Biscuit V1.2 envelope filter

[sommer]

Hi. Thanks for a great update. I played around with the Envelope Filter effect today, and just wandered if it is logarithmic or linear in its attack and release? Even though it is a great addition, it feels a bit linear, hard and oversensitive if you compare it to for instance the moogerfooger LowPass (which is sort of like a standard). Just my opinion and I dream of a supersmooth envelope follower to compensate for the raw 8-bit madness!

Keep up the good work!

[blue_lu]

Sometimes I get some really cool results with the envelope filter, but the controlls are still not quite clear to me. And I read the manual several times and own two other (all analog) envelope filters... so I understand how they work. however the drive and clock pot sometimes puzzle me.

[otomachines]

Hi. Thanks for a great update. I played around with the Envelope Filter effect today, and just wandered if it is logarithmic or linear in its attack and release? Even though it is a great addition, it feels a bit linear, hard and oversensitive if you compare it to for instance the moogerfooger LowPass (which is sort of like a standard). Just my opinion and I dream of a supersmooth envelope follower to compensate for the raw 8-bit madness!

Keep up the good work!

Hi,
You're right, attack and release are linear in Biscuit's envelope filter. On standard analog envelope filter, such as the Moogerfooger, the attack and release constants are also analog. They use resistor and capacitor to slow down the AR constant. This is typically a logarithmic process.
Biscuit uses its 8-bit processor to create the constant. It's quite complicated to mimic an analog AR constant with this little 8-bit microcontroller, notably because he should take care of everything else.
I will nevertheless think of it, maybe in a next upgrade !

[otomachines]

Sometimes I get some really cool results with the envelope filter, but the controlls are still not quite clear to me. And I read the manual several times and own two other (all analog) envelope filters... so I understand how they work. however the drive and clock pot sometimes puzzle me.

Yes, Biscuit don't work exactly the same way as an analog envelope filter, even if the filter itself is analog.
The idea was to turn down the filter frequency (FREQ pot) very quickly with a percussive sound, or to slow down an attack.
For example, to reduce the decay of a long snare or tom drum. With continuous sounds, you need to play staccato to retrig the envelope (similar to the waveshapers 6,7 and 8).

The drive pot set the input audio level and the sensitivity of the envelope,
The clock set the attack and the release time, from fixed fast attack with fast to slow release (the first half of the pot) to slow release with fast to slow attack (the second half of the pot),
The freq set the depth of the envelope, from 0 to 100% (the first half of the pot) to 100% but with an increasing center frequency (the second half of the pot).

This is weird, I have to admit, but it was the only way to have different settings with few pots.

[blue_lu]

aha, thanks for elaborating.

I am having heaps of fun with the biscuit btw. - such a great, radical but still musical device!