Envelope tracking effects that aren't envelope filters

[icecycle66]

How reasonable is this idea?

I'll start simple since I'm not sure how to describe it.

Imagine an envelope filter.  You know the typ that goes "wacka" or "bloop" or whatever.

But, instead of the effect going "wacka" or "bloop" it engages and disengages distortion.

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Or maybe a trem or vibe pedal.
But instead of tremmin/vibing it goes "clean-distortion-clean-distortion-clean-distortion".

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They don't have to me distortion, that's just the easiest thing to describe.

[jubal81]

I like this idea. OD by pick attack. Maybe an LDR over the clipping diodes?

[selfdestroyer]

Or Have the OD/Fuzz sweep into the dry signal.. hmm you got me thinking now.

[jubal81]

Or Have the OD/Fuzz sweep into the dry signal.. hmm you got me thinking now.

I hadn't thought of that. Sounds pretty brilliant.

[marauder]

Expandora.  Envelope controlled gain control.

[selfdestroyer]

Expandora.  Envelope controlled gain control.

Interesting.. thanks

[midwayfair]

It's not too hard to use a gate circuit to "select" between two audio paths, one distorted and one clean.

There's might be a way to turn the Nautilus into what you want, though. I think something along the lines of making C7 and C8 back-to-back diodes, maybe fiddling with C5.

For the tremolo, Lacesensor recently asked about doing a tremolo that switched between a clean signal and an effects loop. The easy way to do that is to use something along the lines of the Anderton stereo tremolo, except instead of having two outs from two clean tremolo stages, you just have a single out and put some sort of effects loop in one of the tremolo stages.

You could also build a tremolo that's distorted on one side and clean on the other with a couple simply modifications to the Cardinal Trem. Just change the "treble" side to an all-pass stage then bias it hot and it'll distort in a real hurry. Not sure if it needs some sort of buffering at the output in that case, though.

[stecykmi]

this is really just making voltage controlled "blank". Synths are full of stuff like this. I highly recommend checking out the datasheet for the LM13700, as it gives design notes on lots of different circuit types of this nature (off the top of my head, voltage controlled filters, voltage controlled amplifiers, voltage controlled resistors, etc).

the engineer's thumb, which has been really popular on the board lately, uses a LM13700-based voltage controlled resistor in the feedback loop of an opamp and thereby controlling the gain. the resistance is set by, you guessed it, an envelope generated by the input signal.

[raulduke]

this is really just making voltage controlled "blank". Synths are full of stuff like this. I highly recommend checking out the datasheet for the LM13700, as it gives design notes on lots of different circuit types of this nature (off the top of my head, voltage controlled filters, voltage controlled amplifiers, voltage controlled resistors, etc).

the engineer's thumb, which has been really popular on the board lately, uses a LM13700-based voltage controlled resistor in the feedback loop of an opamp and thereby controlling the gain. the resistance is set by, you guessed it, an envelope generated by the input signal.

Yep, envelope generators are used a lot in modular synth stuff.

The eponymous ADSR envelope is just a gate (rather than level) controlled envelope generator.

However, in my experience playing around with env generators (I build a lot of 'modular' stuff in NI Reaktor), their most usefull application is filter cutoff control.

I highly recommend trying out something like Reaktor (http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths-samplers/reaktor-5/) for 'prototyping' this kind of thing.

You can't beat analogue hardware, but it makes trying out ideas really easy.

I built an envelope controlled pitch shifter and phaser in Reaktor. They sounded cool, but more in a crazy, rather than usefull, way.

[juansolo]

I still like the idea of an envelope controlled fuzz. In that the harder you play the more it sags. Just haven't found a fuzz yet that sags in the way I want it to (I want one that when sagged sounds like Greanbaum's bits in Spirit in the Sky).

We managed it once, ages and ages ago when we buggered up making a fuzz. Destroyed batteries, but sounded perfect. We could have designed around that now

[RobA]

I've got an envelope controlled modulation AU that I wrote a while back. The effect is certainly more subtle than an auto-wah. But it is one of my favorite effects. It does envelope control of rate and depth on vibe, tremolo, chorus, etc. I really like a tremolo effect where the depth of the tremolo increases as the envelope fades.

I'm not sure how well it plays with the various AU hosts on OS X out there anymore as I haven't updated it in some time. But, if anyone would like to play with it I can post a link.

[raulduke]

I've got an envelope controlled modulation AU that I wrote a while back. The effect is certainly more subtle than an auto-wah. But it is one of my favorite effects. It does envelope control of rate and depth on vibe, tremolo, chorus, etc. I really like a tremolo effect where the depth of the tremolo increases as the envelope fades.

I'm not sure how well it plays with the various AU hosts on OS X out there anymore as I haven't updated it in some time. But, if anyone would like to play with it I can post a link.

Impressive stuff dude!

I'm a PC/VST guy unfortunately though, Ableton Live all the way (when its not crashing that is  )

[RobA]

Thanks.

The hosts are a pain. It was all the constantly changing specs and host issues that finally made me give up and move to working on doing these things as outboard gear. I love everything you can do with computers and everything they can open up for music, but they sure can make life miserable too.

I guess I could have just put up a link to the downloads page in the first place -- don't know why I didn't. The relevant AU to this discussion is the OttoVibe.

http://www.musicunfolding.com/downloads.html

Unless you are into working through issues, I'd stay away from the M3 audio unit. There have been some recent host changes that cause it to peg the audio at launch and never come back down for some people. I haven't been able to reproduce the issue though. So, I can't figure out how to fix it.