Synth Glossary

Envelope:: An envelope generator generates a signal that changes through the length of a sound, normally to control the loudness of that sound. An example of its use is to control the volume of a piano sound. It creates a signal that goes from low to high very quickly (the loud bit when the key is pressed), then goes down slowly as the sounds gets quieter. They are also used to drive other parts of the synthesizer, for example the filter....

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The Electrocomp 500 is a 2-VCO, monophonic, analog synthesizer with a 3 1/2-octave, 44-note (F-C) keyboard. It was designed to compete with the Minimoog and the ARP Odyssey. The 500 is more of a keyboard instrument, as opposed to its predesessor, the semi-modular 101, using switches and sliders as opposed to knobs and patch cords. Its voice structure is basically a simplified 101 design, with VCO1 outputting only a sawtooth or square wave. The 500 features a resonant multimode VCF (switchable between low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass) a single ADS envelope generator, sample-and-hold, ring modulation, a mic preamp, noise, and an LFO (with six available waveforms). The back panel featured both hi and low outputs, as well as a headphone jack, a pitch selector (switching between one octave above or one octave below normal), sustain pedal input, and interface connections (S1 and S2 sockets).