Audio Damage BigSeq2 - Manual (Page 12)

To return to the actual point, the VCA effects block is a gate effect controlled by its sequencer. Together they
turn the signal on and off in time with your music and are more than capable of creating the rapid, rhythmic
gating effect commonly heard in a number of forms of electronic dance music. The VCA can also be used to
chop pieces out of drum loops, bass lines, vocals, synthesizer riffs, etc., creating new parts that can be
processed by BigSeq2’s other effects.
The VCA’s ATTACK and DECAY knobs control how quickly the gate turns on and off (or opens and closes).
The ATTACK knob controls how rapidly the gate turns on, allowing the
signal to pass; the DECAY knob controls how rapidly the gate turns off,
blocking the signal. If you leave both knobs at their lowest setting of
1msec (that is, one one-thousandth of a second), the gate will open
and close nearly instantly when triggered by the sequencer. As you
turn the knobs up, the ATTACK and DECAY times lengthen, making
the signal fade in and out as it passes through the VCA. Note that
these controls work in units of absolute time and are independent of
the tempo of your music. This means that at faster tempos, longer
ATTACK and DECAY settings can cause the gates to overlap. This can
be useful for creating tremolo-like effects.
The GATE knob controls how long the gate stays open, expressed as a
percentage of the sequencer step size. If the GATE knob is turned fully
clockwise, the VCA stays open for the entire duration of each step, that
is, for 100% of the duration of the step. If GATE is set to 100% and
the VCA is turned on by adjacent active triggers in its Gate Sequencer,
you won’t hear any gaps between one step and the next. At smaller
values, the VCA stays on for a fraction of the duration of the step. Very
small values may silence the signal altogether, particularly if the
ATTACK and DECAY knobs are turned up.
The DEPTH knob controls the overall intensity of the VCA. It controls how much the VCA attenuates the signal
when it is turned off. If DEPTH is set to 100%, the signal is completely silenced when the VCA is turned off—
that is, at each step for which the VCA’s Gate Sequencer is off. On the other hand, if DEPTH is set to zero, the
signal’s loudness is the same regardless of whether the VCA is on or off and the VCA has no effect on the
signal. At intermediate settings the DEPTH control allows some of the signal to pass when the VCA is off, thus
controlling the contrast between the loud steps (when the VCA is on) and the quiet steps (when the VCA is
off).