Multiples - Buffered Or Unbuffered

[TrueFallacy]

Can someone explain to me the difference between the buffered and unbuffered mutlis. I am looking at the Intellijel mixers and also liked the idea of the unity mixer. If I am starting with a 6U system, how many do you suggest?

My ideas- One buff. and one unbuff, but then that unity mixer sounded like a nice add on as well. It's like an anti multi, right?

[polyroy]

Buffered multiples are powered so that each multiplied signal doesn't lose any power. Unbuffered means the signal is weaker after each output. I use passive ones but depends on what your using them for and how complexly your using the multiples in regards to stacking them up. I plan to get some buffered ones though when I get more oscillators.

[sduck]

Buffered mults are handy if you're driving a bunch of VCO's from one voltage source, especially if it's an underpowered one like my mfos sequencer. Otherwise they're kind of overkill - you probably only need one buffered mult in your system. I use passive ones mostly.

[Klopfgeist]

Unbuffered mults don't necessarily mean you will lose signal at each output. It's mainly impedance issues. Buffered mults are active.

[sunsinger]

I've got an Active (buffered) Mult from Suit & Tie Guy.
Some applications I use it for:

An "Active Mult", allows me to send a quantizer's output voltage to multiple oscillators without dropping the original pitch's voltage, keeping all oscillator splits off the mult in tune.
The passive mult will drop the pitch voltage each time the original voltage is split off the mult. Two splits is enough to drop the pitch voltages out of tune by a good bit.

At times, I will run a STG Time divider, or MOTM pulse divider. When sending a clock output to a passive mult, I notice clock dropouts or errors if I split clock signal out to 2 or 3 devices.
This no longer happens using the Active Mult. Active mults are very nice to have