Now the native Delay device has what are called Ping Pong presets. Trying these and you will find you do not get a Ping Pong effect, the audio switches side then stays on that side.
To create a ping-pong Delay all you should have to do is pan the left output to the right and the right output to the left. Then it should feedback to the opposite side each time. To test get a sample, pan it hard to one side, set a Delay with the outputs reverse and play a suitable sample (drum hit or the like.) If you panned left then your Delay with be on the right, but the feedback still goes back on that side so all delays stay on the right side, rather than ping-ponging left and right. This indicates to me that the feedback section is before the output pan faders and thus you can not create ping-pong and I would consider this a fault. Feedback into the Delay device should be after the L/R Pan faders. Or at least optional in some way if you want full backwards compatibility.
A real ping pong delays generally is a self-feeding delay. This means the feedback on the left is a oneshot routed to the right and to the output. Same for the right side feeding the left. With the current delay device this just is not possible. Another thing is a ping pong device normally handles mono signals only, for a good reason. The reason you are mentioning having problems with the pan. The “problem” is in fact it seems Renoise handles every stream, no matter if mono or stereo, as a stereo stream. At least this is how it seems to me, as soon as you do some panning. Actually a panned singal of course is kinda stereo, though not really. The “stereo”-delay then does, what it’s supposed to do. It grabs the hard panned audio signal on the left and the empty “muted by panning” stream on the right and handles both just as a stereo signal. That’s why there is no feedback available for the right then.
But maybe I’m wrong. Just some thoughts.
PS: I’ve setup a stereo PingPong device for download here and added a Mono PingPong with this thread.
Wouldn’t that basically be achieved it Feedback came after Pan, rather than before, like I suggested?
You’re right that now I think about it when playing with Ping-Pong settings on hardware units they seem to mix the signal to Mono then bounce this between left and right but just the ability to have left and right switching on each delay/repeat would be a step closer and quite useful to me. Would probably also make it easier to make a real Ping-Pong delay, as described above with one Send with Keep Source, Monoise, Pan to side, use Delay with ping-pong setting and 100% Wet.
Sure the ones I’ve used before have not been single shot only (you mean a single repeat by that right?) but have had feed back and will bounce across the stereo for as long as need be, based on Feedback setting.
Well, the “oneshot” is really a oneshot. While bouncing the signal its amplitude gets lower and lower with each bounce. These are oneshots in a row. In practice this makes things easy. You give out the “Ping” for example with -6dB, it’s also routed then to the other side then with -6dB and the “Pong” lowers amplitude by 6dB again, so it’s -12dB, routet for the next"Ping" with -12dB. This way you can lower the amplitude by a one time calculated static value and don’t have to do too many calculations. The value of lowering the amplitude is depended on the feeback amount then.
That’s not a question of panning. The two stereo channels ARE panned correctly. They just can’t feed each other. You can rebuild your panning suggestion with a LFO for pan (both feedbacks panned the same, so the feedback is mono). what you’re gonna hear is not a ping-pong at all. It’s just changing from left to right and back. A ping-pong delay would still allow signals to arrive on the left, while it already fed the right. But with a “ping-pong” by panning you’d always have just one side active, while the other side is completely muted. Which is also no ping-pong.
Yes but for the presets that already exist and have ping-pong in their name to actually bounce alternately between left and right (swapping left/right audio information) all that would need to be changed would be for the feedback to come from the point after the two Pan sliders, rather than before it. This would actually make the Delay device much more powerful, would hardly affect how it is used by most people most of the time and is only a minor change.
I guess in fact the feedback pan is already done after the feedback itself. so it doesn’t matter if it’s interal done before or after. You can affect it. But I still agree, the ping-pong preset is no ping-pong preset and the delay device really needs to be thought over.
While… yes I can see your point of “waving” through the pan before feedback and being able to adjust pan after feedback. Yeah, this might end up in some nice pan flow. But also makes it hard to control, because you would need in fact 4 pan controls then. With still 2 pan controls it doesn’t matter in any way, if it’s panned before or after feedback.
