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>It's a nice dream, of a synthesizer where any knob can be pulled out and replaced with a patch cable, and any jack can have a knob plugged into it to set it to a fixed value.

What's even better, though, is a coupled knob + jack where the knob turns into an attenuator for the input when a cable is plugged in, and works as a standalone knob otherwise. I think this is quite a common design.

I believe I've also seen patch cables with built-in attenuators.

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enneff 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is why I really like Intellijel’s designs. They generally have attenuators on the inputs for which it makes sense, and those attenuators are the small stick knobs. While they use larger knobs for more central module functions.

Eg: https://intellijel.com/downloads/manuals/rubicon_manual.pdf

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kennywinker a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another common pattern is jack + offset. The most useful is when you have jack + offset + attenuator… but most modules pick one or the other for space reasons.

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robotresearcher a day ago | parent | next [-]

The attenuator-inverter is super handy too. A gain knob that goes from -1 to +1 X.

	▲	wbl 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That's a neat trick. Only way I can think of to do it involves two op amp buffers, one inverting one not and take the signal from the wiper.

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BlandDuck a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Totally. Also, an attenuator is easier and cheaper to implement, because it just requires normalizing V+ into the jack plug. An offset requires an adder.

My preference is: attenuator < offset < attenuator + offset. I see no benefit of having to remove the knob to get to the jack as proposed in the article.

	▲	nine_k 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The benefit is saving space. Imagine a 10x10 grid of such jack / knob inputs.

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malthaus a day ago | parent | prev [-]

the smartest pattern is used in mutable instruments beads, the "attenurandomizers"

it packs a ridiculous amount of functionality into a single plug & knob combo