How many oscillators?

[Jessie]

Hi all! While reading synthesizers descriptions on VSE website or others, I get confused about the number of oscillators analog synths have... Take the example of the Oberheim T8. Sites say that it has 8 voices with 2 oscillators per voice, but in the specs, they say it has 2 oscillators.... If T8 can play 8 voices with 2 oscillators per voice, my conclusion is that the synth has physically 16 oscillators, not only 2! Am I wrong?

[Jessie]

Sorry I meant OB-8, not T8...
Here is a link with specs:
https://encyclotronic.com/synthesizers/ ... ob-8-r603/

[Fatbenelton]

I think the best way is to think about how many Oscillators you can control and then times per voice....So yes the OB8 has 16 oscillator chips inside which manifests itself in the architecture as two oscillators x 8 voices.

[meatballfulton]

There's no reason to worry about total oscillator count with a poly synth, all that matters is the number of oscillators per voice.

[synthchaser]

Unless it's a Chroma where you can configure it to have 16 voices with 1 oscillator each or 8 voices with 2 oscillators each.

[meatballfulton]

Unless it's a Chroma where you can configure it to have 16 voices with 1 oscillator each or 8 voices with 2 oscillators each.

There are plenty of polysynths alllowing more voices if less oscillators are used, ever since the days of the Casio CZ-101. Even so, I would consider a Chroma as a 2 oscillator synth, not a 16 oscillator synth.