The Envelopes; Playing Programs - Alesis Micron Reference Manual

The Envelopes

If you hit a note on a piano, you'll hear a burst of sound energy as
the hammer strikes the string, followed by lower level of loudness
as you hold down the note and let the string ring out, which fades
quickly as soon as you release the note and the damper is applied.
Synthesizer designers model this behavior using ADSR envelopes.
ADSR stands for "attack, decay, sustain, release", and represents
the different stages that the sound goes through over the life of the
note. Since the most important application of the envelope is to
control the loudness of the sound, the Micron provides one
envelope that is specifically designed for this purpose. This is the
amp envelope. However, envelopes are useful in all sorts of mod
routes, which is why you can hook up any of the Micron's
envelopes to any modulatable program parameter.
Each of the Micron's voices contains three envelopes. "Env1" is
the amp envelope. "Env2" is the filter envelope. "Env3" is the
pitch/modulation envelope.

Playing Programs

Press the [programs] button to enter programs mode. Release the
[programs] button and spin the control knob to cycle through
the programs first by category and then–after you have reached
the last program within the last category–again in alphabetical
order.
You can also quickly switch to any category by holding down
[programs] and then pressing the white key on the Micron's
keyboard labeled with that category.
Note that the "recent" category is generated automatically. The
"faves" category is controlled by you, as detailed in the next
discussion.
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Programs
Envelope assignments
Envelopes can affect different
parameters depending on the
modulation routes you assign.
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