Pentagon 1 is the ideal synth for hoover sounds (I have two patches somewhere that I'm particularly proud of that I'll try to find for you if you have Pentagon 1), although you should be able to get this sound out of most subtractives that have PWM and a pitch envelope.

Here's the basic approach:

1 - Oscillator 1: Use a square wave with PWM (try 20%)

2 - Oscillator 2: Use a saw wave with double the PWM of Osc 1 (try 40%)

3 - Oscillator 3: Use a sub square two Octaves lower than osc 1 and 2, set the PWM at about 30%

4 - Set the LP Filter cutoff to around 2,5Khz, with medium resonance (experiment with these two but this is about right)

5 - Use the Pitch envelope (if it has one) or the pitch wheel to get that hoover drone just right.


I even programmed a half decent hoover sound in Reasons Subtractor a while back even though Subtractor has no PWM. Reason uses something called "Phase Offset Modulation". While not the same as PWM you should be able to achieve the same results. To achieve Pulse Width Modulation using Subtractor, just use the mode button to the right of the phase knob on the oscillator and choose the subtraction mode (the middle "-" option), this will create a second oscillator waveform the same as the one selected. Now use the phase knob to adjust the offset between them. Because you chose the subtract mode, one waveform will be subtractive from the other (I guess this is why they called it Subtractor ). Now if you offset two sawtooth waves and subtract one from the other using this method then you will get a pulse wave, so to get pulse width modulation just use an LFO to modulate the phase offset between the two sawtooths. This will modulate the pulse width.

As Subtractor has no pitch envelope you'll need to flip Subtractor over to wire the mod envelope to the oscillator pitch modulation input (see step 5 above).
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