Veils is without doubt my favourite VCA module, and when Mutable Instruments announced a version 2, I was very excited. JKLMNT did a lovely panel for it, so I decided to build one with that design.
It’s all 0402 passives and quite cramped, so this is not an easy/pleasant build – it felt like quite hard work!
In testing, I discovered an issue – 2 of the channels were working perfectly, but the other 2 were bleeding horribly – something was not right. After some analysis, I narrowed the issue down the the SSI2164 chips. Following discussion with some other DIYers, we confirmed that this was the source of the issue. The SSI2164 was advertised as a drop-in replacement for the V2164 (which is what the Veils BOM calls for) – unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case in this specific application; as a result of our investigations, Thonk have now updated the product description on their store.
We have done further testing with the AS2164 from Alfa Rpar, which is much better than the SSI chip, though some users have reported some excessive gain with this chip. I switched the SSI chips out for V2164 and the module works perfectly, so I would advise anyone building Veils 2 to use those. FWIW, the Veils 1 circuit seems to work just fine with any 2164 chip.
