4ms Releases Ensemble Oscillator, Advanced Waveshaping Techniques Meet Polyphony

May 18, 2020 Synth Anatomy Eurorack, Hardware, News 0

Ensemble Oscillator, the latest collaboration between 4ms & Matthias Puech is a new module that combines 16 sine wave oscillators with a variety of shapers.

At NAMM 2020, 4ms presented the ensemble oscillator, a deep digital oscillator for Eurorack. This module was created with none other than Mathias Puech who has already worked on older releases. Today comes the news that the module is ready to ship.

The Ensemble Oscillator is a unified polyphonic voice of sixteen sine wave oscillators combining additive, FM, phase-distortion, and wave folding synthesis techniques in new ways. Everything you can do with sines waves in a relatively compact module. It allows you to quantize the oscillators to scales or series of harmonics which makes it possible to explore the sonic boundary between music chords and rich evolving textures.

Easily create a wide variety of sounds ranging from aggregates of pure sine waves to pulsar synthesis or pristine harmonic tones and lush wide chords to rich dirty drones and rumbling glitches. Custom scales can quickly be “learned” and saved using a CV keyboard or by manually entering notes with the controls.

Features

16 sine-based oscillators bound to intervals of a selected Scale
30 factory-programmed, user-writeable scales organized in three groups:
- 12TET: all notes quantized to equal temperament, repeating over octaves
- Octave: unquantized notes, repeating over octaves
- Free: unquantized notes, repeating over the interval between the lowest and highest note
A simple method to program (“Learn”) your own scales manually or with a CV/Gate keyboard
Three Twist phase distortion effects
Three Warp wave distortion effects
Three algorithms of Cross FM for modulating the oscillators with each other
Mono or stereo output with selectable panning algorithm
Freeze button and jack to freeze the frequency of some of the oscillators, with selectable algorithm
Two 1V/oct inputs: Pitch (non-quantized), and Root (quantized)
High-accuracy, temperature-stable, eight octave range (-2V to +6V), can be calibrated to any keyboard
Six bi-polar CV inputs (-5V to +5V)
Two gate inputs for automated Learning and Freezing