PLL Info (by DougCl)
Q: can someone explain what this module actually does? i think i get it, but i'm not sure
A:
It has a VCO with a square wave output. You feed it an audio signal and it tries to track it, ie its square output tries to match the pitch of whatever audio signal you feed into it.
The cool thing is it does a bad job of tracking (you can actually get it to track pretty well if that's what you're after), but it screws up in ways that are not entirely predictable, but are almost always somehow useful.
There are two knobs, VCO pitch, which is a constant cv amount that helps the PLL when you adjust it to be in the range of the incoming audio, or hurts it when adjusted out of the range. There is an LPF knob that determines how hard the PLL will try to track. At CCW settings, the PLL tries really hard and gets jumpy. At CW settings, the PLL gets lazy and just slews around like a drunk. At full CW, typically the PLL just stops tracking altogether and plays a constant note.
The other cool thing is that Dieter exposed some of the internal signals so you can send the chaotic inner control signals to other modules to spread the behavior around. It can emerge in a patch as a kind of chaotic control center. You can spice up your boring cv signal with a little PLL cv from one of the PLL outputs.
In the broadest terms, it allows you to add unpredictability into your patch yet gives you quite a bit of control over the result.
A:
It has a VCO with a square wave output. You feed it an audio signal and it tries to track it, ie its square output tries to match the pitch of whatever audio signal you feed into it.
The cool thing is it does a bad job of tracking (you can actually get it to track pretty well if that's what you're after), but it screws up in ways that are not entirely predictable, but are almost always somehow useful.
There are two knobs, VCO pitch, which is a constant cv amount that helps the PLL when you adjust it to be in the range of the incoming audio, or hurts it when adjusted out of the range. There is an LPF knob that determines how hard the PLL will try to track. At CCW settings, the PLL tries really hard and gets jumpy. At CW settings, the PLL gets lazy and just slews around like a drunk. At full CW, typically the PLL just stops tracking altogether and plays a constant note.
The other cool thing is that Dieter exposed some of the internal signals so you can send the chaotic inner control signals to other modules to spread the behavior around. It can emerge in a patch as a kind of chaotic control center. You can spice up your boring cv signal with a little PLL cv from one of the PLL outputs.
In the broadest terms, it allows you to add unpredictability into your patch yet gives you quite a bit of control over the result.