As asked in the title: is it possible in some way to do that?
If not, does it sound like a reasonable feature request?
Thanks!
Well apart from FM (actually PM I guess) of other oscillators, no. What did you have in mind? Filter FM?
Filter FM/PM is one idea yes. In instruments that allow it I honestly just randomly modulate parameters with osc output and see what happens. Because of how clean vital sounds I feel like it would do great with this sort of feature. I’ll write a request post I suppose, thank you for your time!
the result would be distortion
Filter FM is a pretty common feature in analog synths, and it sounds very different from “distortion”
In a broader sense the signal is of course distorted, but then almost all modulation becomes a distortion of the original input signal
well yeah, it’s distortion but often (to my puny experience) a nice surprise and I’d safely guess you can’t just use a distortion plugin to get the same results
The LFOs can run at audio rate – select Keytrack in the right-hand side of the LFO’s Frequency box. The rest of the box then shows the LFO’s pitch offset, defaulting to (-12 semitones, 0 cents). You can then use this to modulate practically anything: oscillator’s phase, or a filter’s cutoff, for instance. Note that the LFO’s Smooth control functions basically as a low pass filter, and doesn’t default to 0.
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Wow, thanks for sharing! I wasn’t aware of that, I’ll be playing around with this feature a bunch! Doesn’t fully replace what I asked about but I think it’s more than enough for my experimentation needs so far.
Thanks again!
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if you use an oscillator output to modulate anything, it should be used to modulate the frequency of another oscillator, if you try to modulate the frequency of any other parameter it will always and only cause clipping distortion unless that parameter has a very low frequency smoothing filter built in. and if thats the case then theres no reason to use a full frequency modulation source in the first place, that’s why there’s LFO’s. I have been making my own software that uses audio rate FM on program material for a bunch of years but do try it yourself if you doubt me. there’s no advantage whatsoever in modulating a filter at anything higher than about 100hz because the result is similar to ring modulation, or at best just pushing and pulling the phase in time. its because the higher in rate you go, theres little for the filter to actually filter. and what else could you modulate at say 10k? nothing useful. but try it yourself in puredata, synthmaker, synthedit, reaper’s reajs, etc. don’t just take my word for it. also, if the oscillator is anything more complicated than a sine wave you’ll get nothing but hard clipping noises on anything you route it to.
Well on analog synths filter FM is a very nice thing to have. Also there are many presets in vital that modulate the filter cutoff at audiorate (via keytracked lfo) and they sound great as well… So I don’t take your word for it… 
Why didn’t Matt choose to do it already? He’s included FM already but there must be a reason why he chose to implement FM the way he did. I think it’s because statistically speaking it would sound bad. You don’t want to put in functions that 99% of the time will sound bad.
But it is already there! Just via lfo and not direct oscillator. I don’t think it sounds bad.
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exactly, but I was speculating as to why an oscillator isn’t a mod source directly. LFO is a different story, I’m just trying to speak my mind re: the uselessness of High Frequency Oscillators as a mod source unless we’re talking about FM, and FM sounds good with clean Sine or Triangle waves, and bad with program material and anything choppy like squares or saws. I mean HFO, not LFO.
Well i guess things like sounds bad or good are not really measurable at the end of the day… It’s personal taste. But I get your point, i most often use FM with non sine sources for distorted basses, so I want them to sound bad… A subtle filter FM can make your sound so much more analogous though, which would fall in the category of “sounds good” for most…
if you use it judiciously of course you can create an interesting distortion that works for you. In 2014 I made an effect that lets you phase modulate your track with itself or with any other program material you feed it via the sidechain. So in my research I have gotten some cool sounds, but most of the time the process of phase/frequency modulating stuff will result in just a bunch of digital cipping, and it’s because the waveform wants to be continuous but if the frequency in the amplitude direction goes higher than the nyquist frequency of the carrier track, (or something like that – its very complicated for my brain) then it will always create a really average sounding kind of hard clipped distortion. except maybe a bit ring modulatey. These are my findings from working with the DSP part. EDIT: this is a demo track of “Voltage Phase Module” by Amateurtools https://soundcloud.com/amateurtoolsdsp/fm-life-js-mono-sound-example