When people are talking about west coast synthesis they often mention the low pass gate as characteristic of the style. My understanding is that a low pass gate simultaneously acts as a filter and a volume attenuator. My question is, how is this unique, and why is it good?
How is it unique, as in, can't I achieve the same result with literally a low pass filter and a volume envelope, but more flexibly as I can change or tweak their relationship to each other?
Why is it good as in, similarly, why isn't it better to have those as separate functions controllable indepnedently?
Listening to examples, I hear what people say, about how it can sound more like what natural sounds are like, with frequencies dropping out along with the drop in volume. That's great! But I can do it easily on my subtractive synth as well, again, by having the VCA envelope and the Filter envelope look identical.
So why is the LPG thought of as characteristic of a particular style?
Or am I misunderstanding something?
(Also, every LPFilter I remember using tended to naturally make the sound lower in volume as it filtered more frequencies just as a byproduct of reducing frequencies. I haven't been sure whether it's actually lowering the volume or if this is a perception thing due to low frequencies being percieved as having less volume. (It's possibe I have a bit of low frequency hearing loss which would make it even more of an effect but it is a general fact about perception that lower frequencies are percieved as quieter even when they're actually the same loudness.) But in either case this again makes it really unclear to me what the LPG is supposed to add to the experience.)
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