Yeah I’ve watched that but found his way a bit confusing. Or I basically wanted to know what I was setting speed and multiplier to without having to listen to it or work it out.
Hi, I’ve noted from a different thread, so not my insight:
LFO length in bars = 128 / (multiplier * speed)
2 Likes
Actually, the slowest is speed 0,01 with a mult of 1.
The formula is handy for slow speeds mostly. When working with faster LFO’s <a bar it’s less useful imho. Not unusable though 
Here’s what I’ve added to my cheat sheets for Elektron:
Not perfectly non-abstract either but might help.
9 Likes
Dammit I didn’t think about decimal points for the slowest speed! So guess they technically go as slow as 12,800 bars.
Your cheet sheet is excellent cheers Dave…I have it saved to my phone!
I still wanted a quick method of setting LFOs to divisions, so I think setting multiplier to 128 and then using speed for the divisions was a good way to get my head around it and memorise it.
3 Likes
That was the bit I was looking for. Thank you!
WHY the heck can’t they put such simple though key information in the manual?
1 Like
Btw for me the manual is simpler ! Reading this I don’t understand lfos anymore…
For me Phase is an offset in waveform, it changes how the lfo starts when triggered, end of the story. I count cycles, not phase chunks that are interpolated anyway.
I probably miss something…
But nevermind, if it helps some people to understand lfos…
1 Like
This has nothing to do with understanding LFOs in general. The manual says “Speed sets the speed of the LFO.” Well…who would have thought! 
But what are the numbers related to? Bananas, miles per hour…? Without any visual representation of what the LFO is doing it’s even harder to understand what I’m setting there. LFOs in hardware synths typicallly have an associated LED for good reasons.
Lfo means low frequency oscillation. It is a frequency, you can count in hertz, cycle per second.
With Elektron machines synced lfos, you’d rather choose another unit, like cycle per beat, bar, 4 bars. I’d choose 1 bar.
You need a reference setting to calculate it on Digis.
Phase is another parameter, I don’t get the interest to create a related formula with Speed and Phase values. Speed would be the same if phase setting had a 1024 steps resolution…
I don’t care about what has been said about the phase at all. But without the above explanation I would have never known that a speed setting of n represents n/128 LFO cyles per bar. To me it’s that simple now.
1 Like
Thanks for the hint. I posted a request.
1 Like
Multiply is missing in the formula. 
For slow lfos I’d rather need a duration in bars, and cycles per bar for faster lfos. I agree that there should be another table in the manual showing speed as cycles per bar, not duration. Invert below values to get cycles per bar. My usual reference is Speed 32* Multiply 4 , which correspond to 1 cycle per bar.
*Btw I wish positive speed could snap to 64 instead of 63.99…
1 Like
Not really, as I was only referring to the definition of the Speed parameter. The Multiplier is just a factor that is applied to the Speed setting and needs no further explanation than is already included in the manual. A factor is a factor is a factor. But Speed should be defined properly.
Absolutely! Also, I agree that a table would come quite handy in the manual.
1 Like
That table is from the manual 
1 Like
Ooops! 
I mostly navigate the manual by searching for keywords and clicking links in the PDF. And I’m pretty shure, regarding the LFOs, I never read beyond the sentence “LFO page 2 page contains the same parameters as LFO page 1.” My bad! But good to know it’s there.
So we have all the explanation that’s needed right there at hand!? I suspect I’m not the only one who missed it. Maybe this table is a little misplaced and should live somewhere more closely to the SPD/MULT paragraphs, or there should be some hint like “see table below”, at least.
I think it always sounds much better at 63.99
3 Likes
Probably, but it warps my head so I prefer to use -64 or 32 to get a hole value (OCD), even if 63.99 doesn’t change much. It drifts slowly.
Thinking of Octatrack’s rate : it shows +63, but it is actually 64 to stay in tune (32 being 1 octave lower).
How does anyone have a problem with this? The lfo is locked to bpm and you can change the resolution in the mult box, then you can alter the number of lfo cycles within that resolution with the speed control and there are so many other options to reset the lfo on any given trig, TRIG, ONE, HOLD etc. Experiment, use your ears. Why does everything need to be locked to grid and why the hell would anybody need a chart ? I don’t see what the problem is, but then I’m not the sharpest Stanley in the arsenal so maybe I’m missing something. Rant over.
addendum, 1k in the mult box is actually 1024 and 2k is 2048.
It seems (to me!) as though the DT2 maybe has the spare CPU power/DSP to display some of the LFO movement on the UI. This would really help those of us who sometimes get lost in LFO land and for whom maths hurts our heads! Be great if this could come to pass at some point…
1 Like
Yeah they missed my request that the lfo speed should be shown in steps somewhere on the lfo screen.