meowbox

meowbox · sources · schema v2

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

A gate-triggered cat-vocal synth voice: fire a gate and it sings one 'meow' at the patched pitch. Under the hood it's a formant synth — a harmonic + noise excitation pushed through a bank of vowel formants, with a stereo-decorrelated tail so the result spreads across the L/R outputs. The Morph control sweeps the vowel (the a/e/i/o/u regions) so a single meow can sound like different vocal shapes, and Decay sets how long the tail rings. 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.

the faceplate

5 inputs · 2 outputs · 4 params

inputs

id	cable	what it does
`gate`	gate	The trigger: a rising edge fires one meow event and re-excites the voice. It responds to the edge, not how long the level stays up — the meow's length comes from the Decay control. gate / trigger
`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, sweeping the vowel formant in real time (e.g. an envelope opening the 'mouth' across the meow). 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. 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 of the stereo-decorrelated meow — the two channels carry the same voice with a decorrelated tail, so summing to mono is fine but keeping them split gives a wider sound. audio signal
`R`	audio	Right channel of the stereo-decorrelated meow (the decorrelated partner of L). 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): short for a clipped chirp, long for a drawn-out wail.
Lvl	Output level from silence to 2x; the Level CV input adds to this.
Morph	The vowel-formant macro (0..1): morphs the timbre across the a/i/u/e/o formant regions, changing the 'shape' of the meow from one vowel-like color to another.
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.

source

meowbox.ts on GitHub.