Elektron-Users

I think this is because it's the filter feedback that adds the fatness - and feedback obviously needs to build up?

Shouldn't need any time to "warm up." The A4 has DCO's not VCO's.


The reason your drums take time to "kick in" is because you have "created" them using filter-feedback. It takes time for the "feedback" to build (loop) to an audible level.

If you want to avoid this, use a dedicated waveform (transistor, Triangle, Saw etc) to create your drums.

This is the VERY reason I was hoping "they" (Elektron) would add a dedicated sine-wave waveform to one of the oscillators, so we wouldn't have to depend on filter-feedback to create a sine-wave for drums.

But that is strange, and uncommon - I've never encountered another VCF that works this way. Any simple monosynth filter, standalone modular VCF, etc. - nothing else needs to "build up." I wonder if it's something to do with the way the A4 allocates parameters or something.

Nystagmus wrote:
Shouldn't need any time to "warm up." The A4 has DCO's not VCO's.

yea i think it doesn't. when i hit play after a cold start, everything sounds like it should -
and the thing with the 'weak' filter oscillation can also happen when you switch patches, i personally don't think this is related to operating temperature.

That's right, it sounds as it should right away.

You can still use a self-oscillating filter to make drum sounds, just add a touch of audio to feed the beginning of it and the filter will have something to work with. It can be just a tiny snippet of noise burst or one of the analog oscillators, but if you have that the filter will have some juice to kick itself in.

heckadecimal wrote:
just add a touch of audio to feed the beginning of it and the filter will have something to work with. It can be just a tiny snippet of noise burst or one of the analog oscillators, but if you have that the filter will have some juice to kick itself in.

In theory, yes, still that doesn't fix the volume build up on the filter resonance on the A4

so basically there are 2 undesired effects with using F2 with a high resonance setting as a kick drum..

effect one is a missing self-oscillation which slowly builds up. you switch to a pattern which uses your kick patch, and the kick takes a couple seconds to fade in while the resonance builds up.

effect two are occasional 'duds' with kick patches. the kick plays fine, but occasionally you get a single weak-sauce kick, feels like unexpectedly stepping into a hole while dancing.
or like a sudden involuntary loss of erection, or something. anyway, unacceptable!

probably both problems have the same cause, namely the filter's self oscillation being somewhat 'fragile' in the lower bass frequencies.

in my experience (the way i've been making kick patches) a little noise burst or a quick zapping ramp with the filter envelope wasn't enough to reliably work around this..
i always saturate the filter with a triangle wave now.

snowcrash wrote:
heckadecimal wrote:
just add a touch of audio to feed the beginning of it and the filter will have something to work with. It can be just a tiny snippet of noise burst or one of the analog oscillators, but if you have that the filter will have some juice to kick itself in.

In theory, yes, still that doesn't fix the volume build up on the filter resonance on the A4

It works for me.

Bath House wrote:
But that is strange, and uncommon - I've never encountered another VCF that works this way. Any simple monosynth filter, standalone modular VCF, etc. - nothing else needs to "build up." I wonder if it's something to do with the way the A4 allocates parameters or something.

^ I agree with this the behaviour is somewhat puzzling in the A4.

Certainly the effect can be lessened with using the noise/vco to feed the filter, but it is still not ideal.

I think that a future OS update should allow a small amount of the filter envelope to be fed into the audio input to provide a sharp transient at sufficient amplitude to ring the filter, this works great on modular filters so in theory should work on the A4.

I posted about this issue 2 weeks ago in another thread. was not sure what the issue was as i have only had my A4 about 3 weeks now. I figured it was some lfo routing from my experience with the machinedrum.

I was also surprised there was no sine wave for any of the oscillators.

while this is not a huge issue i guess. for anyone using the a4 with no other dedicated hardware for drums as is the case for me right now. the idea would be using 1 track of the a4 for drums while using the other 3 for the rest of your song ideas.