Sunday, July 7, 2013

Calculation error gives Moog synthesizer its signature sound

Bill Hemsath, one of the engineers of the original Minimoog synthesizer, on why it had such a distinctive sound.

Our instrument had punch to it because we inadvertently overdrove the filter like crazy. Jim Scott did the filter and voltage controlled amplifiers. He made a calculation error, and he overdrove the filters by 10, 12, 15 dB, something like that. And nobody knew that until a month or two after we started in production. And everyone said, "Leave it alone!"



Hat tip New York Times.

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