In my current rack, which is a half full Intellijel 7U, I have an enormous amount of VCAs and mixers. Take a look below. A summary:
- Veils. It's just a great and very flexible VCA. You get control over linear/exponential and the offset. In exponential mode, it can give you lots and lots of gain. It also acts as a mixer.
- Doepfer octuple VCA. Just linear, no relative volumes, but for sheer VCA per HP, it's unbeatable. Works great e.g. for stereo (same envelope via multiple to two channels) or beats made out of noise (summed into one).
- Quadratt. I sometimes feel like I need a second one of these. It can do bipolar, e.g. inverse an envelope for ducking, and it acts as a mixer.
- Ladik stereo mixer. I used to use this a lot before I got the ES-9. Output went to the Befaco out and then to my speakers. Nowadays, I mix in my iPad and the mix goes back to the ES-9, then out to the speakers. Still, I don’t regret having this extra mixer.
Other utilities? On my shortlist are the Divkid Rnd step, Intellijel Shifty, an FSR, Pamela's, Joranalogue's Select 2 and Compare 2, etc. Pamela+Rnd Step for S&H for randomisation, but also to reduce the sample rate of something. I'm actually also considering the Joranalogue Orbit 3 as a source of chaos. Even though it's not really a utility, it can serve as a many things: VCO, LFO or modulation source, …
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