Hard Sync

Hard sync is one of those mysterious items...

On the Wavestation, it is DIGITAL HARD SYNC, which means that the A-wave is influenced by the 'duty cycle' of the B-wave. In a sample, the higher pitched a sample is, the shorter its duty cycle is, so a quick way to see what HARD SYNC does is to compare two waves with the same duty cycle, and then alter the pitch of the second (B) wave.

Find a two-wave patch, and before entering the WAVES screen, set the HARD SYNC to ON. Now, for experimentation sake, set the A-wave to ROM 169>VS41, and the B-wave to ROM167>VS39, and we'll make a nice cheesey sound for starters. (I used a copy of the Digi-Harp Performance, ROM-38 for a piano-like attack.) Now, go to the SEMI adjustment for the B-wave on the WAVES page, and start changing its tuning there (the SEMI changes a tone by a half-step up or down, normally over a two-octave range in either direction, yet not always...). As you change the frequency, and thus the duty cycle, of the B-wave, you will hear a pronounced change in the sound produced by the A-wave while the PITCH of the A-wave remains the same.

Now that you have the idea, try other (better!) wave combinations. If the duty-cycles are TOO different, though, you will hear an annoying clicking noise or flutter, or a distorted, dirty-digital effect. But starting with waves of similar or same duty cycles and altering the frequency (and thus, duty cycle) of any but the A-wave will give you an interesting range of new sounds to work with.

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To which Paul A.F. Carter adds:

I'd just like to point out that when using hard sync, it is oscillators b,c, and d, that are synchronised to the frequency of the A oscillator. Not the other way around:)

This means that the tone of oscillator A stays the same whilst the other oscillators sample playback cycles are interupted, at a rate dependant on the frequency of oscillator A; This introduces a certain amount of harmonics/noise dependant on the pitches of the slave oscillators.

See my wsbank PAFCWEB2.mid for examples of hard sync (pafc101)

see you later, Paul.

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To which Brett Kaplan further added:

Wait a minute! You'll have to ammend your archive again, Terry. I have a slight correction of Paul's description:

When you use 4 oscillators in a patch, and the hard sync function is on, Waves A and C operate as one exclusive pair and Waves B and D will operate as another exclusive pair. Wave C will "slave" to A and Wave D will slave to B. In other words, Waves B and D have NO effect on Waves A and C, and vice versa.

Brett Kaplan

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Fascinating stuff, eh? :-)