Elektron-Users

I love to drive it just under the limit of mayhem and then set a slow triangle LFO to drive this parameter just a little up....you hear a lot of animation this way, but it´s not for every morning I guess

Yes, just feed the output back to the input. Like when you hold a guitar up to its amplifier. After it hits the threshold it's like a self oscillation, if you will. You can still control the pitch of guitar feedback, but sometimes the relation of the guitar's pickups to the sound being put out (and back into them) has more to do with the sound than the pitch you're playing on the strings. If you turn the feedback up all the way (or hold the pickup right in front of the speaker) not much else gets through.

It's hard to say "it does this specifically to an oscillator" because it depends on the oscillator level (or whatever audio is going through the filter), its character, pitches, peaks, and the feedback level, as well as the filter settings (what kind of filter, what's its cutoff frequency, its resonance). It will behave differently if you're running drums through the filter than just a simple oscillator tone. But just saying "turn this knob to crank up the jam/heat/thickness" doesn't really work. It might just turn everything to poop. It takes a certain subtlety.

Anselmi's tip is an awesome one.

heckadecimal wrote:
Sorry you don't know what feedback is.

Wow, you're so smart Heckadecimal.

It's hard to say "it does this specifically to an oscillator" because it depends on the oscillator level (or whatever audio is going through the filter), its character, pitches, peaks, and the feedback level, as well as the filter settings (what kind of filter, what's its cutoff frequency, its resonance).

Or then again, maybe not. The feedback circuit taps the output of the ladder filter, so it doesn't make any difference what kind of SV filter you select or how you set up the SV filter, as it's not part of the feedback loop.

See, I have a copy of The Art of Electronics here on my desk and the chapter on feedback circuits is 75 pages long, so I was hoping to have a conversation on how this particular feedback circuit was structured, because there's more than one way to do it. I'm not expecting you to provide circuit diagrams or anything, but when your answer consists of repeating part of the question and adding ''nuff said?' then it reads like you don't actually have anything to contribute.

I admit I was lazy and came here to ask a question after 10 minutes of fiddling with it instead of several hours, but there was no need for you to respond in such a dismissive fashion.

One thing we all should keep in mind is that (I would assume) quite a few new A4 users may have never had the opportunity to own an older analogue synth with a physical filter input to where they could have used that feedback to supplement the oscillators. More so, there could be a chance that the A4 is the first analogue synth for some.

On the flipside of the coin I would generally recommend to new A4 owners that are not quite as experienced with analogue subtractive synthesis to read the soundonsound synth secrets series which explains a lot of the basic verbiage, signal flow, etc.

"We're all links in a chain." - Jim Combs

That's a reasonable point Reset. However, it's worth noting that the signal flow diagram in the A4 manual (on page 6) is extremely simplified, and doesn't include the feedback path at all. There are 4 different places where you could tap the output (after Filter 1, after the overdrive, after filter 2, after the VCA), and there's obviously a gain-limiter in place, but I'm not sure where. On other synths which allow this sort of thing, the feedback is usually post-VCA and goes in parallel to the oscillators rather than substituting for one.

I got my first analog synthesizer in 1998 or 1999, and took up modular synthesis soon afterwards. I'm used to a more detailed signal flow schematic, but since Elektron has a rather individual approach to these things I thought they might have implemented this idea before on the Monomachine or MD, or that it had been discussed extensively in some other thread that I missed.

anigbrowl wrote:


The feedback circuit taps the output of the ladder filter, so it doesn't make any difference what kind of SV filter you select or how you set up the SV filter, as it's not part of the feedback loop.

I admit I was lazy and came here to ask a question after 10 minutes of fiddling with it instead of several hours, but there was no need for you to respond in such a dismissive fashion.

I meant filter feedback in general, but ok, guess I'm not so smart.

While I think you're right about the A4 feedback being tapped after the ladder filter (and before the multi mode one), the manual doesn't actually say. And the signal flow diagram, as you mentioned, completely omits filter feedback. I guess it's forgivable seeing that the OS is still being developed and I'm sure there will be an updated manual at some point (even if this feature was there from the start.

But yes, if you try playing with the filters an feedback it does seen apparent that filter 2 is downstream from the feedback circuit.

Sorry if I was dismissive, but your initial post was kind of, as you said, lazy. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings so much. When I said 'nuff said, it's like, there's not much to add to the fact that there's a feedback circuit on the filter. If you don't know what that means, use google and just play around with it.

Well, I was needlessly grumpy as well, sorry

These are pretty interesting and weird with the neighbor tracks. I'm still trying to figure it out, but try setting your feedback osc in slot one track 1 at about 70 so it won't activate on it's own and a neighbor machine turned up all the way in slot 2 track 2 then modulating the volumes of the other oscs. Also the feedback works well with noise. I don't recall feedback on the second track having much effect.

It's kind of a bummer the effects aren't mixed back in, damn you analog purists! But you can use a cable out to back in.

The thing that confuses me the most are the AM settings and the whole osc 2 page 2 screen because they work even when using the external audio, as well as feedback and neighbor if you change the tune. And bend or vibrato, or whatever will work, but what's it bending?

How cool would it be if the gurus of this community would start posting video tutorials!

Implied wrote:
How cool would it be if the gurus of this community would start posting video tutorials!

+1

Not hardly new to all kinds of synthesis but new to Elektron's way of working and since the user manual can be quite vague, detailed tutorials would certainly be welcome. The guy I bought my A4 from is into modular synthesis and he was discouraged by the lack of comprehensive details regarding cv/gate track driving. I have had to intensely search on this forum to put together collected info from members on forum that took the time to post some good details but have more often come across incredibly abbreviated answers as if sent in form of a text while on a roller coaster.

The journey of discovery with the A4 as well as new to me, MnM Mk1, is quite exciting but as a previous post rightly implied, people need to realize some of us have extensive hardware synth experience, which requires menu-diving often enough, but many of us are totally new to things such as neighbor tracks, trigs, trigless trigs, and since there's no such thing as a 'Project" in the A4, further explanation in form of tutorials sure would help in managing patterns and kits.
Would be great if someone even made for purchase tutorials of the likes Groove3.com provides.