I was trying out the automation function today. Pretty nice stuff, but i’m having some issues that is bothering me. Maybe they are just supposed to be this way or maybe i’m doing it wrong.
I wanted to make a cutoff effect gradually increasing, but i could hear “steps” and not a smooth increase. Almost like listening to a ladder… is it supposed to be like this?
I managed to smothen up the steps by increasing the Speed from 6 to 3 and extending the track but it still sounded a bit “choppy”.
Another thing i’d like to automate is pitch on the VST synths… havnt yet figured out how to do it, maybe the VSTi i was using doesnt support it. But if it works, will this be a “choppy” pitch as well?
It’s a bit unfortunate but the behaviour of the automation curve is currently related to the song’s bpm/speed settings. The stepping behaviour has been discussed a few times in older threads.
Here is a slightly extreme example to clearly illustrate the problem. I created a nasty sample which is just pure DC offset, then I automated its volume from 0% to 100% over a small (16 rows) pattern at 80bpm speed 6. Even though it’s a curve in Renoise we can clearly see the volume jumping at each of the 16 rows in the pattern.
BE CAREFUL PLAYING THIS!!! This kind of sound is really not healthy for your speakers. I merely used it as a simple way of clearly highlighting the problem here.
Hopefully this problem will be resolved when Renoise eventually changes to a tickless timing model.
In the meantime, depending on the effect you are using there may be a control to set the reaction speed of the parameter. For example, Renoise’s own Filter2 DSP effect has an inertia parameter. If you lower the inertia then the cutoff will react more gradually to changes, which should create the smooth effect you want.
Automation values in NE will also be applied in speedsteps and not just in line-steps as it does now.
This means that automation will be more precise and more fluent than using certain effect-commands (which still apply to one line only, with exception of the effect commands where you can set the speedflag for in-/decrement steps)
Thanks a lot for the tip. Tryed the intentia slider and it smoothened it up a bit. Unfortunatly not all effects have this intentia slider. Still curious about vsti instrument automation of pitch. I usually dont use any keyboard for recording notes but if i did will renoise record knobs and pitchwheel/modulation changes?
Don’t forget to add the instrument and panning column command on the subtrack next to the effectcolumn and not any other track more to the left of it. (unless there are no subtracks defined in the track)
Ahhhh … thanks a lot… That helped. Adding the instrument number on every row solved the problem =) That should be added to the wiki pages. I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out myself…
But it still works the same way as above example. Choppy between lines. Hardly noticable on slower pitch changes but if you want to make faster pitches on a higher bend range it’s “choppy”. If it were working same way as the 01XX and 02XX effect for samples it would be even better.
I’m waiting patiently for coming Versions. If issues like these are resolved. And smother non-choppy automations are implemented i guess i’ll never use another program again =)
Yeah, the explanation is being worked out on the wiki pages.
Pitchbend values however still won’t be automatable in NE (Unless the VSTI supports this by allowing you to internally assign a specific MIDI CC command to it).