I'm new to the whole Eventide universe – I just got a Modfactor, so I'm working my way through understanding all the functions. I'm a fairly "visual" thinker, so the "shapes" got me scratching my head. I looked through the manual (and the Eclipse manuals…) looking for an, explanation, or better, a graphic representation of the different "shapes." No luck.
So, I could just complain here, but I figured I'd give a shot to graphing what I think is happening – I hope it's useful. Also, I'd like to know if I've got any of these wrong.
On page 18 of the manual, the SHAPE options are listed as "SINE, TRIANGL(E), PEAK, RANDOM, SQUARE, RAMP, SQUARE, SMP/HLD, ENVELOP or ADSR." (Yeah, SQUARE is listed twice.)
I still have no idea how SMP/HLD works, but it sounds good on some settings…
ENVELOP(E) appears to be a function where the intensity/volume of the signal directly drives the setting. The louder the signal, the higher the setting.
RANDOM is, of course, random.
The two shapes that were not obvious were PEAK and ADSR. Take a look at the graphic for what (I think) is going on with PEAK.
ADSR comes from the days of analog synthesizers. In this case, a note 'triggers' the shape, which builds to a peak (Attack), then drops off a bit (Decay), then holds at a certain level (Sustain). Once the intensity of the signal drops below the Sensitivity threshold, the shape drops to zero (Release).
.
Could someone explain SMP/HLD? Let me know if I'm off on some of these – hopefully this is helpful to everyone else. (Hint – this is good stuff to include in future revisions to the manual(s). I'll bet it's obvious to Digital Signal Processing engineers and programmers, but non-obvious to the rest of us.)
