It's Hard to Build an Oscillator

Re:It's Hard to Build an Oscillator by Mizza on Friday November 21, 2025 @04:31AM (#46002839)

Never found it hard to build an oscillator, the hard part is musical voltage per octave. 3340 repro chips are the way to go, the best non-3340 circuit I've seen is this one and it's still temperature-sensitive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiCMjt0mqvI

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Re:It's Hard to Build an Oscillator by ofalkaed on Friday November 21, 2025 @05:07AM (#46003023)

Temperature sensitivity only matters in polysynths where you don't have easy access to per-oscillator tuning. It is not difficult to build an oscillator with better pitch stability than a guitar, even my VCOs with no temperature compensation require less tuning than any guitar I have owned.

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Re:It's Hard to Build an Oscillator by Mizza on Friday November 21, 2025 @05:19AM (#46003086)

But that's for synths where the oscillators are ICs. I'm talking about simple oscillators from basic components

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Re:It's Hard to Build an Oscillator by ofalkaed on Friday November 21, 2025 @05:34AM (#46003172)

My VCOs which lack temperature compensation are oscillators built from basic components. The closest I have to oscillator on an IC these days, are the VCOs in my Moog Prodigy which use a quad OPAmp and a 3086 transistor array, it is far more stable than any guitar string.

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Re:It's Hard to Build an Oscillator by elihu on Friday November 21, 2025 @02:53PM (#46008223)

3340s are great. I've also heard good things about the SSI2130 and 2131 chips as a more modern alternative to 3340.

3340s are more DIY-friendly though, as they're DIP packages.

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