38 Control Section
Oberheim
Control Section Controls
Vintage:
The OB-X8 is an authentically vintage-sounding instrument
even though it was designed and constructed with state-of-the-art tech-
nology and components. Part of the reason for this is that it uses genuine
analog, discrete, voltage-controlled oscillators, filters, and amplifiers that
are as exact as possible to the versions used in the original instruments
(OB-X/Xa/8) that provide the OB-X8’s features and characteristics.
Another reason for the vintage sound of the new OB-X8 is that we did
research into what made the original sound the way it did — warm,
organic, and alive. Not surprisingly we found that much of this desirable
character was due to slight voice-to-voice variations in the electron-
ics often due to the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the many calibration
controls within the synthesizers (The OB-Xa had over 150 trim pots that
had to be calibrated by a technician.)
Since the OB-X8 is able to automate all of the calibration to a high
degree of precision, to impart the same flavor to the OB-X8, the Vintage
knob lets you dial in progressively more of this calibration and compo-
nent variation as you go from very stable, with the control at minimum, to
a highly variable state, with the knob at maximum. Try it out!
The Vintage parameter also controls the Voice Detune parameter on Page
2. Increasing the Vintage value will also increase the amount of voice
detuning. For some sounds it is desirable for the parameters other than
the oscillator tuning (such as filter frequency, envelope times, etc.) to be
“vintage” while keeping the oscillators in tune. This is especially useful
for OB-8 presets, since the OB-8 had much more accurate oscillator
auto-calibration than the other models. To add “Vintage” without detun-
ing the oscillators, first turn up the Vintage knob to the desired value, and
then turn down the Voice Detune on Page 2
Summary of Contents for OB-X8
Page 1: ...USER S GUIDE www oberheim com ...
Page 8: ...viii Oberheim ...
