Best synthesizer for theremin

Hi there, 

what is the best synthesizer for theremin? I would like to modify the sound, make it as near as RCA sound, for example. What do you use?

Thanks! 

No Synthesizer will be able to emulate the RCA sound over a wider pitch range. The “secret” of the RCA (when well played) is that it’s timbre changes with pitch and volume. Bob Moog tried it with a VCF in the Ethervox and the Etherwave Pro Theremins, without success. 

When you look at the RCA schematic, you’ll find that the impulse response of the interstage transformers undergoes dynamic nonlinear filtering through driving tubes softly towards cutoff or saturation. Describing that asymmetric transfer function is complicated like hell and nothing which a Synthesizer could reproduce.

No Synthesizer will be able to emulate the RCA sound over a wider pitch range. The “secret” of the RCA (when well played) is that it’s timbre changes with pitch and volume. Bob Moog tried it with a VCF in the Ethervox and the Etherwave Pro Theremins, without success. When you look at the RCA schematic, you’ll find that the impulse response of the interstage transformers undergoes dynamic nonlinear filtering through driving tubes softly towards cutoff or saturation. Describing that asymmetric transfer function is complicated like hell and nothing which a Synthesizer could reproduce.

I see, but I want to get as near as possible, or get near to sound of Etherwave Pro... 

"I want to get as near as possible, or get near to sound of Etherwave Pro..."  - Martin21

A component of the RCA sound you hear in recordings is due to piping it through an open-backed speaker and miking that in a reverberant room.  You'd need something like an electric guitar amp & speaker sim to get that.

The Etherwave Pro timbre sounds really bland to me, I'm not sure why anyone would go out of their way to replicate it.

The etherwave pro sounds cold and synthetic - clip the oscillators’ sine waves down to square waves with LM311 comparators, mix them through a 4077 XOR gate and low pass to a triangle wave, then use the Etherwave Standard’s wave shaping plus a VCF and you are done.

If the EtherWave Pro has a poor volume control needing a mod and it sounds bland why do people pay so much to get one?

Just for the pretty look? Inquiring minds need to know.

When someone wants the sound of an RCA they should post a sound sample as the recordings are all over the place.

If you are referring to Peter Pringle's sound that is a $5000 sound processor. I might have the name. He explains his approach somewhere on YouTube

Here PP plays four different theremins and all have the same mature sound, it is more than just finger movement.

Edit: If memory serves me he uses something from Millennia Products

Christopher

"If the EtherWave Pro has a poor volume control needing a mod..."  - oldtemecula

I've never encountered a Pro (so grain of salt) but I have to wonder if the snappy volume response is an intentional feature rather than a bug to be modded away?  The D-Lev has an explicit knee which expands low volumes down, which can dramatically reduce volume hand motion and increase overall expressiveness.  One could maybe fake this to some degree by adjusting the volume side null, but it might also be dependent on the sense of the field.

The snappy volume response was a bug, approximative exponential volume control was intended but realized with one p-n junction too much in the way. That’s why Pamela Kurstin as an early adopter told Bob Moog to fix it before the official release. Bob tinkered quickly a workaround which made things a little bit better but which didn’t fix the whole problem. Since he knew that he would die soon from his brain cancer, he decided to release it though. Buyers had to wait 4 years until a weird half French half German guy who was mostly unknown until then designed an add-on module which would really fix the problem.

The Etherwave Pro has its strong points: Besides the usual waveform and brightness and filter knobs, you have 5 fixed timbre presets which are in 99% of cases used by 99% of the players. You get an excellent temperature stability and (if regularly serviced) an excellent linearity. But you pay for the latter with a restricted pitch range of 5 octaves and that ugly square wave conversion and digital XOR mixer which allows transposing that range 1 or 2 octaves down with a register switch and D-flipflops, so that you get an overall pitch range of 7 octaves. At that time, there was no other Theremin which could play in such a deep bass register down to 30Hz besides the rarely available Russian tVox tour Theremin. Then, there is that excentric cabinet design which makes it look beautiful and interesting, much more appealing than the E-Standard shoe box. What most people don’t think of, is that together with the custom stand, the thing weights 13kg and it is ways too large to fit into standard cabin luggage.

Another point is the price. Seen the high production cost of the cabinet with the bent Birdseye maple front panel and the complicated pitch arm construction, 4-layer PCBs and a medical grade SMPS inside, Moog couldn’t make benefit from selling it in small batches at retail prices between 1500 and 2500$. Had it been more expensive to cover the full production costs, still less people  would have bought it. With this knowledge, someone asking for or paying the actual exaggerated prices up to 7000$ for used (15 years old) and most times never upgraded and/or serviced instruments is a complete idiot in my eyes.

You see that there are a lot of trade-offs. What I see is that a few professional thereminists who bought it still at a reasonable price around 2005 use it and struggle traveling with it and lots of amateurs who even aren’t able to get everything out of an E-standard want to have it because they think that it will make them automatically better players which is (naturally) an illusion.

Thierry what an outstanding follow up, I have saved it. I am so use to being shit on as my research is greater than my knowledge, rather inspired.

Ask and you shall receive. Peter Pringle got back to me promptly. As we get older sharing what we know is most important.

Peter Pringle said: I use the Millennia STT-1.  $3200

Here is a YT video demo of the device.

Christopher

"The snappy volume response was a bug, approximative exponential volume control was intended but realized with one p-n junction too much in the way. That’s why Pamela Kurstin as an early adopter told Bob Moog to fix it before the official release. Bob tinkered quickly a workaround which made things a little bit better but which didn’t fix the whole problem."  - Thierry

Fascinating, thanks for that info!

"The Etherwave Pro has its strong points: Besides the usual waveform and brightness and filter knobs, you have 5 fixed timbre presets which are in 99% of cases used by 99% of the players."

I think this is true of any instrument with presets, most players use what's there from the factory and don't tend to make new ones.

"At that time, there was no other Theremin which could play in such a deep bass register down to 30Hz besides the rarely available Russian tVox tour Theremin."

The D-Lev is not limited at all here, and I've currently got the octave switch going from -7 to +3.  The extreme low end is useful for pinging ringing filters and such.

"Then, there is that excentric cabinet design which makes it look beautiful and interesting, much more appealing than the E-Standard shoe box. What most people don’t think of, is that together with the custom stand, the thing weights 13kg and it is ways too large to fit into standard cabin luggage."

Youch!  I like the look, but not the ergonomics of the control panel facing your navel.

"Another point is the price. Seen the high production cost of the cabinet with the bent Birdseye maple front panel and the complicated pitch arm construction, 4-layer PCBs and a medical grade SMPS inside, Moog couldn’t make benefit from selling it in small batches at retail prices between 1500 and 2500$. Had it been more expensive to cover the full production costs, still less people  would have bought it. With this knowledge, someone asking for or paying the actual exaggerated prices up to 7000$ for used (15 years old) and most times never upgraded and/or serviced instruments is a complete idiot in my eyes."

The Theremin market has always been pretty weird.  Very little supply due to the very little demand.  The Theremin itself is much more nuanced to design and build than one might initially think, and the monetary return basically non-existent, so you tend to get very little quality in the supply, built mostly as a labor of love, sometimes by big weirdos who don't even understand capacitance.