interesting stuff, my thanks.

@tim: i'm not sure how close the bass station is modelled on the 303,
since the last time i had a 303 in my hands was about 1984 :). it
seems that software is responsible for the curve - cheers florian -
which i assume to be quite different to the 303. however, the sounds
i'm aiming at are less the squelchy acid stuff than the round and sexy
sawtooth things, which the novation does well enough that it gets
noticed by those suitable disinterested in the technical details. the
fact that i don't have a moog lying around is probably self evident. i
had to stifle a giggle when i read this;

The biggest
problem is that such a scheme might open up a myriad of possibilities
of what is and isn't a good curve, and it might be hard to remove
this subjectivity

like, "i got this synth from a firm called doepfer, but it's crap -
you even have to decide in what order you want the components". just
kidding.

@dieter: overdriving the OTA (what on earth is that ) sounds like what
i've been trying to do since my post, i.e. clip the envelope. although
putting it through the extreme filter produced an in interesting
envelope in its own right, this wasn't exactly the yoke of the egg.
the filter is dc coupled or something anyway, is there a module that
would serve as a cv compressor used to do this a lot with max/msp,
and it yielded superb results - i read somewhere that the moog
envelopes need a few milliseconds to start dropping to the sustain
level. anyone know more

@florian: this was all about the filter envelope, but now i know why i
like the cheapo a132 vca's better than the a131 exp. vca :) thanks for
that!

just out of curiosity, if someone has time: is the slew limiter not
much more linear am i imagining it i can't afford to, but if i
were to replace the adsr with, say, a sequencer (clocked suitably
quickly) that would send the appropriate cv's at appropriate times to
a slew limiter, would i not then have my linar curves
duh! if i put the adsr through the slew limiter (back in a minute)