Nyquist Nightmare

Audio Mangling Modulator/Demodulator

This module is a modulator/demodulator. The top four knobs interact with each other to take a signal and mangle it beyond all recognition, or if you're patient and lucky, let the signal come through mostly unchanged.

What is going on there? you ask. The input is used to frequency-modulate a VCO that can oscillate beyond anybody's hearing range. The resulting (possibly ultrasonic) signal frequency-modulates a second identical VCO. This leads to the kind of signal degradation you might expect from an AM radio transmission. Or a short wave signal fighting its way through a hurricane.

The rest of the knobs control filtering; high-pass to remove the truly ground-shaking rumbles the top for knobs can generate, and resonant low-pass to get the harsh high pitches out of the signal, and emphasize (for example) the frequency range of human speech, if you want to pass old movie dialogue through this.

Also included are a wet/dry control (while prototyping this module I would sometimes spend minutes looking for the perfect knob settings to allow a signal through just to realize the signal source had stopped playing), a CV input for the low-pass filter with an attenuator knob, and a effect volume knob.

Some fun things to try:

with zero input, try to get a modem sound!
connect a simple waveform and massage the top four knobs to fold the wave in surprising ways
David Lynch. Put David Lynch through this.
turn the resonance of the low-pass VCF up and use this as a VCO (not 1V/oct, I'm afraid
Turn both "Carrier" knobs all the way down, so the VCOs are stalled, and listen to the signal bash its way through

http://hivemindsynthesis.com/m4tm