I've definitely heard retold stories of Arp Odyssey's being returned
as broken because the VCA slider was raised. It ranks alongside
stories of monosynths being sent back because they only played one
note at a time when you tried to play a chord. Rick Wakeman still
tells that story of being given a "broken" minimoog. Though
admittedly the initial gain concept requires some actual knowledge to
grasp and use. As for "hold" etc. that a couple people mentioned.
It's well known that numerous musicians resorted to sticky tape,
weights, knives, etc. to get their synths to play drones for what
it's worth. I would think a special "hold" function sometimes seen
stems partly from Minimoog experiences though the availability of LFO
to VCO modulation practically requires a pot imho.
To me, I quickly grasped the concept. The vast majority of LFOs swing
positive and negative. VCAs just work with positive values. If you
want to patch an LFO to control the the VCA you will need one with
initial gain if you want to hear the whole wave rather than the
positive portion then nothing for a half cycle. If you don't have a
routing for LFO to VCA to begin with then I can follow why a designer
would leave it off.
> This just comes to my sight: Initial Gain does not make sense at
> polyphonic synths, because you would have humming all voices all the
> time - no matter, whether their actual note fits in the played
> chord or not.
I agree with monotimbral synths. Though in the 90s before modulars
were common again, I started reading about people sharing stories
about playing Oberheim Xpanders without the keyboards. Being matrix
modulated and multitimbral meant you could get some complex layered
self playing patches going. That gets me thinking, if only I had a
mod to route the output of one voice into another. That would really
xpand it's potential... but anyway...
I just thought I'd share what I've heard on the subject. I do wonder
how, without a work-around, like a mixer with offset or a separate DC
source one would work with LFO to VCA on a little system and hear the
whole sweep of the LFO.