Kinda answered my own question there, but would love to hear your thoughts

PD-Pi

I could of course just make two different versions and see which one I like the sound of; plus, doing it that way will throw up any issues along the way.

Thanks again
Brendan

@PD-Pi Wait, if each clone instance is a voice, then they can't share a single phasor because then they'd all have to play the same pitch, which is not my understanding of a polyphonic synth.

the idea of using a central phasor is not that the frequency must remain the same all the time, rather you would derive sub-phasors from it or use forms of distortion - or clock multiplying - while everything can still be resynced from the master.

that is also how you can realize a naive hardsync oscillator among other things.

the master would be outside the clone patch of course.

Brendan

Can you show me a patch that, say, generates all 12 equally tempered tones starting with middle C from 1 phasor?

3:1 is not an equal tempered frequency ratio -- it's a justly tuned octave+fifth. The 12ET octave+fifth is 2.9966141537533 (approximately, since it's a fractional power of 2, thus irrational).

The [*~] --> [wrap~] approach will definitely have sync artifacts for non-integer ratios. Not sure what Max's [rate~] will do.

hjh

This morning I'm thinking that in the case of equal temperament, would sync between two oscillators even be meaningful? If the ratio between two pitches is a floating-point approximation of an irrational number, well gosh, that's as complicated as having no sync at all, isn't it?

Can you show me a patch that, say, generates all 12 equally tempered tones starting with middle C from 1 phasor?

You could do something like this ... phasor-sync.pd

Note sure if that's anywhere close to what's going on inside Max's [rate~], though.

Backing out to look at the big picture again, i.e. Brendan's question, this means that it couldn't be used to make either a "hardsync" synthesizer (disclaimer: I don't really know what that is) or a "phasor~-synchronized system", assuming that both require a precise phase relationship between the input and output phasors and that the output phasor doesn't contain discontinuities. What do you think?

Wheter it can be used for a synchronized system with a central phasor I'm not so sure ... Maybe the mode (sync or non-sync) should depend on wheter the scaling factor is an integer or not? On the other hand: If it is an integer, the multiply-wrap method suggested by @PD-Pi is of course much simpler and probably more precise.

PD-Pi