Dsp Linked To Instruments?

Title says it all, would be cool to process an instrument with effects without needing a dedicated track to route the audio through.
I don’t use a lot of DSP and still end up with a confusing amount of tracks…

+1

I’m pretty sure this will be coming eventually.

-1

You saying this isn’t in the works?

Or you don’t like the idea?

I think that TakTik has talked about it one day. He explained that a DSP effect NEEDS a track to work. You cannot create a DSP effect without a track in fact. So each time you would have to process a DSP effect on an instrument, a “temp. track” would have to be created on the fly by Renoise, in the background, then when the DSP effect is processed, the “temp. track” would have to be also deleted on the fly in the memory. TakTik said that this behaviour would require lots of CPU power, that’s why he did’nt recommended this for now. However, I also like your idea, but I would dislike to work with a tool that reach too easily 90% of CPU power and stops.

What about something similar but that would not harm the DSP-Track relationship ?

For example : let’s imagine a .sxrni instrument : super extended renoise instrument.

Renoise could be able to store directly in the .xrni file format the content of a .xrnt (dsp chain).

And each time you load a .sxrni file, it creates of course a typical renoise instrument but also creates a new track, that has previously saved DSP chain, and the top name of the created track is also the name of the loaded instrument.

You get the picture ?

Thanks for the clarification.
And although doesn’t address my bugbears, the .sxrni idea sounds cool nonethless!

+1 to that. I was just thinking this would be nice today while saving out some sampled instruments. I don’t like the idea of any direct link between instruments and inserts, but saving out an .xrni + .xrnt that can be added as a new track would be nice (seems to be a common feature in the music making programs I’ve used).

The concept of this thread is really good, as is the .sxrni idea. Currently when recalling an instrument with effects I have to find and save, or recreate dsp chains to go with it, never mind the automation.

I don’t like the idea, if you want DSPs linked to the instrument you can set instrument to play in it’s dedicated track and then whenever you play the instrument it will be played through this channel and fxs,
I am happy with dsp chains in different tracks because it’s an easy way how to try different chain of effects on different samples/vstis and it is great tool for quick and complex processing, in fact
I find this to be one of biggest advantages in renoise. Linking DSP directly to the instrument would mess up the concept completely

Would there be anything forcing you to use it B-Complex, rather than the existing method?

Assuming any DSP associated with an Instrument can then have it’s own Envelopes, which are triggered for each note, then it can do things that track DSPs never can!

These ideas complete the .sxrni idea.

I think that if we want to store more “usefull” DSP chains in instruments, we need to improve or create a few DSPs.

The problem is not to be able to directly attach existing DSP effects to sample-based instruments, but to be able to create better dsp chains, to improve exsisting DSPs (or create new ones) that will bring to tracks the unique power of instruments settings tab, and improve the way those instruments behave directly fron the track DSP tab.

I’m talking about sample-based instruments. The advantages of sample-based instruments enveloppes (when compared with tracks’ automation curves) is that they are defined one for good and that they produce their effect through all the song each time an instrument is called wherever it’s called. However, this advantage could become also a problem, especially when you want to modify a bit the way sample based instruments behave. The problem is that when you’ve defined your enveloppe in the instruments settings you’ve got to keep it for the rest of the track. No way to apply a kind of variation on it between patterns. That’s why the LFO + DSP looks more attractive. Because you can finally define different LFOs with different envelopes through a song.

Take for example the panning, the volume. Those 2 things can be handled by a LFO + a gainer DSP that controls volume, or a LFO + Gainer Panning. The cutoff and resonance parameters can also be emulated through a LFO + a flanger DSP with a high amount, the other sliders to 0 and each filter available in the instrument envelope listbox can be also found in the Flanger DSP (also in the Chorus DSP).

However there’s something that a LFO envelope does not handle, the “note off”. The LFO DSP has no “sustain position” that could be triggered when a note-off is encountered. There’s also something that you can’t define precisely through a LFO : the pitch. Because the LFO can only point to another DSP, and because there isn’t any existing DSP that controls the sample pitch amount, up/down, there is no solution, if you want to create an arpeggiator you’ll need to use instruments envelopes that’s all.

We should have a new DSP named “Pitch DSP” that could be able to get a slider with [-2200 to +2200] cents, an inertia parameter, and these sliders could control the sample pitch behaviour, including finetunes.

When those DSPs are improved and / or created, the .sxrni fx improvements will follow the tracks improvements, without redundancy of code and functions in the GUI.

Just thought about this - how is it that we can use a Filter on an instrument (in the Envelopes section)?
This is a DSP of sorts right?
Was it considered essential enough to forego the processing power problems?

I have hard time believing this could be a problem when it comes to cpu usage, unless there would be ability to use same instrument on multiple tracks (which isn’t possible with vsti’s anyway). There are vsti’s hosting vsti’s and I haven’t noticed them consuming huge amount of cpu’s just because they’ve loaded a plugin.

About the temp track logic - why should the temp track be deleted ever? Why not just have “hidden” track for each instrument of which audio is sent to track where instruments notes lie?

i’ve made a thread some time ago with a similar idea. my idea was to have fx per sample
Wich mean that for example if you have 2 samples layered on top of each other, you could have one sample that go to a disto and eq (for sub) and the other sample that go to a chorus and reverb. after that the instrument go the particular track you assign it

it will open nu realms of creativity
Don’t know if it’s possible though