No, I guess it wouldn't need a vactrol to make the low-pass gate. But it
would need to be a low pass gate, meaning that it would need to
exponentially reduce the higher frequencies over time so you would get a
lot of high frequency formants at the start of the note and it would
dampen down to the resonant frequency at the end of the note.

Perhaps a similar trick could be done with an envelope generator,
however, controlling either the cutoff frequency or the resonance or
both of a low pass filter. Might sound similar but probably not the
same. I think I've seen some low pass gate designs that don't use a
vactrol to control the shape of the high frequency decay, although as
far as components go, a vactrol (an optocoupler combining an LED and a
photoresistor...it's the slow response time of the photoresistor that
gives the characteristic slew of the vactrol) is pretty darn cheap. But
that's DIY talk again...

The Make Noise low pass gate looks pretty good for what it is. We just
gotta get that dude doing the demo to get rid of the vocal pitch
shifter. Does he think he's James Earl Jones as Darth Vader or
something ;-)

D.

madrayken wrote:

> --- In Doepfer_a100@yahoogroups.com , "Ken" <kenneth_harte@...> wrote:
>> just saw this...
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch v=UJwTtrl6rus
>>
>> bongo with the new module from makenoise.
>>
>
> Indeed - this vid is what prompted my original question. By the sounds
> of it, you don't *need* a vactrol in order to produce the bongo sound.

--
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista
---Oblique Strategy # 145:
"Slow preparation, fast execution"