this statement in the manual mean that I could use different oscillator settings for each voice? I'm not quite clear on this.
Thanks in advance for your help.
I suspect this refers to modulation…
easiest to see when you are using a per note modulation source…
say you have poly aftertouch, this could modulate something in the oscillator, and so each voice could be being modulated differently, say timbre, fm carrier etc
with single channel is a bit limited, as there are few per voice modulate sources - velocity, pitch (key tracking), poly aftertouch.
its a bit more obvious if you are using OSC with say a soundplane (or eigenharp), here you could be modulating all parameters with 3 axis, and each voice would be therefore different
Yes, a different signal goes to each voice via the modulation inputs. This is how a different pitch gets to each oscillator, for example.
Remember each voice has its own independent LFO and sequencer as well. so when these modulations sources are not in sync, they provide different signals to each voice.
And then there's the "voice" output from the KEY module, which just puts out a different constant signal for each voice. This can set the sequencer for each voice to a different rate, or a different offset, or... lots of other possibilities.
I'll try to clear up the manual a bit—thanks for the question.
Thanks guys! I'm newly into synthesis and having a lot of fun learning. I really like exploring Aalto and figuring out what it can do. Your explanations cleared things up for me. I appreciate it!