what does Voices mean on a synth?

[alinenunez]

hi there . this is kind of dumb question , but i would like to know what voices does to the synth itself. when i try to create basic bass patches i know that u could use more voices . does that make a difference on the sound itself?

[Lotuzia]

hi there . this is kind of dumb question , but i would like to know what voices does to the synth itself. when i try to create basic bass patches i know that u could use more voices . does that make a difference on the sound itself?

Voices usually refer to polyphony.

Sometimes an instrument will also use one 'voice' (ie one generator/oscillator/soundsource) per generator used.

So a monophonic bass can still use 4 'voices" (ie a combination/layer of 4 sources ).

Or a 6 notes chord with use 18 'voices' if it is based on a 3 osc layer. Sometimes the release will eat "voices" too, and you can be confronted to note stealing problems ( Like pianos )

All this terminology is not fixed btw, and depends on the brand/company aso.

So take all this with a pinch of salt

LtZ

[brok landers]

a voice is one whole signal path that the osc's have to go through to be finally heard, when pressing a note. this signal path has to be multiplied as soon as you press more than one key at once, once you want to play a synth polyphonic. that means, that for each voice every to be polyphonic function has to be there multiple times.
an easy example:
say, a synth has 2 osc's, a lowpass filter, a filter env and an amp env. say, it is concepted to be 6 voiced polyphonic. that would mean, that the 2 osc',s, the filter and the env's have to be existing 6 times, in order to be able to play the 6 voices independantly.
in the analog domain this would mean that you'd have to have these components 6 times, hardware wise. in the digital domain this means, that you'd have to provide these components 6 times in parallel, which means that with each voice played, the cpu usage of the synth is increased by the cpu factor that one voice needs to be played. so playing one voice needs 1/6 of the cpu power it would need for all 6 voices. (this is a quite a bit simplified explanation, but you get the idea)

everything else after the voice level, is on the summarized output, and it is monophonic. i.e. a stereo chorus after the summarized signal is fed just by that: the summarized, max 6 voiced output of the voice mixer. so essentially all 6 voices are summarized and this output feeds the chorus unit, that is present only once.

hope that helps ...