Arturia CS-80V - 7 Some Elements of Sound Design; Subtractive Sound Synthesis; A Basic Sound

ARTURIA – CS-80V – USER’S MANUAL
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7 SOME ELEMENTS OF SOUND DESIGN
Here is a series of examples designed to guide you through the creation of various
sounds as well as a vintage analog styled note sequence. They progress in order of
difficulty going from the easiest to the most difficult and are organized into 3 parts:
 The first part will help you to grasp subtractive sound synthesis. You will start with
the most basic patch (make a VCO oscillator «ring» in an output VCA amp), to finish
by touching on the programming of a more rich sound (several VCO sources, VCF
filters, VCA envelopes…)
 The second will help you to use the Multi mode and the arpeggiator.
 The third will give you tips on creative use of key follows, and creating a stereo sound
without the use of additional chorus and delay effects.
7.1 SUBTRACTIVE SOUND SYNTHESIS
7.1.1 A basic sound
To begin we will see how to program a basic sound. As we saw in chapter 3 (Quick
Start), the CS-80V uses two identical and independent lines of synthesis. We will only
use the first (the one above) for this example. It will be simply composed of:
 an oscillator
 a low pass filter
 an output VCA
 the envelope corresponding to the output VCA.
You will thus obtain the base patch for subtractive synthesis.
The following image shows the different slider/lever positions:
 Choose the preset «1_line» in the «templates» bank, sub bank «temp_syn».
This sound uses a saw tooth waveform, the high pass filter is «closed» (but not
deactivated), while the low pass is completely «open». The amplifier envelope has a
minimum attack time («A») as well as a short release time («R»).
This minimalist configuration will let you easily perform some simple experiments with
this basic sound.
 Start by progressively lowering the cut-off frequency of the low pass filter. The sound
becomes more and more «soft».
 Increase the frequency of the high pass filter. You will hear the sound lose its low
frequencies (to clearly hear this effect, make sure not to set the cut-off frequency of
the low pass filter too low as the sound will be too soft !)