Envelope Generator

Version 0.1 from September 2020

Here’s the first Envelope Generator (ADSR) that I built for my drum machine project. It’s based on “The Fastest Envelope in the West” by René Schmitz which is comparably easy to build and works awesomely! I modified and extended it a bit for my purpose (changed R and C values and added some peripherals).

Features

• ✅ Full stack envelope (attack, decay, sustain and release)
• ✅ Manual trigger
• ✅ 2 outputs (for e.g. VCO pitch and VCA)

Details

Links

• Video Demo
• Schematic (PDF)
• Stripboard Layout (PDF)
• Front Panel (PDF)

Improvement Potential

Sustain is probably not 100% stable. You can hear it a few milliseconds after the tone starts (pitch goes down). Fortunately that’s not a show stopper for my drum machine project, because I mostly just need some decay and release.

Also see the comments on Instagram and Reddit.