Oscillators

In Twin 3, you can use up to four full-featured oscillators. Combined with our award-winning filters and the new FX section, this gives you an exceptional broad palette of sounds. The oscillators are vintage-sounding, and have built-in analog drift: there is a very subtle randomness in various parts of the synthesizer, like the oscillator tuning and phase.

To add an oscillator, click the + button at the bottom of the oscillators. To delete one, hover over the oscillator and click the small x button in the top-right corner.

Every oscillator can be easily customized and shows the produced waveform in the background. The following parameters are available:

• Waveform
  The Waveform button selects the waveform that the oscillator produces:

  • Sawtooth: a sharp bright tone that is ideal for filtering
  • Square: a more metallic but still vintage and 'round' sound, adjustable with the pulse width setting
  • Square Pure: a more pure, digital square wave, also adjustable with pulse width setting
  • Triangle: a soft, warm tone
  • Triangle Pure: a pure triangle wave with more harmonics
  • Sine: a simple, pure sine wave, the most basic waveform without harmonics
  • White noise: has a flat frequency response, meaning all frequencies at equal power
  • Pink noise: like white noise but with less power in the higher frequencies

• Enable
  This will turn an oscillator on or off, so you can easily check the contribution of an oscillator to the overall sound.

• Pulse Width
  The Pulse Width knob adjusts the pulse width of the square waveform, from an even square to an infinitely thin pulse (which is actually inaudible). Pulse width is a modulation target and is only available when the Square or Square Pure wave form is selected.

• Detune
  The Detune knob sets the detune for each oscillator. It has a range of +/- one octave, and is extra sensitive around the 0 position. It is a modulation target as well. Like any other knob, you can double-click it to enter a value directly using the keyboard. For example, try '0.5 octaves' or '1 semitone' or '50 cents'. See Knobs for more information.

• Scale
  Each oscillator can be transposed up to 3 octaves above and one octave below the master tune.

• Sync
  The Sync knob adjusts the level of hard sync for its oscillator. When set to 1, the oscillator works normally without hard sync. When set to a higher value, the oscillator will 'squeeze' more phases into one actual audible phase, which drastically changes the harmonics in the sound with a metallic-sounding effect. Sync is a modulation target.

• Phase Sync
  Below the Sync knob, the Phase Sync button (with a MIDI icon) toggles oscillator phase sync on and off. When oscillator phase sync is on, the oscillator resets its phase to halfway the waveform on each note-on event. With short, percussive sounds, this works really well to create a sharp and aggressive attack with every note. However, normally you should turn it off because it sometimes introduces unwanted clicks.

• Level/Pan
  The volume and pan of each oscillator can be adjusted using the combined Level/Pan knobs. The inner knob set the overall level and outer ring sets the panning. Both are modulation targets.

Ring modulation

You can enable ring modulation between two oscillators with the small * button between the sections for oscillator 1 and 2 or oscillator 3 and 4. Ring modulation multiplies two waveforms, and outputs the sum and difference of the frequencies present in each waveform. This produces a signal rich in overtones, suitable for producing bell-like or otherwise metallic sounds.

Master Tune/Scale and Portamento

The Master Tune knob determines the global frequency offset of all oscillators. The Scale menu above the knob transposes the frequency by full octaves. The Master Tune knob is a modulation target so you can modulate the frequency of all oscillators at once.

The Portamento knob adjusts the amount of portamento or glide, which makes the oscillators slide from one note to another. A little portamento is great for smooth keyboard solos, or when playing large bass intervals. Good portamento is one of those things that give your play just that little bit extra: it's magic. So we have fine-tuned it until it was just perfect! The best thing is: we have created a unique portamento because it also works in polyphonic mode, so you can play sliding chords. Normally, portamento is always applied, but when the Portamento Legato button below the knob is active, gliding will not be applied for the first key pressed, only for the keys after that. Portamento is also a modulation target.

Tips

• Modulate the Pulse Width knob with an XLFO for the classic pulse width modulation sound.
• Using less oscillators reduces CPU usage. Also, the oscillators operate more efficiently when the Sync knob is set to 1 and is not modulated (disabling hard sync).

• When you want to change any oscillator parameter for all oscillators at the same time, just hold down the Alt key (Shift key in Pro Tools) while turning a knob.

Next: Filters

See Also
Overview