Cherry Audio

If you like to get creative with your synthesis, Cherry Audio have a new and exciting design for you. Roland Schmidt gets re-addicted to additive

We’re all familiar with the basic synthesis building blocks, enshrined into synth-law by Dr Robert Moog back in the ’60s. His subtractive blueprint continues to influence the vast majority of synth designs today, but every now and then, a product breaks the mould, moving in a slightly different synthetic direction.

Going harmonic

Cherry Audio’s latest synth does employ degrees of subtractive synthesis: you’ll find filters, envelopes and LFOs onboard, but the exciting stuff begins at the oscillator level.

Time for a quick (and very basic) physics lesson; the fundamental synthesis building block of the musical sound that we hear is called a sine wave. This is a pure sound, with no harmonic overtones, and is relatively quiet as a consequence. If we add further sine waves, at specific multiplied frequencies (pitches), we end up with a richer and louder sound, such as a sawtooth or square wave. The quality and colour of these sounds, and others, is entirely influenced by the harmonics contained within, hence more harmonically rich waveforms generally sound more gratifying.