Clamping VCA in Reaktor 6 Primary

Building a “clamping VCA” in Reaktor for subtle distortion, imitating the envelopes in Roland TR-808.

Normally, an amplitude envelope for your synths are just that: a control envelope on the amplitude of the signal. When we use a “clamping VCA”, though, instead of controlling the amplitude of the waveform, we clip it at the desired maximum envelope. This means, when the VCA is all the way up, it sounds the same, but during the attack and release, we’ll get the addition of subtle (or perhaps not-so-subtle) distortion to our waveform.

I use the “Mod. Clipper” in Reaktor 6 to achieve this effect, stealing the idea from Noise Engineering’s “Sinclastic Empulatrix” module, which, in turn, stole the idea from from the Roland TR-808 drum machine’s cymbal envelopes.

0:00 The “Mod. Clipper”
0:33 Clamping VCA
1:25 Simple Sine Oscillator
2:03 Mod-Clipping the Sine Wave
3:51 Standard VCA for comparison
4:58 Pulse Wave
5:41 Sawtooth Wave
6:34 Adding a Filter
7:35 Next Steps

More Reaktor 6 Intermediate Tutorials:

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