meowbox

meowbox · sources

Gate-triggered cat-vocal synth voice (formant bank + harmonic + noise excitation).

A gate-held cat-vocal synth voice: hold a gate and it sings one 'meow' at the patched pitch. Under the hood it's a formant synth — four harmonic sines (F, 2F, 3F, 4F) crossfaded against white noise, pushed through three parallel resonant band-passes, with the right channel a short delayed copy of the left so the result spreads across the L/R outputs. MORPH crossfades FIVE CAT ANCHORS — kitten, adult meow, purr, yowl, hiss — and it is far more than a tone control: one fader moves all three formant frequencies, all three resonances, their three weights, the voiced/noise balance, the pitch contour and the decay scale together, interpolating linearly between whichever two anchors you are between. Decay sets the release, but the anchor multiplies it (0.6x at hiss, 2.0x at yowl), so the same dial is a different number of seconds at every morph position. Pitch tracks a true 1V/oct input so you can play it from a keyboard or sequencer like any other oscillator, with the Pitch knob acting as a transposition on top — though the voice's own contour settles slightly SHARP of the note you ask for, by an amount MORPH decides.

the faceplate

5 inputs · 2 outputs · 4 params

about this module

Hover a control, or open the patch panel and hover a jack.

inputs

id	cable	what it does
`gate`	gate	The GATE, and it is level-sensitive on BOTH edges: the amplitude envelope attacks, decays to a sustain of 0.4 and HOLDS there for as long as you keep the level up, then releases when it falls. So the meow's length is how long you hold it PLUS the Decay tail — not Decay alone. (A short trigger pulse works too and gives a clipped chirp; it is the same envelope, released early.) Patch a sequencer gate, a keyboard gate or a clock here — or hold the card's MEOW pad, which drives the same input. gate / trigger; gate — acts while the level is high (reacts to both edges)
`pitch`	pitch	A true 1V/oct pitch input (0 V = middle C). The DSP reads the volts directly and the Pitch knob is added on top as a transposition, so patch a sequencer or keyboard pitch CV here to play melodies; with nothing patched it sits at C4. V/oct pitch CV
`morph`	cv	CV that adds to the Morph control, walking the voice between the five cat anchors in real time — so an envelope here can start a note as a yowl and land it as a purr. Remember what it moves: the formants, their resonances, the noise balance, the pitch contour AND the decay scale, all at once. control voltage (CV); modulates morph (additive offset — ±1 CV sweeps the full range, centered on the knob)
`decay`	cv	CV that scales the tail Decay time (logarithmic), for shorter chirps or longer wails. It scales the knob, which the current anchor then multiplies again. control voltage (CV); modulates decay (multiplicative ≈ octaves — ±1 CV spans the param’s log range)
`level`	cv	CV that adds to the output Level for per-hit dynamics. control voltage (CV); modulates level (additive offset — ±1 CV sweeps the full range, centered on the knob)

outputs

id	cable	what it does
`L`	audio	Left channel. LEVEL is applied here, and the right channel is taken FROM this one — so L is the whole voice and R is its delayed copy. audio signal
`R`	audio	Right channel: L put through a short delay line, 0 to 0.6 ms, moving INVERSELY to the amplitude envelope so the pair spreads apart as the note dies. It is not a second voice. That matters if you sum to mono — the two channels comb, with the first null at 833 Hz when the envelope is at rest and 1.4 kHz while it sustains, which is straight through the formant region. Keep them split unless you want that. audio signal

params

id	label	range	default	curve
`pitch`	Ptch	-36..36semi	0	linear
`morph`	Morph	0..1	0.25	linear
`decay`	Dcy	0.05..2s	0.4	log
`level`	Lvl	0..2	1	linear

controls

control	what it does
Dcy	Tail decay time (0.05-2 s, log-tapered) — but the current anchor MULTIPLIES it before it reaches the envelope, 0.6x at hiss up to 2.0x at yowl. At the shipped morph the multiplier is exactly 1, which is the only position where the dial's seconds are the real tail. Short for a clipped chirp, long for a drawn-out wail; the full reachable span is 30 ms to 4 s.
Lvl	Output level from silence to 2x, applied to the LEFT channel; the right inherits it through the delay. The Level CV input adds to this.
Meowbox meow {n}	MEOW — the audition. HOLD it to gate the voice exactly as a patched cable would, release to let it go. It is a held pad and not a one-shot on purpose: the amplitude envelope sustains while the gate is high, so a click would release it milliseconds in and you would hear a blip instead of a meow. It writes nothing to the patch — nothing is saved, synced or undoable — and a real gate cable keeps working alongside it.
Morph	The five-anchor macro (0..1): kitten at 0, adult meow at 0.25, purr at 0.5, yowl at 0.75, hiss at 1, linearly interpolated in Hz between neighbours. It is the only timbre control on the module and it moves thirteen things at once — the three formant frequencies, the three resonances, the three weights, the voiced/noise balance, the pitch contour's rise and fall, and the multiplier on Decay. Anywhere except exactly on an anchor you are hearing a crossfade of two of them.
Ptch	Transposes the voice in semitones (-36 to +36), summed on top of the 1V/oct pitch input — use it to set the cat's register or to offset an incoming melody. Note that the voice's own contour starts flat and settles SHARP of what you set: at the shipped morph it holds 1.8 semitones above the note.

source

meowbox.ts on GitHub.