Effects doing nothing

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
#1

Hi. I’m puzzled by the way effects are working in a song. I added a filter to a track. It didn’t seem to do anything. I added a distortion effect to another track. Nothing. I added it to a different track that used a different instrument. It worked.

So I started to experiment. I created a new track, entered some notes, and added the distortion effect. It didn’t work. Now I copied the distortion effect to another track, the one in which effects seemed to work. It worked.

So, now I have two tracks: let’s call them Track Weird and Track OK. I enter the same notes in both, with the same VST instrument. Track Weird has a distortion effect, but it does nothing. Track OK has a distortion effect that works.

Now, here’s the funny part: if I bypass the effect in Track Weird and mute Track OK, leaving the effect in Track OK enabled, Track Weird sounds as if the effect had been applied to it! I.e. I have this situation:

Track Weird, distortion effect bypassed
Track OK, muted, distortion effect enabled.

This results in the sound of the instrument being distorted.

But if I enable the effect in Track Weird and disable the effect in Track Ok, the effect is not applied.

I guess there’s something I don’t understand. I thought this was pretty straightforward: you have a track that produces sound. You place an effect in that track, and the output of that track is affected by the effect. But that’s not how it’s working. Sometimes the effect has no effect. And sometimes an effect in a different track does (because it’s the same instrument?).

This is Renoise 3.3.1.

#2

Sorry I just read through quickly but odd things happen when you use the same VST on multiple tracks and use different effects on the tracks, it’s a thing you shouldn’t really do, try duplicate the instrument or maybe an instrument alias will work.

[edit removed the link, sounded like something old fixed in 3.1]

#3

Well, I do use aliases. I tend to use one track for each instrument, but not always, so this is good to know. Anyway, I used the same instrument in different tracks for the experiment. That’s not the situation in the real song (unless I accidentally entered notes with the instrument in other tracks; I don’t think so).

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#4

Does this only happen with VSTi instruments? Can you replicate an example using only stock Renoise Instruments and FX and upload the Renoise project file? I’ve run into similar things on occasion, but without seeing exactly what’s going on it is hard to tell.

#5

Yup. If you use Aliases for Plugins, then effects will not work on aliased instances of the plugin (discovered it lately, and it makes Plugin Aliases feature just useless)… Use „fresh” (another) instances of the Plugin (not as aliased one instance).

#6

Could you provide an example of this happening? That really shouldn’t be happening with track effects.

#7

See here with Delay effect example. It’s for Reverb, Delays and such. But when EQuing one track, the EQ is working on all aliases(!), but should work on current track only. +Faders on tracks: level indicator „LEDs” are not properly working for Aliased Plugins…

#8

The video doesn’t show the Track Scopes or the Plugin panel, so it’s not possible to see what track the alias is actually playing on. Is the Audio Routing perhaps going to the ‘DRUMS’ Group track or the Master track?

#9

I tried re-routing, setting individual (MIDI) channels. Still the same. Effects are just „bypassed” on Aliased Plugin instances… And I can see only this on Audio Routing (no special options to choose between, hahahaha): Zrzut ekranu 2021-04-11 o 16.31.59

#10

There’s no way for a bypass to happen. Effects in a track will be applied to any audio that plays through it. I see from the video that the alias is from Instrument 00, which means it’s likely that that the alias is being routed through the same track, ‘Kick’.

In the pic you just added it shows that this plugin is limited to routing a single output, which is causing the problem. The ‘Audio Routing’ and ‘Plugin Aliasing’ chapters of our video show how this would work with more fully-featured plugins:

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