[sdiy] What do you like in a synth control surface?

[Tom Wiltshire]

On 23 Feb 2015, at 21:51, "Richie Burnett" <rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk> wrote:

>> The solution was to break the control response into various sections, so that you had detailed control over the shortest range, reasonable control over medium length curves, and more limited control in the last third of the pot's rotation of the very longest times.
> 
> Isn't that what a log pot for the decay and release times would do anyway? My SH-09 uses log pots for attack, decay and release in a conventional analogue ADSR stage and I can't ever remember thinking that the control law for these controls felt wrong.
> 
> Or are you saying that Moog replicated this behaviour with digitally generated envelopes in the little Phatty?

I suppose Log pots are already some kind of multi-segment linear approximation to Log anyway, but what I meant was that you can have different responses in different parts of the control if it makes it *feel* right. I generally go for simple exponential functions (2^x comes up a lot, but 10^x is good for envelope controls) but in the case I was describing, we had three different exponential curves in three different ranges of the rotation. You can't do that with a pot.
Interestingly, if it "feels natural" (whatever that means) then you *don't notice*. It's when it feels wrong that the control response becomes something obvious. Like a lot of stuff, you're trying to get it so right, it's invisible.

I don't know what Moog did, so I'll let Florian answer that part.

Tom