Rabid Elephant Natural Gate: dual LPG for evocative acoustic responses
Rapid Elephant Natural Gate · Source: Rapid Elephant
Rapid Elephant Natural Gate · Source: Rapid Elephant
Rapid Elephant have released their second module. It’s called Natural Gate and is a dual channel, zero bleed Low Pass Gate (LPG) with adjustable decay.
Natural Gate
LPG’s are all about creating realistic acoustic sounding responses. It replicates the organic response of how a plucked string or struck drum feels. Rapid Elephant say that the Natural Gate “defines a new paradigm of how the LPG can be experienced and used, thus opening a portal for dialling in new discoveries.” That sounds intriguing.
Natural Gate brings an advanced level of control via the Decay slider. It alters the level of damping of the objects being hit, plucked or stroked. It can range from very short sharp and highly damped events to the long ringing sounds of untethered vibration. A “Material” switch lets you select one of three material types, each offering different transient characteristics. With the switch up you get a very hard surface, in the middle it’s more rounded, softer, and when fully down it finds a balance between the two.
Part of the clever internal circuitry creates what they call a “memory” function. This could be described as the building of sound as the notes, or hits, increase. Resulting in an effect where as the speed of the hits increase, so does the hardness of the strike, opening the gate further. Naturally, as you hit something faster you’ll also hit it harder, and Natural Gate captures this beautifully.
It’s in the HIT
The HIT input circuitry was designed to ensure that any signal, regardless of shape, amplitude or duration, will trigger the gate perfectly. Unlike an envelope, the audio signal goes through the Natural Gate and is shaped and processed by it. And there’s two of them in the one module. They are completely independent although they can mirror the decay control if you wish.
The video below gives a sense of the naturalness of the response, imprinting wonderfully dynamic sounds and tails to your oscillators.
Natural Gate is available for pre-order for £299 and apparently, they are already making a list for the 2nd production run. So if you want one it’s best not to think about it for too long.
More information:
- Rapid Elephant website.
Video:
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