Arturia MicroFreak · Modulation

Envelopes and LFO

The envelope, the cycling envelope in its three modes, and the LFO, drawn live as you turn their knobs.

Envelope

Attack, then one knob for both the decay to the sustain level and the release after the key comes up. With Amp Mod lit it shapes every note's loudness; Filter Amt sends it to the cutoff too.

03.70 s

Cycling envelope

Rise, Hold and Fall, each with its own curve. In Env mode it plays once per note; in Run it loops on its own; in Loop it restarts on every note or arpeggiator step, so it stays in time.

06 arpeggiator steps
Mode

LFO

Six waves from 0.06 Hz to 100 Hz. Push the Rate knob and it locks to the tempo instead. Route it on the Matrix to anything: pitch for vibrato, cutoff for a wah, Wave or Timbre for movement.

02 s
Shape

What the drawings show

The knob ranges are the manual's: Attack runs from 0 to 10 seconds, Decay / Rel to 13 seconds, the LFO from 0.06 to 100 Hz. The exact taper of each knob and the curve of each stage are not published, so the shapes here are faithful in kind rather than to the millisecond.

The cycling envelope's times are drawn against arpeggiator steps, because that is where its three modes differ. In Loop it restarts on every step and stays in time; in Run it drifts against the notes; in Env it plays once per key.

Sources

  • MicroFreak manual 5.0.1 · Arturia, MicroFreak User Manual, firmware 5.0.1 (2023): the panel, the Matrix, the envelopes, the LFO and the filter
  • Arturia: MicroFreak details · The oscillator engines and who designed them, the SEM-inspired filter, the keyboard and touch strip
  • Mutable Instruments Plaits · Émilie Gillet, Plaits: the open-source macro oscillator seven of the MicroFreak engines come from