Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Ever since I built my MOTM I haven't liked the way the envelopes worked, yet
I've never heard anybody else comment on them. I'm wondering why not. Is it
just me that experiences the following problems?

1) I patch up a sound and hit a key on the keyboard to trigger the sound and
it sounds OK. Then I start playing and all of a sudden the sound gets
brighter and louder (I have envelopes going to both filter and amp). This
isn't right. The envelope should not output higher voltages because I'm
playing faster or more legato, yet it does. I finally got around to scoping
it and confirmed it. With the exception of a little initial spike the ADSR
outputs about 4 volts max. Yet at certain settings if I play a fast trill I
can push it up to about 6 volts. Set A=0, D=6, S=7, R=4 and go into the a
filter FM input and you'll see what I mean.

2) If the Sustain level is set way up to about 10, then the Decay acts like
an Attack. I can set the Attack to 0 and move the Decay around to get
various length attacks. It seems to control the attack time from the normal
4 volts up to a higher voltage which is set by the sustain level. Strange.

3) I can set Attack to 0, Decay to 0, and Sustain to 10 to get plain organ
type envelope, yet the attack portion is too soft. It's impossible to get a
hard solid sound at this setting.

And I haven't even gotten into the somewhat artificial sound of the envelopes
either because I need to compare side by side with another synth. But they
almost sound linear instead of exponential (even though I'm sure they're not)
and don't seem to have a really good bouncy and punchy quality I like. But I
need to compare to others before I can say for sure what's going on here.

I've never experienced these things with any of my other synths. Am I the
only one dealing with these issues?

-Elhardt