[LAU] Why does PHASEX sound so damn good?

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 09 August 2014 05:46:03 Fons Adriaensen did opine
And Gene did reply:
> 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.

You are being too kind, Ken.  Has this list gotten so genteel you can't 
use more descriptive terms?
> > 
> > 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.

Whose iron can be quite well saturated when dealing with a DC level at 
their inputs.  That will have a sound all its own that I've never found to 
be at all pleasant due to the IM distortion it causes.
 
> 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.

The idea is simple, properly doing it in the presence of front office bean 
counters who don't understand why it should be done, is not.  But you knew 
that...

Cheers, Gene Heskett
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