Signal generator

A signal generator is a box with a variable frequency dial, a waveform selector an attenuator, and a least one pair of output plugs. See diagram on the right. It contains an electronic oscillator, an electronic circuit that is capable of creating a repetitive waveform. The most common is a sine wave, but sawtooth, step, square, and triangular waveform oscillators are commonly available.

In musical sound synthesis, oscillators conventionally form the most fundamental synthesis building block. With analog synthesizers, they are realized as electronic oscillators and with digital or software synthesizers they are generated algorithmically. Modern software synthesis environments such as Csound have generalized the oscillator as a type of unit generator (UG), where UGs are primitive modules that produce, modify or acquire audio or control signals.