Mapping an LFO with offset 0% and amplitude 100% to a hydra device input gives you an effective range of 0-50%
I’ve been “away” for a while and i couldn’t fathom why i wasn’t getting full range out of the LFO until i remembered offset values less than 50% are effectively negative.
This is needlessly confusing. Is there a reason the LFO offset slider isn’t on a range of -50% to +50% or some other such bipolar range? It effectively is anyway. At this moment in time the LFO isn’t only used to control bipolar parameters anymore. In other modular or semi-modular environments LFOs tend to be toggled between unipolar and bipolar.
In short, i request a change to the offset slider to reflect its bipolar nature.
yes, I notice to myself this from time to time. at least for everything but random and custom LFO it should be changed. Acutally, during the alpha stage I asked if offset could reflect the unit of measure of the parameter to which the LFO is bound
I have to take that [done] back. As nice it is to see the center of the LFO in the destinations format, this also makes it harder to for example set up full ranges. I’ve played around with this and this simply doesn’t make things easier…
I think a bipolar/unipolar toggle (with bipolar default) would actually clear things up tremendously. I don’t think it’s really viable to just adopt the synthesizer LFO interface for a generic modulator. Given a unipolar phase reset, you’d finally be easily able to predict how a unipolar modulation will behave. I know it’s a hassle adding another mode selector (it’s a pretty crowded device as it is), but semantically I’m having trouble making intuitive sense of just what the output of an LFO will be in every context, and that’s bad.
Another option is to add sliders for min and max, which each are displayed in the destination’s input format, and have the amplitude be a multiple of that range (min+maxenvamp). Coupled with a polarity toggle, i reckon this could make the LFO device absolutely predictable in pretty much any context.
Perhaps this could be a separate LFO device altogether, so those in favor of the analog nature of the current device can keep that option? LFORangeDevice?
could you please allow this as an option via a context menu entry in the LFO? I reckon that this can confusing at times, but in some circumstances (for example: use an LFO to set the frequency of another LFO) not having this is extremely confusing!
How it works: The min/max sliders’ associated textfields would display the correct data type of the target parameter. So if i want an oscillator that drives gain between 0.000db and 5.137db, i simply type in those values in the textfields or drag the sliders there. My proposed LFO gui has 3 phase offsets, togglable with the lower left button. When it’s bipolar, an LFO reset sets it to a median of the minimum and maximum values. When it’s unipolar, it resets to the minimum value. When it’s inverse unipolar, it resets to the maximum value. This terminology isn’t entirely accurate as soon as you insert min/max, but it’ll do for now.
The end goal here is to not really change anything fundamental about the LFO, but to get rid of the offset/amplitude terminology, which even now after years of use still throws me curveballs. With this change, there is never any doubt as to where an LFO is going to send you, the target parameter can be better reflected, and i think this is a solution better tailored to Renoise.
Can we have that? Please? It’s exactly the same idea I proposed in that other thread and I love it.
And you don’t need the “polar” settings if you keep the phase-setting, this would make that option obsolete because you still have your wave (sin, saw, pulse etc.) and set the phase from 0 to 1 for the startpoint. For sin 0 (and 1) are bipolar, 0.25 is unipolar, 0.75 is inv unipolar, 0.5 would be bipolar but going down first. And you still have all the other numbers in between to nuts.
PS: Offset and Amplitude are sooo analogue. In a bad way.
PS2: Okay, only problem I see is if you want to increase the “effect”, instead of just cranking up the Amplitude you would have to automate min and max at the same time, but that is a minor flaw imho.
PS3: (Sorry, going nuts here). Anyone interested in my Reaktor-LFO-Macro which has some more options and could give even more ideas for the LFO device?
I don’t think we need to remove offset/amplitude altogether. An analog-style LFO is still useful. But this would make the process of setting up a general purpose parameter oscillation way easier. So… A toggle? I dunno. An alternative would be to keep an amplitude slider that extends past 100%
Mhh, a toggle could be a problem. If you have a single LFO with a certain setting you can ofcourse just convert the min/max setting to the corresponding Offset/Amplitude. It gets tricky with automation though, I can’t think of a simple way to switch an LFO which has min/max modulated to a Amp/Off-LFO and then make the Automation still work. So, Oldschool- and newschool-LFO ?
Or an intensity slider taking the place of amplitude, being a multiplier between 0 and, i dunno, 200%? The issue with changing the strength of the modulation is very real if this was to take the place of the original LFO
Great ideas here. Totally agree with the min max thing, I often find myself halving the amplitude number in my head and setting the offset accordingly to stop the waveform from being ‘clipped’.
Min, Max, Rate, Scale (0%-200%)?
Where the scale set to 0% would leave the lfo sending out a flat signal at the midpoint, and values over 100% could possibly lead to ‘clipping’ if that is desired - so as not to lose that feature of the existing LFO.
I’ve recently thought a LPC / Hz toggle for rate would be nice, too (polluting the thread a bit here maybe).
EDIT #434738:
Hmm… thinking about it, the offset param would be missed. Adding another offset param on top of all the above proposed could lead to problems when automating min and max. Any thoughts?
Min/Max have just like Offset/Amplitude cons and pros. We actually first had Min/Max for the initial LFO but then decided to use Offset. Offset allows you to simply shift the modulation base with one single automation. Doing this with two values is a pain in the ass. Min/Max has the advantage that you can precisely set the Min/Max values, but thats it.
So I don’t think we should remove it, but allow to select one or the other way. In doubt, I thing having Offset/Amp is much more important and what people want most of the time.
But when i get home i can easily throw together an update to this prototype that keeps min/max AND amplitude/offset, and i still believe strongly it will make more sense than amplitude and offset alone. Min/Max median basically IS the offset, and there is nothing keeping us from applying another offset to that, as well as a modulation strength multiplier. In a min at 0% and max at 100% context, it would function pretty much identically to the current LFO.
I wouldn’t go as far as to call the LFO flawed really, but i really believe the inclusion of output parameter sensitive min/max sliders would improve the user experience immensely.
Lust like we have it in the Signal Follower. Bad thing about this is that the Min/max only reflect the values of Offset = 0. Else they are totally useless.
Quite evil that we do this different in the SignalFoller already. Jargs.
