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hawklord2112 wrote:
the HexVCA is going to be in my case at some point. even if they arent "vanilla VCAs", the sheer density wins them points.
will admit though that this thread has opened my eyes to what it could do above volume controlling my dwwargh dwarrrgh thwipp.
Who said it's not vanilla?!?! I'm rocking a Hex with an a132-3 and an Asystems vca and it is way vanilla... I would say it's by far my favorite sounding and feeling VCA, and the AS isn't too shabby.
Also, as Intellijel pointed out, this module really comes to life when using CV, and when doing so you can gain the hell out of things if you want to. The cv response on this little guy just feels so much better to me than any other vca I've tried so far...add the fact it's six of them that you can directly link to Mutagen
so is Azimuth a good choice for the main VCA of a stereo patch? I always viewed it as a kinda 'final stereo width control' rather than the VCA in an oscillator -> filter -> VCA sense.
Me = thinking I might do some modular stereo stuff in the future... Full stereo setups with wavetable oscs like the GWS or E350 which could give a different waveform for L + R.
Mitchk1989 wrote:so is Azimuth a good choice for the main VCA of a stereo patch? I always viewed it as a kinda 'final stereo width control' rather than the VCA in an oscillator -> filter -> VCA sense.
Me = thinking I might do some modular stereo stuff in the future... Full stereo setups with wavetable oscs like the GWS or E350 which could give a different waveform for L + R.
Yeah it's great as a basic VCA.
It's two independent VCAs that can also be crossfaded and panned if desired. To be honest I've used it more as just a single VCA, but the times I've had two things going on at once it's nice to combine and crossfade them.
Well...tried out the Doepfer quad exp vca a132-4 today at tIB's house - we compared it enveloping a sine - controlled by maths - with the stg vca and , although it was hard to really a/b them as the two vcas seemed to be different curves (stg seemed to be Lin sounding)...I was pretty impressed by the Doepfer. If you had the maths output on full it made it distort (as I think maths amplifies a bit...so the voltage ends up higher than the Doepfer is expecting) but if you just turn down maths' output it is fine, but is a bit quieter than the stg. We checked for crosstalk between the different vcas in the Doepfer and there was zero. No noise either, and envs closed to completely silent as intended. The distortion mentioned earlier actually sounded wicked to my ears, and I'd use it for certain!! You can trim the inputs I think so I could set it up as different amounts of distortion and, crossfade between them, or step through them all with a seq switch
I am now officially excited about vcas!!! Oh dear....
Not gonna bother with the hex vca now...got an Oakley, an a131 and gonna get at least 1 of these quads instead. Hooray for research - I now have £170 to blow on, say, an analogue systems rs 95e osc, or.…
In regards to the hexVCA not having CV attenuators, you have 6 channels, any of which could be used as such where it is required. HexVCA, uAtt, and the dual unity mixer seem like an amazing, compact routing/mixing system before you even consider the mutagen.
'6 trim pots on rear of PCB in order to preset attenuation for the CV' (change the dB/V attenuation ratio).
So is any one of your 6 channels used to attenuate the CV at your chosen trim pot setting? Leaving the other 5 for audio or CV options to the user.
Also I find it easy to visualize how having multiple inputs of audio and then sum + out......But (and yes this will sound stupid) I cant visualize the same for 6 CV's? I am missing something big here HELP ME!
Don't be too hard on me if i have missed an obvious point/dropped a clanger here, I am not new to synths in general but new to reading about this modular world. Just a small slap round my face in the form of a reply will help me.
'6 trim pots on rear of PCB in order to preset attenuation for the CV' (change the dB/V attenuation ratio).
So is any one of your 6 channels used to attenuate the CV at your chosen trim pot setting? Leaving the other 5 for audio or CV options to the user.
Also I find it easy to visualize how having multiple inputs of audio and then sum + out......But (and yes this will sound stupid) I cant visualize the same for 6 CV's? I am missing something big here HELP ME!
Don't be too hard on me if i have missed an obvious point/dropped a clanger here, I am not new to synths in general but new to reading about this modular world. Just a small slap round my face in the form of a reply will help me.
audio vs. cv, you should start thinking of them as the same. You can modulate anything with audiorate cv or dc cv. And why is it important that this is dc-coupled, meaning you can process dc? I often use a channel on the hex to process my envelopes (going to 'in') with the dc offset from my midi/cv puts out for velocity (going to cv in). Then I take the output of that and put it back into the cv in of another channel to give me velocity sensitive control of audio.
Why chould I spend the extra money on Cwejman VCAs since both Cwej and HexVCA uses THAT chip. Is the cwejman sounding better in any way...? SNR-ratio or something that is worth the extra money or should I go budget solution, save space and money and go with the Hex?
fungitec wrote:Why chould I spend the extra money on Cwejman VCAs since both Cwej and HexVCA uses THAT chip. Is the cwejman sounding better in any way...? SNR-ratio or something that is worth the extra money or should I go budget solution, save space and money and go with the Hex?
