FSFX 101: Macro Digital Oscillator

"What would I do without mine? The #freestatefx MDO is essential to my modular rig. Pure awesomeness!" - Michael Bradford

The FSFX 101 Macro Digital Oscillator is a high precision voltage controlled audio source. The Macro Digital Oscillator offers 47 unique models which puts an entire studios worth of synthesizer architecture in your modular. Each model is controlled by two parameters, called color and timbre.

Classic Analog Models

CSAW Yamaha CS-80 sawtooth.
/\/I-_-_ Moog Voyager variable waveform.
/I/I-_-_ Sawtooth/square morph, with PWM.
FOLD Triangle/sine morph, with wavefolder.

Direct Digital Synthesis

_I_I_I_I_ Band-limited Dual Pulse Train, with detuning.
SUB-_-_ Square oscillator with variable suboctave.
SUB/I Saw oscillator plus suboctave.
SYN-_-_ Dual square oscillator, with hard sync.
SYN/I Dual sawtooth oscillator, with hard sync.
/I/Ix3 Triple saw wave oscillator.
-_-_x3 Triple square wave oscillator.
/\x3 Triple triangle wave oscillator.
SIx3 Triple sine wave osillator.
RING Stack of three ring-modulated sine waves.
/I/I/I/I/I Swarm of seven sawtooth waves.
/I/I_I_I_ Comb-filtered sawtooth wave.
TOY* Circuit-bent sawtooth generator, with sample rate reduction and bit toggling.
ZLPF Casio CZ style lowpass filter.
ZPKF Casio CZ style peak filter.
ZBPF Casio CZ style bandpass filter.
ZHPF Casio CZ style highpass filter.
VOSM Formant synthesis using three ring modulated/hardsync'ed oscillators.
VOWL Vowel sounds using early computer speech synthesis.
VFOF Vowel sounds using Rodet's FOF synthesis technique.
HARM Additive synthesis usin 12 sine harmonics.
FM 2-operator phase-modulation synthesis.
FBFM 2-operator phase-modulation synthesis, with carrier feedback.
WTFM 2-operator phase-modulation synthesis, with two feedback paths.

Physical Models

PLUK Raw plucked string synthesis.
BOWD Bowed string modeling.
BLOW Reed instrument model.
FLUT Flute instrument model.
BELL Bell model using Risset's additive synthesis technique.
DRUM Metallic drum model using an adaptation of Risset's Bell technique.

Percussive Models

KICK Roland TR-808 kick drum.
CYMB Roland TR-808 cymbal.
SNAR Roland TR-808 snare drum.

Wavetables

WTBL Classic wavetable synthesis.
WMAP Two-dimension wavetable synthesis.
WLIN One-dimensional scanning of all the Macro Digital Oscillator's modes.
WTx4 Four-voice variant of WLIN mode.

Noise Sources

NOIS Noise processed by a tuned multimode filter.
TWNQ Noise processed by a dual BP filter.
CLKN Clocked digital noise.
CLOU Cloud of sinusoidal grains.
PRTC Particle synthesis.
QPSK Model of the modulated signals used in digital telecommunications systems.

Additional Settings

The settings menu is accessible by pressing the encoder knob. These settings are not voltage controllable.

META CV-controlled mode selection with the FM input.
BITS Bit depth (4 to 16).
RATE Sample Rate (4kHz to 96kHz)
TSRC Trigger source (external or auto).
TDLY Trigger delay time.
I\ATT AD envelope attack time.
I\DEC AD envelope decay time.
I\FM AD envelope to FM.
I\TIM AD envelope to TIMBRE.
I\COL AD envelope to COLOR.
I\VCA AD envelope to VCA.
RANG Range of COARSE knob.
OCTV Octave transpose swich.
QNTZ Quantifies voltage at 1V/OCT input.
ROOT Root note of QNTZ scale
FLAT Detuning in the lower and higher frequencies.
DRFT Drift level.
SIGN Waveform imperfection level.
BRIG Screen brightness ajustment.
CAL. Calibration mode.

Features

Width: 2u MU
Firmware: Braids 1.9
All inputs: 100k impedance, DC to 4kHz.
CV Input: 12-bit
Audio Output: 96kHz, 16-bit audio processing (some algorithms are 2x or 4x oversampled)

Special thanks to Émilie Gillet for making this module possible.

Open Source