Frustrations with the envelope on the Analog Rytm

Aevai · 2024-01-20T14:59:46.213Z

Can someone help me understand why it makes sense for the AR amp envelope to not be retriggered by a new trigger??

My understanding is that other envelopes on all other elektron devices work in this way.

Why would they make the AR differently? What is the benefit?

I still don’t really understand how the attack and hold times interact? And why doesn’t the attack work if hold is set to auto?

It all just seems so unnecessarily complicated for no benefit.

alechko · 2024-01-20T15:05:01.778Z

I don’t know the reason but it’s just the way it works on rytm, the most important part to understand is if you want attack you need to make sure that the previous trig envelope closes before the next trig, it’s not just hold but decay as well, and if you use hold=AUTO then trig length also should be taken into consideration.

usually what I do to make sure that the envelope closes is to make a significant attack, like >20 and listen to it, when you hear the proper attack you know that the previous trig’s envelope closed, then you can adjust the attack back to desired value.

again, no idea why it’s like that but it’s just how it works.

Aevai · 2024-01-20T15:09:37.946Z

That’s not too bad for making a static pattern, but stops working if you want to modulate or change the attack/decay live.

If you increase the delay too much all of a sudden you’ve messed up the attack of the next note.

It all seems very weird?

alechko · 2024-01-20T15:16:09.103Z

Aevai:

If you increase the delay too much all of a sudden you’ve messed up the attack of the next note.

pretty much yes

Aevai:

It all seems very weird?

personally I don’t really notice that anymore, it’s just a thing I got used to with the many quirks of the rytm and it really doesn’t bother me, and honestly after 1.70 it even bothers me less because before 1.70 it would click as hell regardless of the attack (and on choke tracks as well), so things are much better now in that regard.

what you can do to mitigate things is perhaps bind the attack/decay to velocity mod, or if you’re using a perf you can do the same, if one goes up the other goes down, something like that, other then that you might wanna open a ticket to support…

couple more ideas:

filter - creating attack with filter can be useful in certain scenarios
lfo - trig/one mode and create the attack with it, guaranteed attack on every trig

philroyjenkins · 2024-01-20T15:24:10.893Z

Yep this always bugged me too. And on a drum machine where repeating envelopes might make the most sense, ha.

I’ve learned to live with it too, or waste an LFO if there’s a sound I really want a consistent attack on.

I can also agree that my main reason for wanting the attack retrigger was to rid of clicks that are no longer as prevalent. So big win for 1.7

alechko · 2024-01-20T15:31:51.173Z

yeah some things in rytm are real eyebrow raisers, especially compared to other elektrons, but it is what it is and I’m just happy the loudest clicks in the universe stopped after 1.70 lol

bgEN · 2024-01-25T00:04:16.303Z

One thing to maybe think about or use is that the SAMPLE will not restart if the trig has the sample-trig turned off, so the amp envelope can be used to control the amp of the sample in a way that is kinda-sorta-independent of the synth-trigged sound.

Try this: put a long sample on top of a rim-shot synth, then lay down a regular trig followed by several trigs that have SMP turned off on the TRIG page. The sample keeps playing even though the rimshot is retriggered. Then use the AMP envelope to control the level of the level of the long sample, keeping in mind that once the decay is done the amp envelope will re-start.

This is probably obvious to anyone who has used their Rytm for more than a month–but it was new to me today. Fun stuff, this machine, even with all it’s really odd design choices.

philroyjenkins · 2024-01-25T01:04:25.740Z

Oh wow, that is kind of nuts actually. I’ve had a Rytm for maybe 1.5 cumulative years over time and never thought to try this.

bgEN · 2024-01-25T03:40:15.520Z

Right? This opens things up quite a bit. You can do a cool rhythmic tremelo effect on pads or whatnot, have a pad doing weird filtersweeps over the top of a RS that’s only occasionally retrigging the filter env, for example.

But I’m still annoyed we can’t retrigger the amp env.

alechko · 2024-01-25T06:55:17.574Z

I actually reported this as a bug several times, but eventually avantronica explained it that it’s not a bug but intended behavior… if you use this with single cycle waveforms (like I did to layer say a saw on top of something) and you use LOOP on it won’t stop.

Tchu · 2024-02-19T03:15:21.631Z

A good video about this topic.

Anigbrowl · 2025-04-06T04:20:26.805Z

While scratching my head and experimenting with this today, I realized that pads in a choke group share the amp envelope, which is kinda logical if you think about the analog circuits, eg the rimshot/clap are sharing the same circuitry.

So if you have a looping or extended sound with a long attack set for the clap, the envelope (and thus the attack) is only retriggered when the clap decay is finished…and if you hit the rimshot and clap in rapid succession, the hold/delay on the rimshot amp envelope is also carrying over to the clap (and vice versa).

Once I realized this everything got a lot more manageable. I still find the design choice around envelope triggers a little strange, but at least now it is predictable. This also allows for some sneaky tricks with p-locks or LFOs, since any pad in a choke group can partially affect the way the other pad will play back on the next next trig. The more I use the AR, the more it feels like an electronic version of a real drum kit, where the physical connection between different drums causes the to interact with each other in unexpected ways.

jm2c · 2025-04-07T08:18:23.083Z

IIRC the envelopes not resetting was a conscious design choice from Elektron. Had something to do with how vintage drum machines handled their envelopes, without it you cannot get those rolling kicks and snares that classic analogue drum boxes are famous for. This effect is most famous on the 808 kick drum, where you can get the kick synthesis to growl more by rapidfiring consecutive accented trigs. Why the behaviour is also the same for samples however, I do not know…

Weirdly enough, the filter env does have a reset function (in the menus of each track).

I suppose Syntakt’s analogue voices are an improvement In this regard. Not only can you retrigger the amp env AHD’s there, you can also use ADSR. I wonder if their omission from the Rytm is a hardware -based limitation…