What The Bleep's Next

[chysn]

There must be something wrong with your buffered multiple as that is how you should be distributing pitch * * * What buffered multiple are you using?

It was the buffered multiple in the Mother-32*. But just about everyone on MuffWiggler says to use passive mults anyway, as buffered mults tend to overcompensate. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, but so far my experience is bearing it out.

A passive multiple will alter itself depending on its outputs, there is a series voltage drop so you are not going to be getting 1V/octave coming out of all of the outputs. This voltage drop increases with each output attached.

That was my concern about adding a third oscillator. With two oscillators on the Intellijel Passive Multiple, there's no voltage drop (at least not detectable within .001V by my meter) and tracking is lovely for five octaves.

* Yeah, I was surprised that the Mother-32's mult is buffered, but it is.

[BobTheDog]

I'm surprised they say to use passive ones on MW, that goes against everything I have ever heard!

[BobTheDog]

I had a quick look on MW, most people seem to think you should use buffered ones for pitch cv.

There's a good post by Tony Steventon in this thread that explains it better than I could!

https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=65129

I have had problems with passive ones for pitch so I always use active ones myself.

[chysn]

I did read the thread you linked, and it's why I tried the buffered multiple first. And then

https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=138460&sid=94b17b202cb04ed18d26f4941a35ff19
https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31032&sid=872c732a4758c1487fea20f81e35fadb

There's quite a bit of nuance to it, even in the thread you linked. I'm more than willing to entertain the idea that the Mother-32's buffered multiple is just not very good, or that there was a poor impedance match or something; at the same time, I can't imagine that the folks saying that tracking will be affected with two oscillators and a passive mult have actually tried it, much less measured it with a meter like I have.

Obviously I'll revisit the issue if I move to a third oscillator and things go sideways. For now, my advice would be, start with the cheaper thing and see if it works for you. For you, it didn't work, but it was probably still a good idea to try the passives out.

[BobTheDog]

I think if you are only using 2 OSCs then a passive will be fine, I notice that on my modular if I attach a pitch cv via passive to 4 or more (OSCs or filters) it all starts to go pretty wonky.

[chysn]

I think if you are only using 2 OSCs then a passive will be fine, I notice that on my modular if I attach a pitch cv via passive to 4 or more (OSCs or filters) it all starts to go pretty wonky.

What do you have that works well? As soon as the DSM03 comes out, I'm going to be tracking three things at 1v/oct.

[DavidDever]

http://www.doepfer.de/a1852.htm, gives you multi buffered outs for pitch CV control AND allows you to mix in a mod source or two.

[chysn]

Oh, that looks nice! And it doesn't cost much more than a regular 2HP buffered multiple.

[BobTheDog]

There's the A-180-3 as well, cheaper but more basic. Can do 1->6 as well as 2->3.

[chysn]

That looks like a more conventional small-HP buffered multiple, whereas for the A-185-2 they promise that it's a precision buffer with "exactly" a 1.00 amplification. No hit-or-miss with that one. The question is whether this promise of precision is worth the HP (it's certainly worth the money), or if other 2HP buffered multiples are up to the task.

[chysn]

I got the Mutable Instruments Links. It works great as a buffered multiple for oscillators, delivering on its promise of low offset error. But also, it has a 2x2 unity mixer, which I use for keyboard transposition of the sequencer. Links is a good thing.