Hi Joe,
I can see better now what's going on with the 163. The
capacitor 'getting in the way' of step changes to the CV is part of a
low-pass filter: thus lowering its value shouldn't cause any
stability problems in itself. However, presumably there is a reason
for the filtering, and I can only assume that this is to prevent any
weird interaction with the software in the PIC microcontroller that
actually does the division. Thus to determine if the 163 could be
used in the way you want would need some input from Dieter and co. as
to how it would behave under such conditions. If it requires anything
like my idea to set it to 'divide by 1' in order to reset it so that
it responds to step changes sensibly, then it may require quite a
cumbersome set-up in practice, and it starts to sound like it needs
to be the dedicated function you are asking for!

Presumably you are anticipating that in use such a function would
still require very careful set up so that the total number of clock
periods across all 8 steps turns out to be a reasonably low multiple
of 8 itself, so that if the sequencer is free running it does
occasionally appear to be in sync with everything else To me this
sounds like quite a complicated feature (but interesting!). I shall
carry on thinking about it in the wider sense though!

Tim

--- In Doepfer_a100@y..., "Joe Buechler" <buechlerjoe@t...> wrote:
> Hi Timothy
>
> > I had an idea that nearly worked with respect to this:
> > The idea was to hold the 163 at 'divide by 1' whilst in a 'reset'
> > state, then let it jump back to the required 'divide by n' when
the
> > reset is removed (and which by assumption also re-starts the main
> > clock). Hopefully this means it starts dividing again from the
right
> > point. I did this by switching the CV controlling the 'divide by
n'
> > through a 150,
>
> A good one, too! Too bad it didn't work out.
>
> > I'm assuming the caps are there for stability
> > purposes - whether they could be reduced sufficiently to allow
this
> > idea to work (it may not even be a very good one at that!) and
still
> > be stable, I don't know ...
>
> Yeah, I'm starting to have doubts about it myself...
>
> The basic goal is to be able to control the length of each
sequencer
> step using the bottom row of A155 knobs. I've done this with the
A147
> VC LFO as described in the A155 user's manual, and it will work
> the same with the proposed A154 clock generator. Neither allow midi
> sync (when the VC control of rate is in use, bakis), and the
> continuous control is difficult to adjust without any sort of
> quantization.
>
> I'm not an engineer, maybe a VC clock divider idea isn't the right
> approach. It isn't obvious that the change in divisor would be fast
> enough to control the sequencer accurately. Perhaps a software LFO
> that can either be synced to a master clock or free-running, and
whose
> rate can be adjusted in increments by a control voltage.
>
> Joe