envelope

How the adsr~ object works

The adsr~ object provides a signal in the shape of an ADSR envelope (attack, decay, sustain, release) commonly used in synthesizer design. You specify an attack time in ms (time to get from 0 amplitude to peak amplitude), a decay time in ms (time to settle to the sustain level), a sustain level (an amplitude factor, not a ms time), and a release time in ms (time to return to 0). Those values can all be supplied as initializing arguments, and/or as floats or signals in the second, third, fourth, and fifth inlets.

Amplitude envelope with the function object

Each MSP object (each object that has signal input and/or output) is always producing signal as long as audio is turned on. For example, signal generators like cycle~ (sinusoidal wave generator) and saw~ (band-limited sawtooth wave generator) are always producing a full-amplitude wave. You control the amplitude of that wave with multiplication, using *~ or some other object that performs a multiplication internally (such as gain~).

ADSR filter envelope

An ADSR envelope generator is a common tool for controlling the amplitude of a note, and in fact it can be used to control any parameter of a sound. In this example, one adsr~ object controls the amplitude of a note while another adsr~ controls the cutoff frequency of a lowpass filter on the sound. Both are triggered at the same moment, but they have slightly different parameters for independent envelope shapes.

Envelope function without a fixed starting point

The function object permits you to design a shape made up of line segments, and then you can send that information (out the second outlet) to a line~ object to cause a changing signal with that shape over a specified amount of time. When the function object receives a bang, first it sends out its initial value as a float (0. in this case), then it sends out a list of subsequent values and destination times.