Not sure if this was suggested before, or if i’m overlooking something which is already there. i’m currently using my own version of dblue’s native monosynth, and i ran into a problem. i want to have the sound follow an ADSR-envelope. normally, i’d use the Volume envelope in the Instrument Editor. however, in this example there is no real instrument, as it is a sample of silence. (i think it works this way). now, i want to apply to envelope to the sound generated by the Ringmod, and it seems the Volume envelope in the Instrument Editor does not really affect it.
correct me if i’m wrong.
my idea would be a DSP ADSR-envelope. currently i achieved something along those lines by using a 2nd key-tracker resetting ing a custom LFO which runs a Gainer. I tried using the Gate-device, but it does not seem to work like i want it to. running through these devices, i figured there must be a simple way to do this. if there is not, it would be an ADSR envelope in the DSP chain.
You can set up a chain of LFO’s to emulate “ADS” device. It’s complicated, and there is no way to get a sensible Release trigger (you can actually get some sort of a release trigger by splitting signal with a real sample in the instrument and let a Signal Follower detect when the note is released, but this is obvious very unstable and hard to do for many reasons).
In the end, only a real ADSR device is what we will need, and what we will get.
It will be there some time in the future…
it’s actually quite nice that the devs wait a while with some things, as i have now tried all sorts of whacky stuff and come up with real interesting sounds and dsp-chains. heck, this experimentation made me rebuild from scratch dblue’s native synth, and going online to check if i just uncounsiously did the same thing he did, because i could not believe a month ago i read about that synth i could not wrap my head around how he did it, and now i just made one myself. i instantly understood all he said in that post. amazing stuff, only because a simple device is missing from the software!
Instead of feeding silence into the DC offset device, you can simply draw the DC offset into the sample itself, and then the instrument’s volume envelope will actually be applied to its output.
This is how I did it during my early testing, but I found that it had some undesirable properties. For one thing, if your instrument envelope has an instant attack then you will get a nasty click from the sample. You can reduce this by using a slower attack, or you can even use a sample which contains a faded intro section to ease it in and reduce the click, etc. Neither method really works that nicely overall, but you might be able to tweak them for your own needs.
The ADSR envelope is obviously a concept that is intended mainly for instruments rather than effects, so it probably doesn’t make a huge amount of sense within the context of a DSP chain. If you wish to apply an envelope to some part of the DSP chain, then the standard reply here is to use a custom LFO or automation.
I don’t think this particular synth hack is the best argument for why an ADSR device should exist, but there have been similar ‘envelope device’ suggestions made in the past, so it’s an interesting idea that at least a few other people have thought about.
