Melody machine
OSC3 is a trio of oscillators featuring a distinctly musical control scheme. Standard VCO controls set a "center frequency" for one oscillator, and a spread control detunes the other two up and down.
A logic output follows the "beating" of the detuned oscillators, letting you harness the frequency of the effect in the rest of your patch.
A set of spread control modes give you sounds ranging from tempo-synced choruses to key-locked chords.
The VCO controls are designed for ease of use. Octave selectors let you set the pitch range over a 5 octave span. A built-in quantizer makes it easy to create tonal melodies. With quantization enabled, the coarse tune steps in semitone increments and a counter-clockwise turn of the fine tune brings you to perfect A440 tuning, making it a breeze to tune with external gear.
Phase modulation can be applied to the two detuned oscillators, allowing for vibrato, extraterrestrial audio-rate modulation, and waveshaping by self-patching from the center oscillator output. You can also apply analog voltage control to the level of each detuned oscillator.
A pair of unconventional logic inputs provide opportunities for patching gate sequences directly into the module, freeing up utility modules that would be required to produce the same effects.
Respect to Jurgen Haible and the Living VCO.
Key specs
- Width: 12hp with expander, 8hp without
- Depth: 38mm
- Current draw +12V/-12V: 110mA/50mA