Relay Click

How it's made

Source

a relay armature seats against its stop, exciting a 0.9–1.6 ms band-limited noise impact. Spring contacts rebound 2–4 times over 2–8 ms; each successive collision is weaker, shorter and less bright.

Body

the small steel armature and contact leaves have inharmonic modes near 2.3, 3.9 and 6.5 kHz, with T60 decays of 11–26 ms. A heavily damped plastic case contributes 0.8 and 1.4 kHz modes lasting 9–17 ms. Size scales these frequencies; higher metal modes die first, rather than ringing like a bell.

Envelope

0.12 ms rounded impact onset, no sustain or coil hum. Contact brightness falls during the first 9 ms. All mechanical energy decays within about 45 ms; the 110 ms render includes a clean silent tail.

Variation

seeded timing jitter of 8 percent, modal tuning within 2 percent and small independent impact strengths. Size controls mechanical scale, bounce controls rebound strength/count, damping controls the sealed case, and release selects the softer, slightly separated spring-return action.

Presets

miniature signal relay, firm standard relay, sealed damped relay, and spring release differ in body scale, rebound structure and damping.

Space

dry mono point source; no room, stereo widening or electrical arcing.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.