Alesis micron User Manual

 

 
If you hit a note on a piano, you’ll hear a burst of sound energy as 
the hammer strikes the string, followed by lower level of loudness 
as you hold down the note and let the string ring out, which fades 
quickly as soon as you release the note and the damper is applied.  
Synthesizer designers model this behavior using ADSR envelopes.  
ADSR stands for “attack, decay, sustain, release”, and represents 
the different stages that the sound goes through over the life of the 
note.  Since the most important application of the envelope is to 
control the loudness of the sound, the Micron provides one 
envelope that is specifically designed for this purpose.  This is the 
amp envelope.  However, envelopes are useful in all sorts of mod 
routes, which is why you can hook up any of the Micron’s 
envelopes to any modulatable program parameter.  Each of the 
Micron’s voices contains three envelopes.