[LAU] Why does PHASEX sound so damn good?

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 04:47:26PM -0700, Ken Restivo wrote:
 
> It looks like this:
>  http://bace.s3.amazonaws.com/dcoffset.jpg

That's a very mild case, probably harmless. What I got, just by
selecting one of the presets ('classic pad' or something similar)
was a DC offset 30 times as big as the audio signal. In terms of
power that close to a 1000:1 ratio.
 
> > Whatever qualities it may have, this is crappy.
> 
> I guess so. But maybe it's dangerousness is what gives it its sound.

You can't hear DC. It may drive your speakers into some nice distortion
before the funny smell appears, but there are less dangerous ways to
achieve the same.

> Will Alexander once described Keith Emerson's Moog as having "no
> padded cell technology". Meaning, it was capable of destroying amps,
> PA systems, expensive mixing boards, huge stadium-sized house sound
> systems, etc. He treated the thing like a loaded weapon when plugging
> it into stuff. Maybe this is what he meant by that.

That can be said of any synth in fact. And I'm pretty sure that
ELP's PA system was not DC-coupled - the mixers they used had
transformer inputs. 

DC offsets occur naturally when using phase modulated oscillators
even if their basic waveform is DC-free. It's part of the way PM
synthesis works, and you want the DC in the modulation inputs. But
once the VCO outputs enter the other parts of the audio path it 
should be removed. It's trivially simple to do that.

-- 
FA

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