Synth Guides

A synthesizer is a keyboard with a fixed number of throats. These guides explain the voice chain, the architectures, and what really happens when your hands ask for more than the machine has.

Subtractive Synthesis 101

Oscillator → filter → amplifier: the one signal chain behind every analog synth voice, and what each stage does to a held key.

Mono, Paraphonic, Polyphonic

One voice, four keys on one envelope, or a voice per finger — the three synth architectures and how each one treats a chord.

Voice Stealing

Exceed the voice budget and the synth silences its oldest note. How last-note priority works and how to hear it coming.

What Is Voice Allocation?

The allocator assigns a voice to every key press — and its policy (last-note priority, glide, shared envelopes) defines the feel.

One chord, four architectures

Take C 13 — six tones: root, 9th, 3rd, 5th, 13th, b7. Feed it to each synth on this site and the architecture answers differently:

  • On the 8-voice polysynth, all 6 notes fit — root, 9th, 3rd, 5th, 13th, b7, with two voices to spare.
  • On the 4-voice polysynth, the reducer reports: dropped: 5th, root — kept: 9th, 3rd, 13th, b7. The name survives; the furniture goes.
  • On the paraphonic synth, the same four tones sound — but one envelope shapes every voice, so the chord breathes as a block.
  • On the mono synth, nothing is dropped because nothing stacks: 6 notes rolled low to high, an arpeggio by architecture.

Those aren’t editorial choices — they’re the output of the same reduction engine the chord pages run, quoted verbatim. Change the engine and CI makes this page tell the new truth.

Why voice limits are the syllabus

Fretted players learn their instrument’s constraint (six strings, four fingers) from day one. Keyboard players meet theirs later, and it arrives on a spec sheet: 8-voice, paraphonic, monophonic. Every chord chart on this site runs your chord through the actual voice budget of the keyboard you picked — these guides are the theory behind what those charts do.

Hear the architectures side by side on the reference pages: eight voices, four voices, four keys on one envelope, and one voice at a time.