Voltage Chain

Catena is a control voltage and audio mixer toolkit that is anything but boring. The interface is designed to encourage self patching and experimentation for unexpected and pleasing results. As well as the standard offset and polarisation utilities, the module can act as a percussive envelope generator or sidechain ducker, slow lag or glide control, waveshaper and mixer.

Four channels of attenuators or attenuvertors are chained together, running from left to right, with an additional alternative mode per channel. The channel functions are chosen using a three way slide switch above each control pot.

Alternative Modes
CH 1: Percussive Slew
CH2: Lazy Slew
CH 3: Half Wave Rectification (with gain boost)
CH 4: Full Wave Rectification

Mode Switch
Left position: Attenuator
Mid: Attenuvertor
Right: Alternative Mode

Alternative modes use attenuvertion at the preamp stage allowing the slew and results to be polarised.

VREF Control
With no CV input patched, each channel generates +-5V or +-10V depending on the attenuvertor and VREF Switch position. The switch toggles between +5V and +10V precision voltage references. All channel inputs and outputs soft clip at +-10V.

VREF Toggle Switch
+5V: Switch in the raised position
+10V: Toggle switch latched down

Slew Controls
CH 1 & 2 in the alt (slew) modes can have the slew response switched between tight and loose. There is further CV control via the CV input jack.

Slew Range Switch
Upper position for tight slew
Lower for loose slew

Offset Control
The pot controls the additional VREF amount added to CH 2, 3 & 4. With a CV input patched the pot controls the external signal input amount.

There is a voltage offset control applied to CH 2, 3 & 4 adding VREF or externally patched signals. CH 1 can also be affected by shifting a jumper on the rear panel.

Signal Doubler
Instead of unity gain as per the other channels, CH 4 doubles the input gain of a patched signal, but keeps any chained or offset signals at unity gain.

Mixer
High quality OPA op amps are used throughout, and Catena will happily serve as a mixer for 1-4 channels of audio. A five channel mixer is also possible by adding an audio signal to the offset jack.

• 80 mA +12V
• 80 mA -12V
• 0 mA 5V
• 38 mm Depth

This Module is currently available.

Module is a 1U tile in Intellijel format