Filter envelope

[Stown]

Hello there!
Can someone explain to me, how filter envelop works.
For example, if make attack at 0 or 127 no difference, it plays the same sound.
How can i get long attack to filter, when i play a not the filter starts evolving from 0 to filter amount when attack is reached.

[Sacred Synthesis]

The envelope section of a synthesizer is a little bit complex, and it takes experimenting to grasp it.

First of all, attack, decay, and release refer to time, and sustain refers to amount.  Attack concerns the initial strike of the note and how long it takes to rise to its peak.  Release is just the opposite - how long it takes for the note to entirely fade away after you've released a key.  Sustain refers to the level at which a tone will remain when you hold a note, and decay refers to the length of time it will take to fade to that level.

Envelopes are used primarily to control the VCA (amplitude/volume) and the VCF (filter/timbre).  On the Rev2 these two sections are called "Low Pass Filter" and "Amplifier," respectively.  There are other uses for envelopes, but amplitude and filter are the main two. 

Based on the setting of the VCA envelope, the volume of a sound will rise (attack), fall when the note is held (decay and sustain), and then completely fade away when the key is let go (release).  For this the "Cutoff" parameter has to be at least partly turned up. 

Based on the setting of the VCF envelope, the filter will open (attack), gradually and partly close when a note is help (decay and sustain), and entirely close when the key is let go (release).  For this, the "Env Amount" parameter has to be at least partly turned up. 

The VCA and VCF envelopes are used together to create all sorts of complex note behaviors.  The best way to keep things simple for now is to set one identically to the other.

That's a quick introduction to envelopes.  Regarding your actual question, I can only guess that, if changing the attack time has no effect, then it's because the release time is too long and the note is still sounding.  Try turning the VCA and VCF release times to "0," and then adjust the release.  Then you should hear the difference.  Also, set the "Delay" parameters to "0".

[Autosynther]

My guess is env amount to low
- set env amount to max
- set velocity to zero

Good starting point to notice how attack works or not.
- each key stroke generate the same envelope disregarding how hard you hit key

then you can start to balance how you want filter to react to how hard you play by
- set env amount to 50%
- set veloctiy to 50%

To forecast the effect of those two you pretty much sum them, but max is 127 as I recall.

When you get more experience you can experiment with key amount to decide how much lower and upper part of keyboard react on filter envelope.

Manual describe quite well how attack works in collaboration to amount
- as I recall attack is the time to reach env amount
This is not so well described in any other synth I had as for REV2.

[Stown]

Thanks for your explanations.
Playing around with the filter and env options got me on the way I wanted to be. Still feel some gaps, but I will gradually overcome them empirically.
Also found that usage of LFO with long rate on Cutoff brings me desired effect.