Yeah, the 4mx was on my list of next to buy when he announced the HEX. So I waited. Now I haven't done any comparisons nor has anyone else that I am aware of but they do use the same chip. No complaints so far from me. Also, he mentioned that his profit margin was very slim on the HEX which explains why it sounds like such a great deal..it is! There's no catch here.
Thanx, I´ll go with the HEX then... Maybe I will go with an more traditional mixer when I´ve raised funds for it. If the Intellijel mixer have had CV attenutaors in it would be a no brainer witch mixer to choose.
Now It´ll be Hex VCA with the Attenuators beside and later when I can afford I´ll buy the Cwej 4mx for stereo mixing purpose...
Or get the unity mixer to go beside. Then you have two mixes plus the sum from the hex. That is my setup but all of those goes to a cwejman mx-4s..gotta have some green.
Just got my HexVCA and Mutagen combo yesterday. simplest way (in jargon-free terms) to describe how the pot works when CV is applied is that its kind of a blend between opening the VCA, and how much CV is being applied. around noon - two o'clock seemed to be a happy medium for me (CV coming from an ADSR-VC2). i think i have to get used to that. i immediately wanted the pot to be CV attenuation, but, i'm sure, that's mostly because of my past VCA expectations.
the pairing of a Mutagen is absolutely great - if not a MUST. no patching between the two keeps the Mutagen cable free and clean for control.
I was a bit confused about the knobs on the HexVCA when I first got it, and Danjel gave me this really excellent explanation (also his replies were super-fast) :
A VCA is an amplifier with unity gain when fully open (technically this can give some gain beyond that). In default state a VCA is closed (max attenuation, about -80dB).
When you apply a control voltage you can cause it to open. So let's say you supply 2.5V then the VCA is half open.
So this is exactly what the gain knobs do, they have a range of 0-5V and allow you to fully open the VCA.
They are a static CV source.
So with no external CV this means these knobs act kind of like a mixer control (attenuator) but all they are really doing is controlling VCA gain.
Now if I took an external CV signal like an envelope, it is also going to open the VCA. If I apply an external CV and I use static CV from the gain knobs these two CV sources are added together. This is where you need to think: if I set the static CV gain to max and then then add envelope my resultant CV is like 5V+5V. If 0-5 range gives 80dB of gain then 10V gives 160dB (which is a ton and will distort).
So what if I want to use an LFO? Well an LFO has both positive CV and negative CV. So this is where it makes sense to use the Gain offset of the HexVCA to about middle (VCA half open). What happens is when the LFO signal is in it's positive swing the CV sums with the static CV to fully open the VCA. When the LFO is in negative swing it subtracts CV from the static so that the VCA goes fully closed. This way an LFO is now fully opening and closing a VCA over it's entire range.
Since a LFO is +/-5V (10Vpp) it makes sense to use the uAtt to attenuate it to half. This would give you +/-2.5V which is perfect since I can set an offset of 2.5V with the HexVCA gain control and then the sums makes sense: 2.5Vgain + 2.5VLFO = 5V (all the way open)
2.5Vgain + (-2.5V)LFO = 0V (all the way closed)
I'm loving mine. It blows my mind that so much is possible within 8hp. The knobs effectively let you use it as a basic mixer, the fact that tapping each VCA removes it from the summing bus means you can use it as a combo multi-VCA/mixer with various permutations.
In regards to what Danjel is quoted in from above... if i have the pot fully CCW, and i apply an envelope CV, I got nothing. i had to turn the pot clockwise to get any sound at all (opening of VCA).
qu.one wrote:In regards to what Danjel is quoted in from above... if i have the pot fully CCW, and i apply an envelope CV, I got nothing. i had to turn the pot clockwise to get any sound at all (opening of VCA).
hmm that shouldn't be the case. What are the trim pots set at the back? Do you happen to know what the peak voltage of the ADSR-VC2 output is? If it is in the range of 0-5V then the trim pot should be fully CW (so that CV has the maximum depth).
If you are using a wide variety of CV sources it might help a lot to use a uATT as a dedicated attenuator to sit beside the Hex. The combination of attenuator + gain of each channel will give you more of the traditional control you would have with a VCA.
intellijel wrote:
hmm that shouldn't be the case. What are the trim pots set at the back? Do you happen to know what the peak voltage of the ADSR-VC2 output is? If it is in the range of 0-5V then the trim pot should be fully CW (so that CV has the maximum depth).
So if I have 0-10v env would it be possible to use the trimmers to increase my use-able range before gaining the signal?
Hi, always thinking to get a HexVCA and have another question: i understood that the knobs are neither attenuator for cv nor input gain but just move up the offset of the amp "pre-opening" it indipendently by applied cv.
hence summing the channel togheter there is no way to control relative volume of the channel w/o using some cv, can i use the uMOD to attenuate incoming audio signal and use the hexvca as mixer/amp?
