As Mazz said, a envelope follower generates continuous CV from a signal you put into it by measuring its voltage. A common application is ducking or side chaining where one sound temporarily suppresses another to keep maximum presence. Like a kick supressing a bass line or a voice pushing back background music in a video.
Something like this:
ducking sound --> env follower --> inverter --> vca controlling ducked sound
-- wiggler55550

This is super usefult, thanks: "ducking sound --> env follower --> inverter --> vca controlling ducked sound"


I would recommend maybe re-thinking the value of Plaits. 2 Plaits would be kind of non-helpful. I recently made a new Eurorack friend and we correspond enough to have agreed upon the fact that modules that do 1 thing great are better than modules that do multiple things great. But not to digress, Plaits is a digital, and quite limited in its capabilities, and IMHO kind of junk. They sound thin. That being, here's some great modules to start building

  • 2 AJH MiniMod VCOs or 2 Erica Synths VCOs. No, they don't have 20 settings, and no, they don't have a LFO mode, but they sound great.

  • Intellijel Dual ADSR (Intuitive and stellar performance)

  • Intellijel Quad VCA (You will need more VCAs than you think)

  • DivKid Ochd (8 independent organic sounding LFO's)

  • Maths

  • Either Intellijel Metropolis or Make Noise Rene 2 for a sequencer

  • Expert sleepers Disting MK4 can do all the effects you'll need for starting out.