Transient Designer

[tardishead]

Its a wonder that it took so long for such a simple beautiful idea to become a product. Its essentially an envelope shaper.
Control Voltage is achieved by difference between a sounds actual envelope and a longer envelope I believe.
This is a quite a simple concept. We must be able to do it with tubes or transistors or at least make the audio path discrete. I am not a designer but this seems like a great idea for a box.
Appreciate the wisdom of this forum

 

[clintrubber]

http://jhaible.heim.at/transient/jh_tran_gate.html

Note that this box is still in production, so it's impossible to make PCBs (...)

There are quite a lot of plugins out there though that do a comparable thing - some quite complex, others (almost) as easy as the 2-knob hardware box.

 

[tardishead]

Jurgen Haible has been here before of course. Check out his transient gate

http://jhaible.heim.at/transient/jh_tran_gate.html

Well its a lot more complex than I thought. But the main signal path is 2 opamps and a THAT2181B. Thats such a good design.
What would be cool is to experiment with discrete or tube input and output amps and use the control voltage to control FET, Vari Mu tubes - optos etc to shape the sound. Obviously each topology would have its design problems but I think this is really intriguing.

I am not thinking about PCBs - unless we can seriously alter the design. Only for experimental and educational purposes.

 

[tardishead]

There are quite a lot of plugins out there though that do a comparable thing - some quite complex, others (almost) as easy as the 2-knob hardware box.

Analogue is always better than a plugin for me - thats down to taste I know but its the texture analogue imparts on the sound that is beautiful and inspires creativity.
There is no doubt the SPL is a great sounding neutral box. I am just interested to experiment with the concept.

 

[clintrubber]

[quote author="tardishead"]Jurgen Haible has been here before of course. Check out his transient gate

http://jhaible.heim.at/transient/jh_tran_gate.html

Well its a lot more complex than I thought. But the main signal path is 2 opamps and a THAT2181B. Thats such a good design.[/quote]
Ah, you had seen that as well already. I posted that link as well in my message above, but in a more low-profile way :wink:

What would be cool is to experiment with discrete or tube input and output amps and use the control voltage to control FET, Vari Mu tubes - optos etc to shape the sound.

It's a free world :wink:
As it is now it seems transparent, so for adding colour to the I/0-stages I myself would go for 'modular': separate stuff that could be put in front of or after it, and the next day be used with something else. But that's just personal preference.

I am not thinking about PCBs - unless we can seriously alter the design. Only for experimental and educational purposes.

Then low-profile not needed of course.
Still a good idea perhaps to change the thread-title into something else, but different opinions on that exist.

Enjoy,

Peter

 

[Mendelt]

I'm not sure that making a discrete version is a very good idea. The audiopath in the normal version is not much more than the vca. Discrete vca's are difficult to do well. (or maybe you could make an opto-transient designer :grin: )

The biggest part of the circuit is for making the control voltage from the different envelope followers. I'm not sure that redisigning this to use discrete transtors or even tubes will do much for the sound of this thing.

 

[tardishead]

I would copy the CV control circuits from Jurgen's version.
I was just thinking about swapping the input and output amp for something more "colored"
and possibly look into other kinds of gain control element.

The THAT chip works with exponential law - is there anything else that will work with exponential cv?
Vari mu is linear right, or near enough. What about optos??

Any advice appreciated.

 

[dale116dot7]

Opto has a curve but it's odd. Maybe a diode bridge attenuator, it might be exponential-ish. But diodes have their own problems - balance being one of them. Noise is the other. Feedforward didn't really become that practical or popular until the Blackmer VCA's came out. I suspect CV to gain reduction repeatability might have had something to do with that.

 

[dustbro]

[quote author="tardishead"]
and possibly look into other kinds of gain control element.
[/quote]
You should also look at maybe modding the attack time. Sometimes the "tick" sound that it makes from giving a snare drum attack is a little annoying. would be nice to slow it down a tad

 

[TomWaterman]

Yeah you can really nail your monitors with TD if you crank the attack... sometimes it doesn't even need cranking!

I love the one we have at work...

I wanted to DIY four channels with 2520 amps and 2503 TX to give it a colourful punch, but to be honest you may as well just buy a 4-ch TD @ £600 and be done with it. My time is worth more than that.

-T