Palette Case
UNDERSTANDING BUFF MULTS
“Buff Mult” is vernacular shorthand for “Buffered Multiplier.” A buff mult takes a single input signal and
routes it to multiple outputs simultaneously. For example, you might want to route a keyboard’s pitch
CV to three different destinations: one to govern the pitch of your main oscillator; another to govern
the pitch of a second oscillator; and the third to open and close a filter so that it tracks across the
keyboard.
Unlike a passive mult, which merely splits the incoming signal and shares it across multiple outputs
(much like a Y-cable), buffered mults make electrical copies of an input voltage and duplicate that
voltage at the outputs.
Buffered mults have a few advantages over passive mults. Because buffered mults isolate their
outputs from the input, any faults or shorts present at the input will not pass through to a connected
module. Also, in a passive mult, what you connect to an output can cause a slight variation in the
voltages that it sends. In some situations (like an LFO or envelope), this probably won’t have any
sonic effect on your patch. But for voltage-critical functions (like an oscillator, where only a slight
change in voltage is easily heard), it’s often better to use a buffered mult, since this insures that the
1V/Oct signal arriving at its input will be electrically and accurately duplicated across all its outputs.
Your Palette has two buff mults — one on the left (Buff Mult 1) and another on the right (Buff Mult 2).
Each is a stand-alone 1 IN x 4 OUT buffered multiplier. Plug an audio or CV signal into Buff Mult 1’s
input jack, and a buffered duplicate of that signal is sent out the four jacks to its right. Similarly, an
audio or CV signal patched into Buff Mult 2’s input jack is duplicated at the other four jacks in the
group.
The input of Buff Mult 2 is normalled to Buff Mult 1. So if nothing is plugged into Buff Mult 2’s input
jack, then the input to Buff Mult 1 is multiplied and sent to all eight outputs, making it act as a single 1
x 8 buffered signal multiplier.
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