ADSR Behaviours

[TeslaTronik]

Hello all,
Can you please try and help explain the ADSR Behavior to me i,m using the standard one from flowstone 3.0.9 beta 1, i am running a wave player into the ADSR as normal but no matter what i try i can not get the envelope to reset with the desired shape.. i want the release to be long (50%) and the attack to be short (0%) decay and sustain both at 50% but when playing notes in quick succession the attack will always return to anything from 0 to 50%. i have used vsti and messed around in synthmaker and flowstone for a long time now and still have never been able to find a way around this behavior.. is this a normal behavior? i would have thought that the attack would slowly come back in upon pressing a new note.

ps.. in the midi to poly i have the voices set to 1 and "retrigger new" checked and in the ADSR env "hold" and "smooth retrigger" is checked.

i hope i have explained my problem clearly enough for you to help me.
thanks, Alan.

[kortezzzz]

Hi Alan,

I've attached 2 lovely examples of well customized ADSR's that have been shared at the forum some while ago by MyCo and Nubeat7.
Hope it helps

[TeslaTronik]

Thank you very much

i have tried both of these, they both give the same result.

when pressing rapidly a key on the midi controller, (with a long release) and the attack set to 50%, the attack will always get sharper (shorter) and will not keep its intended shape for the envelope.

i guess this is just a bi-product of having a fast sloping pitch curve before the osc and adsr?

Thanks again. Alan.

[kortezzzz]

I really don't know
Maybe you would like to upload your schematic, so we can hear the problem?

[Spogg]

The behaviour of an envelope ADSR is, I believe, modelled on analogue electronics principles. These use a capacitor charge/discharge for exponential slopes or use a capacitor–based integrator for linear slopes. In this way if you press a key while the envelope is still non-zero the Attack phase will start from the charge value of the capacitor and not from zero every time.

If you deselect smooth re-trigger (where available) and set the MIDI options for re-trigger etc. appropriately, you’ll get a reset effect but the result can be harsh, due to a sudden step in the envelope signal. This is more noticeable when you have a very short attack, long delay, high sustain and long release times and depends where in the ADSR cycle you are when you press the next note.

Hope this helps…

Cheers

Spogg

[TeslaTronik]

thank you Spogg, that's a perfect explanation of why it is behaving in the way it is, i guess i will have to accept that behavior as a "given".

@ kortezzzz: the schematic is extremely messy i'm afraid, but the idea behind it is a 808 emulation, but i wanted the option to have a slow attack as i find i tend to fade in wav sample 808 drum and add my own attack/transient as a layer.