Synthesis 101

A synthesizer is, at heart, a box that generates electricity in a particular shape, and your speakers translate that shape into a sound you can hear. That's it. No strings, no reeds, no air being blown — just shaped electricity.

The shape of that electricity is what we call a waveform. A sine wave sounds smooth and round, like a flute or a whistle. A square wave sounds buzzy and hollow, like a clarinet or an old video game. A sawtooth sounds bright and aggressive, like a violin section sawing away.

Everything else a synth does — every knob, every cable — is just a way of changing that initial shape. Making it louder, softer, brighter, darker, more complex, more chaotic. The Labyrinth is one of the most playful instruments ever made for doing this.

Almost every synthesizer ever made is built on three pieces working together: an oscillator (the voice), a filter (the throat), and an amplifier (the breath).

The oscillator is what generates that raw electrical shape we just talked about — the actual sound source. On the Labyrinth, the big VCO FREQUENCY knob in the top-left controls one. There's a second voice underneath it called MOD VCO. Two oscillators, two voices, both alive at once.

The filter shapes the tone — it can make a sound darker by removing the high frequencies (like cupping your hand over your mouth) or brighter by emphasizing certain frequencies. The Labyrinth's filter section is in the middle of the panel, labeled VCF.

The amplifier controls how loud the sound is at any moment — it's what makes a note start, sustain, and end. Without an amplifier doing its job, a synth would just drone forever at one volume.

Imagine pressing a piano key. The sound doesn't just appear at full volume and stay there — it jumps up loud at first (the attack), then settles a little (the decay), holds for as long as you keep the key down (the sustain), and fades when you let go (the release). That curve is an envelope.

Synth envelopes do the same thing, but you can shape them however you want. A long slow attack creates a swelling, cinematic sound. A sharp attack with a quick decay creates a percussive plucky sound.

The Labyrinth has two envelopes built in (EG1 and EG2). They can shape the filter, the volume, or both. The DECAY knobs in the bottom-right of the panel control how quickly each envelope fades.

A patch cable is just a wire — but it carries one of two kinds of signal, and knowing which is which unlocks everything.

Audio signals are sounds you can hear. If you plug a cable from an oscillator output into a speaker (or headphone amp), you'll hear it. Audio signals flow between the parts of the synth that generate or shape sound.

Control voltage (CV) signals are invisible — you can't hear them on their own. They're instructions. A CV signal tells another part of the synth 'be this loud now,' or 'be this pitch now,' or 'open up your filter now.'

Here's the magic: any output can become a CV signal, even an audio one. You can plug an oscillator into the filter's CV input and the filter will wiggle a thousand times a second. You can plug a slow envelope into an oscillator's pitch and watch the note slide. This is why patching is endless.

A fully modular synthesizer has nothing pre-connected. You have to patch everything yourself, even just to make a sound. A regular synth has everything pre-connected and you can't change the wiring at all.

Semi-modular sits between them — and the Labyrinth is a beautiful example. All the internal connections are already made, so you can turn it on, hit RUN, and immediately hear sequences and sounds. But every important connection point is also exposed as a jack on the right side of the panel.

If you plug a cable into any of those jacks, you override the internal connection and route the signal somewhere new. So you can start by just turning knobs, and add patch cables as curiosity strikes.

When you see CV in the panel labels, it stands for control voltage — a smooth, continuous signal. A high voltage might mean 'high pitch' or 'open filter,' and a low voltage means the opposite. CV is what makes synthesizer parts talk to each other.

Gate is simpler — it's just on or off. A gate signal says 'a note is happening NOW' or 'no note right now.' It's the trigger that starts envelopes and tells the synth when to make sound.

The Labyrinth's sequencer sends out both: pitch CV (the melody) and gate/trigger signals (the rhythm). That's why one little box can generate complete musical phrases on its own.