Pittsburgh Modular - Lifeforms Double Helix Oscillator

Pittsburgh’s Double Helix Oscillator is composed of two VCOs plus a sub oscillator, a contour section with mixer, wavefolder and low pass gate as well as a LFO and a noise generator. Furthermore, the module features a routing matrix with two voltage controlled VCAs. Its sound is voluminous and clearly analog.

The first VCO is equipped with outputs for sine, saw, blade and pulse waves. The latter can be varied in shape respectively width via a potentiometer. Additionally, there is a sub oscillator, which emits square waves. For pitch adjustments, the VCO offers coarse and fine tune knobs.
The second oscillator generates sine, saw and square waves. Like with the first VCO, there are two knobs for pitch alterations. Both circuits come with a V/octave input for pitch CV signals.

The Contour section features two audio connectors. Incoming material is summed up via a non-editable mixer. The results are fed into the wavefolder. It can be adjusted using the Timbre potentiometer. Afterwards, signals run through the low pass gate. The circuit is a small version of Pittsburgh’s Dynamic Impulse Filter. It does not employ vactrols to shape sound. Instead, a freshly developed, analog circuit design is utilized, which allows the user to edit the LPG’s decay time. The basic cutoff and level settings can be altered via the Dynamics knob. For excitation, there is an impulse input.

The Double Helix Oscillator's modulation section is comprised of a LFO with sine, square and random outputs as well as a noise generator.

The module‘s routing system offers modulation channels for infuencing the frequencies of both oscillators, blade shape respectively pulse width, the wavefolder’s timbre and the LPG’s dynamics parameter. Each path can be fed directly via a connector. Alternatively, it is possible to make a detour and tie-in one of the router's two VCAs. Switches are used to link the dedicated socket or one of the VCAs with each channel. Attenuator knobs allow the user to damp incoming signals. The VCAs offer signal and modulation inputs plus level potentiometers.