Doepfer Dark Energy I (device no longer available) - Manual (Page 7)

7
Introduction Dark EnerGy DOEPFER
As soon as the power adaptor is connected, Dark Energy is powered on. The LEDs in both LFO sections
should now light up and toggle between red and green. The LED on the back panel should flash for approx.
2 seconds and light up permanently.
First contact:
Turn the volume control of your amp / mixer fully OFF, BEFORE powering it up. Turn up volume control of
your mixer / amp slowly and play a note on your keyboard. You should now hear a static tone. Choose a
comfortable volume. And now – Ladies and Gentlemen, have a warm welcome to Dark Energy!
The currently generated sound depends on the setting of all knobs and switches. It will be most easy to
create musically useful patches, if you start at this basic setting and „compose“ your sounds step by step
from that point on.
We will now take a brief look at Dark Energy‘s sound generation and sound manipulation modules.
A detailed description of all functions follows later on.
Now that you brought all knobs and switches into their basic settings, you will hear a simple and static tone.
The oscillator generates a simple squarewave, that is audible at the audio output, yet without being manipu-
lated in any way. Now move the VCO tune knob and the octave switch. You can control the tuning and the
pitchrange of the tone.
As soon as you crank up the FM knob, you will notice an „automatic“ change in tuning: LFO1 is selected as
a modulation source and it‘s control voltage generates a periodic change in tuning, resp. VCO frequency.
Now turn the LFO1 Freq. knob. You will hear a change in the modulation speed resp. LFO1 frequency.
Now let‘s take a brief look at the filter section (VCF): Turn it‘s Frq. knob slowly counterclockwise. You will
hear the sound becomming more and more „dull“ until it gets inaudible. Now turn the Freq. knob in 12
o‘clock position and crank up the XM knob slowly. You will hear a periodic modulation of the timbre, done
by LFO2. Again, you can alter the modulation speed with the LFO2 Freq. knob. Play a couple of notes and
change the settings of the envelope section. You wil notice a change in the loudness contour of the notes. If
you switch the Source switches in the VCO and VCF section into the ADSR position (the knobs FM and XM
have to be cranked up at least to 10 o‘clock position), the envelope will control not only loudness but also
pitch and timbre.
Please note:
Dark Energy‘s parameters mostly interact with each other. That means, there are often more than just one
way to achieve a specific result. In other words: To enable a certain parameter to generate a wanted result,
it might by necessary to set other parameters into a specific setting. This might be a bit confusing from time
to time. An example: If the ADSR‘s sustain knob is set to it‘s maximum, turning the decay knob will not have
any influence to the sound. All the ADSR controls will not have any influence to the timbre of the sound, as
long as the Source switch of the VCF section is set to LFO2. The same goes for the Source switch in the
VCA section. To make use of Dark Energ‘s full sonic potential, it is importand to understand these interac-
tion of parameters. Please do not get worried – explore systematically each parameter and it‘s interaction
with others. You cannot do anything wrong.
If analogue soundsynthesis is totally know to you, please refer to the section „Basics of Soundgeneration“
in this manual.