Yes, and I guess, in most cases, you would barely hear a real difference between the various “random” or “chaotic” oscillators, especially when used as CV source for modulation.
I just looked at the Caudal trajectories in Tricorder (only the x/y components), and they are very different to, for example, the trajectories of Julio’s or the Sapphire oscillators. The “Pendulum” is quite regular (kind of an irregular back and forth on a fixed regular circle), while “Planets” and “Fish Tank” look way more “chaotic” and random than Julio and Sapphire, independent of the setting for Speed and Energy.
To my understanding, strictly speaking, Julio’s and the Sapphire oscillators are not random at all. The CV output of the x/y/z coordinates is the solution of a system of dynamic equations, and the result is completely deterministic, given that the start conditions and parameters are the same (Speed and Chaos knob, or Rate, A, B and C knob, etc.). I think, they are called “chaotic” because the trajectories (i.e. the CV output of x/y/z) are very susceptible to tiny changes of the parameters. So, a small change can have a big impact on the shape of the trajectories (butterfly effect?): Sometimes they are simple and repeating, sometimes they are very complex, so that they might look random, but actually they are not. (@cosinekitty: Is that roughly correct?)
In my patch where I’m using the CV output not only for modulation but also for pitch and triggers I was trying to exploit this to get sometimes repeating note and/or rhythmic patterns (namely when the trajectory is simple and repeating), or longer random phrases (when the trajectory is complex and less repeating). It reminds a bit of the “deja vu” option in Marbles (with the difference that you have to actively kick out the trajectories of their repeating pattern by changing the parameters, while Marbles ends a deja vu section spontaneously, afaik).
In my opinion, you can hear this sometimes in the patch but I could have done better, and it’s a bit messed up by the Bernoulli gates that add variation but also obstruct or hide such repeating patterns a bit.
I think the Venom Benjolin Oscillator has a similar behaviour in that the output sometimes enters into a repeating pattern for a while before it gets more chaotic again, spontaneously or by changing the Rungler/Chaos knobs.
