Forgive my somewhat atypical Other Gear post, but its tied up in a few pieces of Elektron gear so this seemed like a good place.
I’m currently experimenting an Analog Four MKII and an Analog Drive as part of a distorted filtering setup. One thing that really bums me out is that the Analog Drive does not have a dry/wet setting. The distortions sound best blended with clean signal IMO (yes, I know the heat has dry/wet, but I like the raw sound of the drive more )
I was hoping to find a piece of gear that can blend dry signal coming out of my Analog Four with effected signal coming from the Analog Drive. And be able to control that via the CV from my Analog Four. In other words, 2 inputs (A/B), and one output that is a blend of the 2.
FWIW, I don’t want a powered modular solution as I don’t have a modular rig. A pedal that is very close to this is this blending pedal One Control Mosquite Blender Expressio Effect Blender but it is expression input not CV. I tried looking at some of those small passive modular “dongles” that are on etsy etc, but I didn’t seem to find one.
Depending on the pedal, you may be able to use a cable adapter to use CV instead of expression pedal. Usually an expression pedal connection is ground, a voltage source, and a voltage input. The pedal becomes a passive attenuator reducing the voltage source and sending it back to the input.
Otherwise what you’re looking for is a CV controller crossfader, tons in Eurorack but probably fewer in pedal format.
Thanks for the reply Good to know about the pedal!
I saw there were CV controlled crossfaders, but I’ve failed to find one that is passive or standalone. I wonder if I could try using (or even building) two vactrol VCAs? One could control the dry signal and one the wet, which I’d then mix with something else.
This would be very straight forward and fairly inexpensive to assemble in a small Eurorack case, even if just dedicated to a couple of utilities like this. A small 4ms Pod would be ideal!
I think for now I’m just going to try the pedal I linked at the top (knowing now that I can throw cv at an expression pedal). There is a cheap one on reverb. I like that its self contained and small. If that doesn’t pan out I’ll sell it and possibly dive down the real modular route
So the blender pedal arrived today. Works great… but not with CV. Turns out its not like most pedals that measures its own voltage. I could probably modify a cable to provide variable resistance or whatever it expects, but instead I’m either going to dive down the “small modular skiff” route or maybe just build the circuit myself. Its not my “main project” but I post here if I do more.
if I’m understanding correctly, the pedal you bought expects to encounter a certain specific resistance, which is not present, so it doesn’t work? would an in line attenuator, basically a pot in line with the cable, correct that issue? or does it need to modulate resistance based on condition?
I was trying to automate the dry/wet with my Analog Four CV Outputs, so sadly that won’t get me there. I appreciate the thoughts tho
I’m honestly rethinking my path with this in general, keeping in mind that if I make things too complex then I don’t ever finish anything .
My current thought is either:
Use up both Analog Four external inputs and have one be dry and one be wet.
Accept that dry/wet is manual, keep using the blend pedal (which has a built in “expression” knob).
Generally I’m trying to decide what I really want out of this setup (highly feedbacked drum and synth) and what I really need to get there. Part of this was actually so I could use TWO Analog Drive pedals, but honestly I don’t think I need that with the distortions built into the Analog Four. Maybe the other input could be better used by something else
hey, so I looked at the pedal linked at the top and it looks like the pedal is only for wet dry audio signal blend using manual controls with either a blend knob or an expression pedal input - from what I read, you were hoping to use cv to control the blend, so the issue (if I’m following) is that you need cv to be representative of the movement that the pot inside the expression pedal would make and that’s the resistance needed in order to modulate the wet dry mix. am I following this correctly?
I know exactly what you mean, if it gets to be too many steps between a and b I start to get kinda meh about a project… like a, b, c is my speed. but anyways, am I correct about my understanding of the situation? if so (and depending on how much more you want to put into this after dropping that money on the pedal) I’m positive that someone (not me) with some programming ability could make arduino code (or maybe has) that would interpret the cv and output the correct range of resistance that the pedal expects - you would need to open it up and get an idea of the value of the pot so you know the range of ohms spanned by the resistance curve. A pico would cost close to nothing, and if someone already made the code and it’s on github or something and you can access it for free, it get’s pretty simple - however making your own code or paying someone to do it (or getting someone with skills and an interest in this involved I guess is another option) is where it get’s tricky.
I’d look and see if there’s code for this before I gave up, I think you’re almost there. looks like a nice pedal either way and I don’t think you’re asking for anything ridiculous, if you want to use 2 analog drive pedals that’s the business, make it happen.
there may also be another reasonable way to turn cv into a set range of resistance in a way that I’m just not envisioning at the moment but I’ll try and think about it. you need something to act as a translator essentially.
I just found one that converts OSC to cv gate , I’ll keep looking a bit. you can’t be the first person to want to do this.
do you know if cv from a4 is volts per octave or hz per volt?
Yea most pedal expression inputs can be controlled via CV if you use a floating ring cable and just provide your own voltage, but this pedal instead looks at resistance (I assume, the pedal definitely isn’t outputting voltage).
The Arduino is not a bad idea, I have some Arduino experience and could make that happen. I even have some midi shields already, maybe I’d instead control the resistance via midi (as I was exploring using my iPad as a sound source as well, the additional class compliant audio inputs into the Analog Four MKII are pretty sweet).
I have a show lined up with an ambient setup so I probably won’t dive into it soon, but maybe when I get back to this I’ll explore it.
If I try to get the two Drive pedals working I may also take Nate’s approach of getting 4ms pod. I’d probably use a Quad VCA and plug in the two dry and two wet inputs. The Analog Four CV outputs could control the Quad.
Edit: I have an analog four and it can do linear cv.
sorry I already read that I just misspoke because I have too many elektron goods floating around in my head at any given time. I think you can make this happen, it’s just not plug and play unfortunately
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Good to know about the pedal!
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