Ok, am I missing something here ??
We have this new modulation set scheme …but it seems that they only affect pitch/amp/pan/filter .iow …the old usual suspects
I thought that one of the big things here was that we were able to route these new modulation sets to the fx per sample .
Modulations are applied to each “voice” (each note, basically) that is playing in the instrument. In other words, if you have a volume envelope and you play 3 notes one after another, then you will get 3 individual volume envelopes playing one after another, and each note will gradually fade out independently, for example. This works for volume, pitch, panning, and so on, because all of these properties belong to the voice itself, and can be controlled independently.
The DSP FX chains have no concept of voices – the effects are just statically applied to the entire output. In other words, if you play 3 notes through a DSP chain with reverb on it, then you just get those 3 notes mixed together and played through the same reverb. You do not get 3 individual DSP chains with a separate reverb assigned to each individual voice that is playing.
For this reason, applying modulations to DSP FX parameters is pretty much impossible, or rather, the end result would be a meaningless mess. If I have a modulation with some kind of sweeping envelope, and I want this to control a filter cutoff within my DSP chain, then as soon as I start playing 2 or more notes, everything will start to collide with itself, and there will now be multiple sweeping modulations all fighting over who gets to control the filter cutoff parameter at the same time.
bit of a let down no ?
I know the concept of mono/poly processing of voices …I just assumed that now we had the option of inserting effects per voice .
In reaktor everything can be set to poly mode ( I know renoise is not reaktor ) inluding lfo’s env’s …at the last stage there is the voice combiner … everything after the voice combiner is processed in mono mode ( stereo )
This has always been the case no ?
I asked this in the main 3.0 thread too, and surprised its not possible. While I understand the reasons it is; like gentleclockdivder said a bit of a let down. So far I feel there’s huge potential in the new instrument-scheme in 3.0, perhaps this is part of a future road-map.
But having other (internal) parameters of the sampler (like sample-index for stretching/warping)available to envelopes would be absolutely fantastic. There’s a lot of potential in the new framework.
It is what it is, I suppose. Some people will find it more limiting than others, especially if you’re coming from a highly modular environment like Reaktor.
The simple fact is, if we wanted to support polyphonic DSP chain processing, then we’d have to instantiate a unique DSP chain for every note/voice played, and this would introduce a hell of a lot of extra overhead in terms of memory usage and processing power.
Either that, or we somehow convert every existing DSP effect into a polyphonic/multi-channel version, and then dynamically spread voices over all the available inputs/outputs they would have. More or less the same problem, but approached from a slightly different angle. This sure ain’t gonna happen any time soon, imo.
Indeed, it’s nothing new in that sense, but I was just reiterating to show the distinction between how notes/voices/modulations are processed polyphonically, and how such a system does not really work when it comes to automating DSP effects which are essentially monophonic in nature.
Simplest solution would be to provide two different domains for modulations. There could be one accordion tab “Global modulation” and one “Voice modulation”.
You could fake this behavior atm for a lot of purposes by binding voice- and DSP-params to a macro button, with a (or several) voice-operand(s) bound to that button. You’d just have to perform your actual modulations outside the instrument then.
Let’s say you want to bind Filter Cutoff and Reverb Wet Mix to each other. You just add a “* 1” operand at the end of your cutoff modulations, assign it to a macro button with the range 0-1.0 and assign to the same button then the Dry Mix-param of the reverb. Now you can perform your synced modulations and/or automations on both, using this macro button.
yes,
What would be really nice is this new modulation system as an insert effect , this way we can use it to modulate effects parameters .
The filter algo in the" instruments section haven’t been updated since 2005 ( iirc) ,using an souped up env./ mod section on mediocre filters is a bit like polishing a turd .
…I can hear a shitstorm coming …
The new modulation is kind of exciting. An idea to improve it is to have the modules acting like meta-devices. E.G. the Velocity module targets to the attack time of the ADSR module while an LFO modulates the release… that will fulfill the lack of a proper modulation matrix…
Exactly , that’s what I was thinkng when I said inserts infects , the new modulation as meta device …
Let’s start a new thread in suggestions and ideas .