Lfo In The Instrument Editor

Hey everyone,

I need help to understand the LFO parameters in the Instrument Editor.
The user’s manual says:
Frequency: The speed of the LFO (relative to the BPM of the song).
My question is: What is the relation between those numbers (00-127) and the BPM of the song,
and how should I set those parameters in order to hear 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc…

Thank you!

Not actually used the LFO in the Instrument section but hope it’s the same as the LFO Meta-Device.

If so Frequency is measured in Lines Per Cycle. This means the rate of the LFO will depend on both the BPM and LPB of the song. As standard Renoise uses a LPB (Lines Per Beat) of 4 so a frequency of 4 will cycle every quarter beat.

May be slightly confusing as higher numbers are actually lower frequencies, so we really should not call the parameter frequency as it is inversely proportional to frequency. Maybe Rate would be better but still makes you think higher number equates to faster…

Unfortunately, it isn’t :)

The instrument LFO is one of the things in Renoise that has not really changed much since the very early days, so the values you need to use there can seem a bit strange at first. The good thing is that the LFO does actually remain in sync with the song BPM, although it is not really connected to your LPB (lines per beat) or TPL (ticks per line) settings in the way that you might expect.

A value of 15 will cause the LFO to cycle once per beat. A value of 30 is twice per beat. Etc.

Here is a quick list:

  • 15 = 1 cycle per beat
  • 30 = 2 cycles per beat
  • 45 = 3 cycles per beat
  • 60 = 4 cycles per beat
  • 75 = 5 cycles per beat
  • 90 = 6 cycles per beat
  • 105 = 7 cycles per beat
  • 120 = 8 cycles per beat

As you can probably guess by now, getting exact cycles of 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, etc. is not possible since they would require LFO settings of 7.5, 22.5 and 37.5, respectively. In those cases you just have to accept the slight loss of accuracy and use the next best LFO setting.

I’m sure the instrument LFOs will eventually be improved to allow for a greater range of accuracy and flexibility, but for now this is what you’ve got to work with :)

Thanks a lot for these informations, actually it’s a bit strange to use values like 15,30,45 in music.

Do you know why they choose those numbers instead of 4,8,16?? I m just curious :)

Thank you