I’m a vintage VCO fan at heart, and I do have a few of those handy.
Because of this, I struggle with the base sound of the Key’s OSCs, filters, and VCA- it doesn’t quite overflow in sonics like my Polaris or CS50.
The Keys cost me a fair price though and it’s been unused the past month. I needed to get in and find something in it that I could use on a beat.
A little passage, pretty quickly thrown together.
Sounds great!
Thanks! Will be keeping this one.
Cool video as well.
Ah, looped studio gurning.
Very nice.
It’s been mentioned here before but one cannot spread this enough, the key to getting better OSC sound from the A4/AK’s DCOs is to keep both OSC levels low, e.g. below 50. That way, it will make them sound cleaner and bassier. Also there’s some trick involving overdrive and using an open filter1 with full resonance to get some waveshaping on a single OSC sound, i found this quite useful. Though I’d much more prefer to use filter 2 in peak mode as a single band resonator to shape and place sounds in the mix. Overall the A4’s not a sweetspot-synth and it needs some tweaking to get stuff sounding right. Yet it doesn’t lack character but it can’t compete with my Moogs or Rolands for certain duties…
Thanks!
I agree - I tend to keep the OSC levels quite low. The same on the Minibrute actually - the wave OSC faders very rarely go over 1 or 2/10.
But the Analog Keys is a modern sounding synth. You can emulate some vintage tones, but you can never really reproduce them. The synth is limited in it’s hardware - the actual components are remarkably different and respond very differently to vintage hardware VCO synths when used in subtractive sequence.
I think for some it is fine, an emulation or a suggestion of another era is a pass - but for me there is no comparison. My ears are just too well attuned, not just to older VCOs, but to older analogs in general.
So, the trick is to learn how it sings, in its difference, the Analog Keys, and cooperate, right? 
Have you got down on the feedback oscillator yet?
Love mixing that guy in with osc 2 + sub Bosc.
Zero to crazy in no time.
Ha - yes.
When I first got an A4 a year or two ago all I did was fuck around with that feedback OSC.
I sold the A4 to fund moving to Australia and later on got the A4 back but with interest in a nice new Keyboard.
However, I’m doing less sound design at the moment and more beat work which is all “kind of” urban sounding, so I’m waiting on Overbridge to see if that helps in any way.
i run my a4 through a variety of pedals, particularly the moog 104m, 102, 101, and the zvex lofi junky. can get some pretty vintage tones with that combination
I’m sure you can get a good emulation with that outboard!
But for the price of that gear I could have a very nice 6 voice VCO and no emulation would be required.