Triggered Lag Waveshaper/Dynamics

The Triggered Lag combines a gate extractor and a gated slew limited with adjustable rise and fall times. It can process both audio signals and CVs.

It allows one of the hallmarks of many physical instruments where the energy of a “singing” instrument makes it want to keep vibrating rather than die down instantly unless stopped: think violin or sax or electric guitar with feedback/sustain, but also struck instruments.

Triggered Lag has a variety of functions or uses. For control voltages:

  • A gate extractor, with adjustable threshold (“on-voltage”) and hysteris (“off-voltage”).
  • A slew limiter with adjustable rise and fall times (“morph-lag“) and a timing switch to adjust between audio, low audio and envelope rates.
  • A gated slew limiter: this takes an incoming CV or audio wave, and applies a slew filter, with adjustable rise and fall times, to portions of the wave that go above a threshold.
    • E.g., when applied to a control voltage that drives a VCA, it smooths and slows the voltage, but does not cause an initial lag or final tail.

For audio signals:

  • A pulse-wave extractor.
  • A filter/waveshaper that tends to remove higher odd harmonics and add even ones.
  • An exciter that adds extra harmonics to the input wave.

Controls

  • Rise – rise rate (attack) when slew operating
  • Fall – fall rate (decay) when slew operating
  • Range – switch between three different timings, from audio to CV
  • Threshold – on-voltage (between 0.1V and 6.5V)
  • Hysteresis – off-voltage (between -0.3V and 6.4V)

Sockets

  • Input – Control voltage or Audio
  • Lag Out – Main output (level is slightly lower than input level)
  • Threshold Out – Gate function (0V = off, 5V = on)
  • Eager Out – Input minus main output: for audio, a brighter version of the input

Backstory

This module came out of a desire to provide various envelope-smoothing effects for breath control (allowing swells, removing zipper noise), without making things sloppy. So very soft breathe would be left unchanged, but normal playing would be smoothed.

The design was made so that it would handle audio waves, as a waveshaper etc., as a bonus.

Credit: The slew circuit is based on the YuSynth Dual Gated Slew Module, used with the kind permission of Yves Usson.

Status: Release Pending

Physical: 8 HP, white-on-black Aluminium Panel, 20 mm deep (skiff-friendly), 10 pin power socket. (Note, due to an error, the PCB sticks out a few mm on the left side. This may constrain which modules can be the neighbour.)

More Info:

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