One thing I’ve tried to do in Digitone is a slowly moving LFO with smooth stepping. I’m able to do this easily in all my other synths (Novation Peak for example) I’d especially use this with a slowly opening and closing filter in an arpeggio run. When I try this with DN, it just sounds like zigzagging noise or barely nothing changing. Is there any way around this?
I think Sound on Sound might be talking about this in their DN review:
“It might have been nice if the LFOs were able to smoothly modulate the operators outside of their 0.25 quantisation, but they can’t. The resulting zipper-stepped results are interesting in themselves, though.”
what exactly is it you want, smooth stepping is an oxymoron afterall
it’s possible to get ‘smooth’ lfo output on all Elektrons, but without stating the obvious, some destination parameters are Not smooth, i.e. like that referenced in SOS review where the review predates the addition of menu which allowed the targeting of operator pitch in a secondary way that was other than the intended discrete steps hard wired into the device. That was the way it was expected to be on that parameter. The operator ‘offsets’ allow a ‘smooth’ control over the operator frequency and this is giving very different atonal results than teh original arrangement had intended.
Anyway we digress, there’s no difficulty whatsoever in achieving a smooth filter rise across a very long period if you know how to use the LFO and understand all the other parameters which may affect the LFO, like e.g. note retriggering etc and whether this retriggers the LFO
First start with a long sustaining single note, master the long LFO rise technique discussed elsewhere on the forum for every unit, they all have similar LFO designs (post OT)
What the Elektrons don’t have is a way to smooth existing shapes, they are a fixed (but varied) selection and broader than most. Smooth randomisation is the only significant one missing imho - which would get closest to the notion of smooth stepping
also dont forget about mono lfo in sound settings if you are using a polyphonic patch.
it would mimic you manually closing and opening a filter on a sound, instead of each voice having its own LFO going out of sync.
If the desired effect is a drunken wandering LFO, then assuming an Elektron has two LFOs, you can use one sin shape to vary the depth of another (with a different periodicity) - it will be smooth and less predictable - the more you lean on LFO profiles with abrupt (high frequency) changes, then teh harder it is to filter those ‘stepping’ effects.
LFO smoothing is the exception to the norm in my experience of synths … sadly, it’d be one of my top Feature requests
Nope, not drunken slew, I don’t think so. Just slowly opening and closing filter while an arpeggio is running. Basically what every analog, hybrid or VA synth sounds to me if I use a free-running slow, saw/sin-shaped LFO. Slow as in takes several seconds to go through the LFO shape.
This was pretty much what I was looking for, thanks @comradecry . All the settings in the project seem pretty familiar to me, I wonder if the sweet spot for what I want is just relatively small and hard to find.
