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Analog Synth Control Voltage Basics

Control voltage is a DC electrical signal used to manipulate components in analog circuits. It is used in analog synthesizers to specify parameters of modules like decay time. Control voltage also sets the gain of voltage-controlled amplifiers in mixers and effects. In modern keyboards, control voltage from pedals or other controllers manipulate parameters, leaving a player's hands free while playing.

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33 views1 page

Analog Synth Control Voltage Basics

Control voltage is a DC electrical signal used to manipulate components in analog circuits. It is used in analog synthesizers to specify parameters of modules like decay time. Control voltage also sets the gain of voltage-controlled amplifiers in mixers and effects. In modern keyboards, control voltage from pedals or other controllers manipulate parameters, leaving a player's hands free while playing.

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Control Voltage

By Sweetwater  on Apr 22, 2005, 12:00 AM


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Sometimes abbreviated CV, Control Voltage is a DC electrical signal used to manipulate the values
of components in analog circuits. Control voltages are used in numerous ways in many different
types of electronic circuits for all sorts of purposes. A few examples germane to music technology:

If you send a specific electrical voltage to a module of an analog synthesizer (such as


an ADSR envelope generator), you can specify what you want the module to do (perhaps lengthen
the decay time).

In a mixer and other audio circuit that uses a voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA), a DC voltage can be
used to set the gain of the VCA. This is applicable for things like compressors and gates, where the
DC voltage may either be a signal proportional to the audio level the devices are acting upon, or
could be from some other source. But it also applies to VCA-style mixing automation systems, where
a control voltage is set by the user (via some interface, but usually faders) to determine and
subsequently log the desired levels in the mixer at specific points in time.

In modern keyboards and synthesizers a control voltage pedal (or other controlling device) can be
used to manipulate certain parameters, which, in the case of a pedal, would leave the player’s hands
free to play the keyboard. In these cases the pedal usually doesn’t generate the voltage. Instead the
pedal is attached to a potentiometer, which acts as a variable resistance to a circuit providing the
voltage inside the keyboard. The circuit is able to “read” the position of the pedal by how it acts on
the circuit and uses that information to provide data to the specified parameter.

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