Saturday 17 October 2020

EMS Synthi-E - Trapezoidal Envelope Generator

 Playing around with the Synthi-E's envelope shaper.


It's an unusual beast.
 

We are all used to a 4 stage ADSR style of envelope.
EMS however used the Trapezoidal Envelope.
This also has 4 stages. They are Attack, ON, Decay, Off.
 
The Synthi AKS uses knobs to adjust the 4 stages, and can be set to
"manual" or "free run" triggering.
The Synthi E is much simplier. 
Attack (rise) & decay (fall) are set using the rise & fall sliders.
On /off are determined by the gate length.
 
The 3 variants of the envelope are available simultaneously. 
Variation 1 : attack & decay are adjustable using the sliders.
Variation 2 : attack is variable, but decay is fixed (fast)
Variation 3 : attack is fixed (fast) and decal is variable.

Connecting a gate to the second black input form the bottom  (bipolar "?") will make it behave as if it were an LFO. 
The envelope starts on both the rise & fall of the gate ... I think this is the equivalent "free run mode".

The gate itself is interesting ... it's a short to ground.
Touching a cable with your bare fingers will produce the required gate.
This is essentially an S-trig. 
Manufacturers like (vintage) Korg & Moog use S-trigs.


 
About the patch:
I'm using a square wave to trigger the EG.... which is opening /closing the VCA.
The filter is in self oscillation mode.
 
If you still want to trigger the Synthi' gate with eurorack, you will probably need a V-trig to S-trig converter. I haven't tested this myself. These synthi's are rare and expensive so be careful if you plan to try this.
BTW, I don't recommend plugging anything into your synthi which is not from EMS.
 
The Synthi E's envelopes seem to have a 1.7Vpp range.
 
 

Analogue Systems still produce a Eurorack version of the Trapezoidal Generator.
(Thanks to James from Synthwerks for the info) .
"AS make both it (RS-510e) and the EMS filter module (RS-500e) both 
now with universal mounting hole and power connector for both AS and 
Doepfer systems".
Erica Synths also has a Euro format envelope generator module... It looks like
two EMS Synthi functionality inspired looping envelope generators with simultaneous unipolar (0V - 10V) and bipolar (-5V - +5V), VCA, Noise generator and Sample & Hold.  ...... That's nice :-)

 
I wonder if it's inspired by the Synthi 100, who's envelope shapers also have dual trapezoidal outputs.
The Synthi 100's envelopes however differ in that they have 5 triggering modes (Signal threshold, Hold, Single Shot, Free run & Gated free run) & the 4 stages are Delay, Attack, On, Decay.


The addition of a second output for each of the synthi 100's trapezoidal generators is pretty neat.
The second output lags behind the first by one quarter of a complete trapezoidal cycle.

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