Getting Started
Elka-X Voice Architecture
Top Toolbar, Sound Presets, and Focus Control
Oscillators
Noise Generator
Multimode Filter and Filter Envelope
Amplifier Envelope
Keyboard
Low Frequency Oscillators
Glide/Portamento
Arpeggio
Effects
Panel Control and Lower and Upper Layers
Master
Step Sequencer
MIDI Controllers Setup and The MIDI Tab
QWERTY Musical Typing Keyboard (MTK)
Settings
Elka-X includes two digitally-controlled oscillators (DCOs. DCOs were famously employed in the Roland Juno-6/60/106 synths, and sometimes get a bad rap because people assume they're not "analog" and are therefore inferior. The "digital" part refers to the tuning and scaling circuitry, and certainly improved tuning stability. In reality, DCOs are still "analog" and sound great, and we've gone to great effort to recreate the sound of the original oscillators.
DCO-type oscillators are very stable - Elka-X's pitch does not "drift" or waver in any way. This is why we didn't include the "drift" control you may have seen in other Cherry Audio instruments.
Since the oscillators are almost identical, we'll go over the controls one time and make note of differences along the way.
Octave- Sets the coarse pitch range for each oscillator in standard organ footage settings of 16', 8', 4', 2' and 1'. Only one octave footage can be active at any time; selecting a footage disables the others.
Transpose- Allows fine-tuning of pitch or building intervals into multi-oscillator patches. It's also useful for fattening up multi-oscillator patches by detuning a small amount. Its range is a one octave.
Tune - These adjust the tuning of the oscillators by about 1/4 of a step up or down. These are particularly useful for individual detuning when in keyboard Double (i.e. stacked) mode.
Waveform- Selects the oscillator waveform. Each oscillator includes triangle, sawtooth, square, variable pulse.
Also in this section are OSC2 PWM and Ring Modulation; these aren't waveforms, but affect the raw waves as follows:
Osc2/1 PWM cross modulation- Selecting these routes the signal of the other oscillator to control oscillator pulse width the variable pulse width wave is selected. Because this modulation is occurring very quickly (i.e. audio rate), the effect is similar to ring modulation. Experiment with the Octave, Transpose, and Detune controls to hear all the tonal possibilities.
Ring Modulation- When two audio sources are inputted, the output contains only the sum and difference frequencies of the two signals, while removing common frequencies. The audio result is useful for creating sounds with inharmonic frequency content, which is useful for synthesizing bell and metallic sounds. Again, we recommend experimenting with the Octave, Transpose, and Detune controls.
Pulse Width- Sets the width or "duty-cycle" of pulse waves, from a perfect square to a very narrow pulse. It has no effect on other waveforms.
Volume- Sets pre-filter oscillator level.