>>The only HW subharmonic synth I'm aware of is the Doepfer Module for >>their analog modular system. There it is specifically created to build >>a Trautonium (which does sound quite nice, IMO). > >What's a Trautonium? <Admin: As interesting as it is, this a bit OT. If there are many more posts regarding this, it will be requested to take this to the Logic-OT list.> It is a HW synth first shown to the public 1929/30. It was build by Prof. Trautwein (thus the name) and Oskar Sala (who died earlier this year at the age of 94 or so). Composers like Hindemith and Genzmer wrote works for this instrument. If you (and others) are interested, I could try to give a rundown in what this is about technically though I suggest you search the web for "Trautonium". There are lots of pages though it seems most are in german (Trautwein and Sala were germans :). It works by creating subharmonic waves. These do differ from harmonics in that each subharmonic is recognized as a different tone (harmonics do for a single tone; adding more harmonics changes the color of the sound). Such created subharmonics do form perfect intervals (i.e. they are naturally tuned as opposed to tempered tuned; tempered tuning is what you find on almost all keyboards and synth). By slightly detuning certain subharmonics you can create very (IMO) interesting sounds. Possibly the most prominent use of the Trautonium is the soundtrack to "The birds" from Hitchcock. All the screeming of the birds was synthesized by Oskar Sala on his Trautonium. During the 50s and 60s the Trautonium was widely used to create the eerie sounds of the SciFi and Horror films (often B stuff) of that time. Reading up on it on the web will reveal *LOTS* more info on it. >My understanding of a subharmonic synthesizer (like the dbx 120) is >that it adds deep bottom to existing signals. This can be used to >fatten bass tracks in music mixes, but I'm mostly interested in getting >that larger than life sound out of spoken voices. I've noticed that, >in Disney films for example, big voices have an impossible amount of >bottom coming from the subwoofer, and I'm assuming this was >accomplished through use of a subharmonic synthesizer. > >Experienced film mixers feel free to chime in here! Aaaahhhh, I see (lots of light bulbs going on ;-) I always wondered why one would need such boxes (like the dbx 120) and now I understand. Best, Michael -- Vote against SPAM - see http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/ Michael Gerdau email: mgd@... Windows IS NOT a virus...viruses work. PGP-keys available on request or at public keyserver