Making an intelligent decision on which type to buy is imposible unless you know whether the instrument sounds good to you. You get the idea. There are a bewildering number of factors to consider when deciding what type of instrument has the sound you want. As you might expect, each of these synthesis techniques has characteristic sound qualities, along with characteristic strengths and weaknesses.
Oscillators produce electrical fluctuations that repeat in a consistent and periodic manner.
T he shape of an oscillator's output is called the waveform . Each of these waveforms produces a fixed set of harmonics that remains static over time. It's static and unchanging. A n acoustic instrument like a piano or a violin, on the other hand, will produce a very complex and changing waveform when measured over time. This is so that from the moment you hit a key to the moment you let up on it, the sound will be more interesting than an emergency broadcasting system beeeeeep.