VCAs and LPGs

[sunbeamer]

As someone who will probably never find a Natural Gate, how do you find the Pittsburgh DIF compares? Is it pretty close when it comes to imitating the natural response of struck objects?

[Starthief]

I don’t really find the DIF natural-sounding at all when using the Impulse input. It’s probably the least-natural sounding LPG I’ve owned.

With a CV envelope though, I like its character as both a VCA and in LPG mode (and once in a while in VCF mode). It works well with saturated synth sounds and FM, and can sometimes can lead to brassy or woody sounds with a nice character.

For my ears, the Doepfer A-101-2 – in conjunction with a flexible envelope generator – is what I would recommend to imitate the Natural Gate. It takes more work and doesn’t have quite all the magic pixie dust, but it’s the closest I have heard. Of course units vary and maybe only the one I had was like that. Mine also had an extremely snappy vactrol that I didn’t like, so I always used CV with it.

When I decided I had too many LPGs, that’s why I kept the DIF instead – because it’s the most different from NG yet sounds good.

I find it can be hard to compare LPGs exactly. There are a lot of factors: sensitivity to input level, (non)linearity of response to CV, decay time and curvature when pinged (and apparently attack time too), ratio of filtering to amplitude at different levels, etc.

[alanza]

Genuinely surprised to see that Dynamix is already being retired!

[hermbot]

I need to get one then, I think they sound great!

[12eightyseven]

Maybe didn’t sell that well? I enjoyed mine when I had it but ended up swapping for an lxd and a moddemix, which took up the same amount of space with (maybe?) more functionality.

[mateo]

I get the feeling they maybe didn’t sell that well? I imagine there’s a new take around the corner though, because I believe they’re phasing out all their vactrol based modules…

[joe_biomassa]

this is unexpected. mine is dearly loved and gets used a lot.

[reignbear]

I thought the dynamix was a post vactrol design. The same transitor based lpg circuit as the 0-coast.

I wonder if it’ll be replaced by a different take on the design? I like the 0-coast variant as it’s own thing(not really as a substitute to a traditional lpg though). was thinking about the dynamix for my small euro system, but it was a bit big for a 2 channel vca/lpg. Might have to rethink!

[12eightyseven]

I wonder if some of the dynamix functionality could be accomplished with the X-pan? I feel like Make Noise has a nice way of not-quite-replacing things, where the new item doesn’t exactly do what the older item did. Of course the moddemix v1, optomix v1 maths v1 are maybe reduced versions of their successors but rene 1 and 2 are very different for example!

[grey]

It’s so aesthetically similar to X-Pan; that thinking seems on the mark.

[hermbot]

I wonder how much of a difference it would have made if they were able to get the Dynamix down 2hp to the same width as the Optomix. I actually would have bought one before if it had been a drop in replacement, even just to try it.

[_mark]

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the Doepfer A-135-2 as a general purpose VCA:

http://www.doepfer.nl/a-135-2.html

Seems like a bargain in terms of functionality and is also compact at 8hp. Any obvious downside?

[simonvanderveldt]

Looks pretty nice, especially for 8hp

Some observations from a quick scan, you be the judge if these things matter to you

• Only linear, no exponential nor a way to fluently go from one to the other
• Seems like the CV inputs aren’t normalized?
• I’m not sure, the text isn’t very clear, but maybe it doesn’t allow distorting the signal (text says the range is 0-1, not really sure what that means)

Btw the Antumbra DVCA offers 2 VCAs in 4hp so would allow for the same amount of VCAs in 8hp but you can then distribute them around your case if you want.

[_mark]

Thanks. I had seen the Antumbra and nearly bought one foo ebay last week. Similar is the other Doepfer A-130-2:

But the cost for two is a bit higher than the quad.

Quick question -

Seems like the CV inputs aren’t normalized?

What does that mean? in terms of usage?

[simonvanderveldt]

Ah, yeah, you’re totally right, I forgot about the A-130-2. It’s pretty new, Doepfer only added the slim modules recently, but looks pretty nice.
I haven’t tried one yet, so not sure about the knob spacing. I think I prefer the way it’s done on the Antumbra or on for example the Intellijel VCAs where the CV attenuator is a smaller knob leaving more room for the gain knob. But that’s personal preference of course

Seems like the CV inputs aren’t normalized?

What does that mean? in terms of usage?

It depends a lot on how you use the VCA/what you use it for. If you want to pass multiple signals through it that you want to control with the same modulation, let’s say an envelope, you only need to plug that envelope’s output into the first CV input and because it’s normalized to the other CV inputs that single envelope’s input can be used to control all other channels as well. And when the channels have attenuators for the CV amount you can still vary how much that shared CV input is applied to the individual channels.
Nothing major, but saves using a mult and some extra patch cables.
Alternatively you could mix the signals you want to control first so they only take up one channel but then there’d be no way to apply different amounts of the envelope’s output to the different input signals of course. Again it depends on what you want to use this for if this matters or not.
There are always multiple ways to achieve the same thing/something similar

This video shows how it works

It also shows the distortion later in the video.

[papernoise]

If you want to pass multiple signals through it that you want to control with the same modulation, let’s say an envelope, you only need to plug that envelope’s output into the first CV input

Sometimes I wish I had this, and other times I’m happy I don’t. The downside is: if you want to use part of the module the way you describe but maybe use one or two channels to do something that doesn’t involve CV control (like just attenuation or mixing) then you’d have to plug in a dummy cable. Pros and cons I guess.

[simonvanderveldt]

Yeah, you’re definitely right, it’s not always something you want.

I tend to put the channels I want to have under CV control at the bottom, so the channels above it are free to use for just attenuation without CV control.
And I guess alternatively one could turn down the CV control using the attenuator as well, but personally I almost never do that because then you have channels that are and aren’t controlled by CV arranged randomly which to me is a bit harder to navigate.

[_mark]

Thanks @simonvanderveldt and @papernoise - super helpful and all makes sense, only just got round to going through these replies…

[_mark]

Is there a VCA out there that gives you CV control over Linear to Exponential response?

[prussian_zen]

Alternatively you could go for a linear VCA and modulate the envelope from linear to exponential …

The ‘old’ MI Tides (2014) has a shape control, that is doing just that.
Or I think multing the envelope out back into the envelope time CV will change a linear into an exponential envelope. Add a VCA to control the amound of CV that is fed back into the envelope time CV. Not straight forward, but …