Envelopes and their design in Zebra, Bazille others

[bhinton]

One of the many things I love about Zebra as a performance instrument is the way the envelopes function in relation to polyphony and “in the moment” control.

The player can adjust attack and decay while playing without effecting the note(s) that have already been played and are still sounding. For example, one can play a note with a long attack, then before that EG has finished, reduce the attack time (and even adjust, say, decay) for the next note without it impacting the previous note. This allows some wonderful and unique articulation options and at least for me really makes improvisational playing a joy. Changes to sustain, on the other hand, do impact all currently sounding notes – which is also a natural response when playing, allowing for EG-specific swells and such.

In Bazille (and many other softsynths), it’s different. If I adjust the attack time from a long to a short attack while a note is playing, it effects THAT note as well as the next note (which can sound quite awful). Same with decay. I can see how this might be preferred for some types of music and playing styles, but I've always found it frustrating. (Tracktion's F-em and the new CA PS-3100 are also driving me crazy with this approach, the latter made worse because VELOCITY cancels the previous values as well).

I’m curious as to the design thinking behind these and others' opinions/use cases. Also hoping Z3 will still feature the same envelope-to-note structure as Z2. It would be a dream if someday Bazille had an option to use that same method as well – it’s one of the things that keeps me from using it more for improvisational / live work (it’s otherwise one of my favorite software synths ever).