#190

Let’s all get back to making sick bongos.

17 Likes
#191

A lot of what is being discussed here with the optomix clicking sounds to me like the result of very fast vactrols.

I’ve been building myself Buchla clone modules and recently replaced my excelitas (likely to be what make noise uses) vactrols with some old vactec vactrols.

The results were night and day when it came to response. The newer vactrols (not sure if this is what is truly deciding the speed) were super fast, to the point where it behaved like a VCA and lacked much slew at all. When I replaced these with the vactec vactrols the response was completely different. Sending a single ping wouldn’t even open up the gate fully. Sending a few in a row would open it more and more as they came in.

Even in my replacing, I found that some of my old vactrols response varied in speed. Some were just as fast as the modern ones I have were.

4 Likes
#192

Different vactrols have different attack response as well as decay. I would have predicted that none of them are fast enough to get the discontinuity click, but I guess I’d have been wrong :slight_smile:

Generally speaking, lower voltage triggers into a vactrol lead to softer attacks (and shorter decays and less brightness too of course).

Among the four LPGs I have:

Natural Gate: non-vactrol. Will click at its most aggressive Material setting using the Hit input (not the CV).

Pittsburgh DIF: also non-vactrol, and much less competent than Natural Gate at imitating the response. It too will click when using the Impulse input. I almost always use the CV input with an envelope, though, where it sounds pretty good.

0HP Vactrol LPG (passive vactrol): has a noticeably soft attack that gets completely blurry if you attenuate the trigger. But the decay is shorter than I would like, and it tends to overdrive (in kind of interesting ways) if you don’t attenuate the audio input.

Gerridae (passive vactrol): behavior is similar to the 0HP, though the tone is a little different.

2 Likes
#193

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?

#194

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.

3 Likes
#195

340 Likes, 18 Comments - Make Noise (@makenoisemusic) on Instagram: “Happy retirement, Dynamix! . A unique take on the dual Low Pass Gate and a component of our…”

Genuinely surprised to see that Dynamix is already being retired!

#196

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

#197

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.

1 Like
#198

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…

1 Like
#199

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

#200

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!

#201

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!

1 Like
#202

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

#203

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.

2 Likes
#204

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?

#205

Looks pretty nice, especially for 8hp

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

  • 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.

1 Like
#206

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

A1302

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

Quick question -

What does that mean? in terms of usage?

#207

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 :slight_smile:

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 :slight_smile:

This video shows how it works


It also shows the distortion later in the video.
2 Likes
#208

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.

1 Like
#209

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.

1 Like