So just a few technical details on the sound engine of Digitone might be of interest in this thread:
Internally it runs the synth engine at 32 bit 96kHz with oversampling as well, meaning that the samplerate is doubled (twice in some places) and then scaled down to reduce aliasing. This means that it can modulate deeper and produce richer harmonics (cleanly) than some lower fidelity implementations.
Also, the lookup table playback (oscillators) is interpolated, meaning that any odd samples (which will occur when changing frequency of the oscillator) are smoothed out so that the intended shape of for example a sinewave is possible at any frequency.
Oscar, who implemented the DSP routines (in assembler!), really did an outstanding job with the sound quality.
Sound quality was super important to us since we wanted an FM synth that really reflected the parameters entered. Most older FM synths have an inherent sound which you cannot get rid of - for example a lot of quantization noise, aliasing etc which will imprint on the sound regardless of the user patch. For some this is a desired effect, it sounds like FM synths in the 80s and has a nice retro feel to it. However, for the Digitone we wanted something more ‘now’, or even futuristic.
That’s perhaps why some say it doesn’t have bite or is tame, but I would rather say that it’s just more open. You can add bite and roughen it up by using the features on hand, something that’s much less easy to do the other way around.