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[Korg Fan #1]

What are oscillators when in sounds mode?

[Reuben]

I'll try to give a non-technical explanation (because there is no way I know enough to give a technical one!).
Sounds are made up from a number of oscillators. Early monophonic synths had one then came along the Yamaha DX7 that still probably only had one but had a polyphony of 8 I think which meant that you could now play chords. But it's more than just the number of notes playable (this is more to do with polyphony than osc because one osc can still play many notes) - they can be used to construct much more complex sounds that change according to velocity or other parameters. This is usually done by limiting some oscillators to certain velocity ranges or perhaps having more than one playing at a time. The simplest stereo sound needs two. More complex sounds might be using 4 or more.
In Sound mode you can tell what's happening by looking at the velocity range for each osc and maybe Solo-ing the oscillator to listen what's happening (you can solo an osc using the dropdown menu).
Pianos sometimes use 22 oscillators (pp, ff samples etc, pedal down, up noises, resonance etc) but usually only 4 to 6 are being used at any one time depending on velocities and pedal up/down etc. If one note is using 4 osc then at 128 polyphony you can sustain a maximum of 32 notes.
Every oscillator can be adjusted (amp level, attack release pan etc and stereo sounds are generally fully panned one right and the other left).
It's worthwhile fiddleing in Sound mode because you do get greater control of the sound you want and you can save your new sound as a User sound.
Hope that gets you going.
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[Korg Fan #1]

Thank you for your help.