Origin Keyboard Polyphony

[Colourise]

Hi
I should be grateful if someone would help to understand what determines the maximum polyphony that is available.

There are some programs that appear to be only 8 note polyphonic even if the polyphony is increased in the program screen.

Is it to do with the demands on the processor? So that if a program is created that uses many modules, oscillators, envelopes, filters etc. then the polyphony will be reduced? Or is it that every oscillator in a program uses one voice?

Is there a formula that determines the maximum available polyphony when creating a program?
I cannot find any reference to this in the manual

Thanks

[synthguy99]

Others can give a better answer, but the quick answer is that each module uses up some DSP power.  Mg and CS-80 OSCs and filters use more resources than Origin units.  I made a CS-80 almost as complete as the original, and I can only squeeze a max of seven notes from it.

But while the "name brand" units have their characteristic sound, the Origin modules sound just great on their own.  This was a surprise to me, because I knew that the Origin units were resource "cheaper," and I wasn't expecting them to sound as good as they do.  I use them a lot, and they produce "instruments" with a very sweet sound of their own.  If you want to have the most polyphony, see if you can make patches with the fewest modules, and also use the Origin modules when you don't need a precisely Mg, Yamaha or Jupiter sound.

[Colourise]

Thanks synthguy99 for the reply

Understood on the resource demand from the "name brand" modules.

So I guess there is no formula which I can use to predetermine how much polyphony I will get.

thanks once again

[Cord]

It would be nice to know how the processor load indicator relates to the voice count. I think Arturia should make this information public since it helps the user to budget voices.

But I guess, this would only show that in very few instances the 32 voices are available. I guess it is a similar situation as with Access's Virus too, where you practically never reach the promised 80 voices.

[synthguy99]

There used to be a CPU percent value displayed at the top of the screen, but it wasn't correct.  It seemed to always display more resources used than the Origin was taking.  Apparently, building patches is a little more dynamic than we suspect.

I have been able to make really huge, involved patches using more than 20 modules, but as with my CS-80, stuck to having just 6 - 8 voices available.  Having said that, I realize that having a programmable modular that is polyphonic at all is a godsend for me.  And you can certainly make some amazing patches using just three oscillators and two filters.  And as I stated above, you can stretch the Origin's polyphony by making the main body of a sound with name brand modules, and then adding in Origin modules for complexity and richness.  Or just use named filters, since the filters are the major contributor to how a synth sounds.

Have the more basic patches to do the big chords, and you can certainly make some that don't sound basic at all, and then have the big modular guys for the melodies which use just a few notes.  Heck, it's much better than the original Nord Modular, which when you began to reach the resource limit, you could only play two or three notes.