Phase locked loop laboratory

This is my try to do a PLL machine. I have been so close to press purchase on a hardware device that would do that, most preferably Moutarde or Pill from Glou Glou. But I realized that it isn’t that hard to do it in VCV/Metamodule.

A VCO square goes together with a sample device into a comparator, that then goes in to a slew limiter, but also a filter, as this gets more fun and controllable. Then that signal goes back into the v/oct in the VCO.

You can control the freq and pw of the square, which is important, then the levels between the “carrier and modulator” is most important, and then the slew and filter, mostly the filter drive as the last important.

There’s a lot of “new” kinds of timbres with this. It is quite ease to sound like the snow droid in empire strikes back scene when lands on Hoth and starts sending coded droidish.

As I’m not really sure to why this sounds as cool as it does, please give some ideas to how you use it, or suggest improvements on it.

PLL Lab.yml (6.1 KB)
PLL Lab.vcv (2.4 KB)

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I highly recommend using a drum loop in the sample player. Also perhaps tune the range on the threshold of the comparator. Only use the middle 10 percent

excellent nostalgia - fiddling with knob ‘B’ is highly reminiscent of scanning the airwaves, trying to dial into ‘radio hilversum’ using an old radio set. great to add this as a sonic tool for a bespoke sfx sound design arsenal. Have you got any more like this?

Yes. Agree. What did you run through it? I have used breakbeats for it which seems to suit the setup well.

I have a few patches with some ideas. I will look at uploading them.

It’s a good idea to exchange the sample player and just send live audio into its place instead.

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I just ran some classical music samples through it and fiddled until it sounded right, but running live audio would be good too.

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there is this one also:

Frozen Wasteland Phased Locked Loop

Yes. But not made for MM.

ops…sorry

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