The Buchla 230E is a Triple Envelope Tracker and Preamp Module which provides more functions that its name might suggest, one of the lesser sung heroes of the Buchla ecosystem, the 230e can be used to integrate external signals in some very interesting ways.

The 230E provides three combi XLR ¼” Jack inputs, each with their own gain settings with amplitude ranges that are user selectable to suit the connected equipment, there’s even true 48 volts of phantom power available per channel should you wish to connect a microphone directly to your system.

Each of the preamplifier signals have their own output, their also mixed to the summed output which provides a mix of the three signals. The outputs of the preamps are also normalled to the envelope follower section above, meaning no extra cabling is needed to connect between the preamps and the envelope follower circuit.

The envelope follower has three separate control sections for controlling the incoming audio, which is either received through the aforementioned normalled preamplifier circuit, or audio can be directly connected to the TiniJax inputs.

Once audio is connected to an input, you are able to control the sensitivity of the envelope follower circuit, there’s a group of four LED’s that tell you if your signal is too low, normal or overloading the input, simply dial back the gain using the sensitivity control until you’re in the normal ranges to get the best performance.

From there the module produces a control voltage based on the audio amplitude present at the inputs; you have control over the overall decay time of the resulting CV, meaning CV based envelopes that are longer in nature than the audio source can be produced for some interesting results, particularly if you’re using physical medium to strike the envelopes, like a drum trigger or some transient heavy material.

The pulse outputs are similar to the CV generator section in that they respond to the incoming audio, but they operate in three states meaning they can respond to “obvious” transient information, “steady” audio impulses or they can even pick out specific transients in a complete mix, which is really cool if you run a break into the input and have the resulting CV and pulses plumbed into an LPG or similar. Two LED’s help you see what’s going on with the pulse generators at all times.

The main features of the Buchla 230e Triple Preamp and Envelope Follower include

Three channel preamp with a wide range of gain and 48V phantom power

Combi XLR ¼” jack connections

Triple state pulse generators which offer a wide variety of responses

200E preset enabled