Reference Manual
CHAPTER 22. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE 340
22.6.2 Oscillator Section and Aliasing
Oscillator D's Display
and Shell Parameters.
The oscillators can basically play back ve waveform types sine, square, sawtooth, triangle
and noise as chosen from the Wave chooser in the individual oscillator displays. The rst of
these waveforms is a pure, mathematical sine wave, which is usually the rst choice for many
FM timbres. Since FM synthesis has a long tradition in hardware synthesizers, we added
some variations of the pure sine wave that allow for more realistic modeling of vintage digital
synthesizers. The differences between these sine waves are very subtle, and whether or not
they are audible is highly dependent upon the individual sound. We also added Sine 4
Bit and Sine 8 Bit to provide the retro sound adored by C64 fans, and Saw D and
Square D digital waveforms, which are especially good for digital bass sounds. Another
special case is the noise waveform. This is not real noise, generated by a random generator,
but a looping noise sample. For more statistical noise, one could modulate the noise
oscillator with another oscillator, or with real noise from the LFO. The square, triangle and
sawtooth waveforms are resynthesized approximations of the ideal shape. The numbers
included in the displayed name (e.g., Square 6) dene how many harmonics are used for
the resynthesis. Lower numbers sound mellower and are less likely to create aliasing when
used on high pitches.
Hint: Oscillator waveforms can be copied and pasted from one oscillator to another using
the (PC) /
Ctrl
(Mac) context menu.
Aliasing distortion is a common side effect of all digital synthesis and is the result of the
nite sample rate and precision of digital systems. It mostly occurs at high frequencies. FM
synthesis is especially likely to produce this kind of effect, since one can easily create sounds