Catena (Black Panel)

Voltage Chain

Catena is a control voltage powerhouse, packing in four channels of attenuation and offsets, two VC slew engines, half and full wave rectification, input voltage doubling and switchable voltage reference sources with an external offset input. As well as the standard cascading offset and polarisation utilities, the module can act as a percussive envelope generator or sidechain ducker, slow lag or glide control, waveshaper and mixer.

Four channels of attenuators or attenuvertors are chained together, running from left to right, with an additional alternative mode per channel. The channel functions are chosen using a three way slide switch above each control pot. Alternative modes use attenuvertion at the preamp stage allowing the modified signal to be polarised.

Alternative Modes
CH 1: Percussive Slew
CH2: Lazy Slew
CH 3: Half Wave Rectification (with gain boost)
CH 4: Full Wave Rectification

VREF Control
With no CV input patched, each channel generates +-5V or +-10V depending on the attenuvertor and VREF Switch position. The switch toggles between +5V and +10V precision voltage references. All Inputs and outputs soft clip at +-10V.

Slew Controls
CH 1 & 2 in the alt (slew) modes can have the slew response switched between tight and loose. There is further CV control via the CV input jack.

Offset Control
The pot controls the additional VREF amount added to CH 2, 3 & 4. With a CV input patched the pot controls an external signal input amount.CH 1 can also be offset by shifting a jumper on the rear panel.

Signal Doubler
Instead of unity gain as per the other channels, CH 4 doubles the input gain of a patched signal, but keeps any chained or offset signals at unity gain.

Mixer
High quality OPA op amps are used throughout, and Catena will happily serve as a mixer for 1-4 channels of audio. A five channel mixer is also possible by adding an audio signal to the offset jack.

https://www.laine.uk/products/p/catena