Yes it does! If feedback is before pan, as currently, pan will always send audio to the same side again and again. If feedback is after Pan then your left signal will then become your right signal on second repeat and thus each and every time the pan position of the output will change.
This not only gives Ping-Pong by having them maximised to opposite of original signal but also the ability to have the delay becoming more and more centre/mono by having each not fully panned.
Honestly, I really think there’s some error in your reasoning. You can already do all these things. With only 2 pan controls it wouldn’t change a thing. It really makes sense to stay with the pan on it’s origin channel, because it just gives you full control over things. Otherwise you’d access the pan and wouldn’t even know from what side you actually get the current feedback. Doesn’t make sense to me. Keep in mind it’s not all about the ping-pong thing. And using LFOs you can achieve nearly everything atm. Except a ping-pong. But I guess this is just a matter of the fact Renoise tries (with a good reason) to prevent self feeding streams and devices. And a ping-pong delay is exactly that, even if in a special form.
Image a sample hard panned to the right. Put this into a delay unit with the right output set to about 50% right. Play the sample you will get a hit on the right and then every delayed repeat will be at about 50% right. If the feedback was after the pan then you would get it moving more and more towards the centre of the stereo field (50% right, 25% right, 12.5% right, almost centre etc etc…)
Now take the same sample and have right panned 50% left and left panned 50% right. You will get your hard right panned hit then every repeat on 50% left. If it was after feeback you would get hard right original, 50% left repeat, 25% right repeat, 12.5% left repeat, getting more and more central. If you wanted it like the original you would have to put both pans to 50% left (although if working in real stereo this may confuse things and you would still have to split into sends. Would still be far more powerful.)
Now most of this is kinda possible with LFO. You can set up an LFO so that it adjusts your Pan position and get it triggered with a velocity device. Do you see a problem though? I don’y knoe about you but my delays generally run over more than one hit. This means that the pans will be being reset all the time and moving the sound back to the outside when it should be moving towards the inside. It will not work!
Please explain how it’s more full control with the current set-up. I could see the argument for same amount but different type of control but current set-up gives far less options and I would use that as an argument for less control (although technically I guess it’s the same.)
Don’t agree that it would be any harder to know where it’s coming from. It’s the way I’ve always thought about delays when working with their feedback and was surprised Renoise wasn’t like this. Not all about ping-pongs, see my examples on delays that move towards centre of stereo field.
Also would need four pan controls. A button to allow switching of feedback from either before or after the pans should be enough (although there may be one or two very minor things this rules out it would be neater and simpler than four pan controls. In fact I think the only one is having first repeat on the same side of original signal but there may be more…)
That’s not only a question of pan position in the chain. It’s first of all a question of what’s the source for the feedback. Your example presupposes the delay to work with self-feeding feedback. I’m pretty sure it does not.
See above.
Well, that’s a matter of routing and setup. “It won’t work” doesn’t exist in my Renoise related word pool.
THe way you suggested I get an audio stream (in fact 2 audio streams) I only know 1 thing of. It’s left or right. But no pan positions of the signal/feedback contained. No controll over the stereo spread, even less when I start panning it myself then, because a part of it is 25% left, another part 50% left, and so on. Sounds to me just like a nightmare, not like a feature. Currently I grab the slider and know it’s position is where the slider is set to. Pretty simple and full control.
See above.
In all your thoughts you assume the delay to be a self feeding device (which would be nice, at least as option) - one feedback gives the other. If it were and then would be capable of selecting the pan position within its internal chain… yup, it would be very powerful. Even thinking of the result by also adding filters to such a device makes me get wet. But I don’t think we’re talking about a self feeding device. I assume it to work like a over and over repeated simple buffer and nothing but that.
Too lazy to do detailed reply now but will try to remember in the future. Want to concede the point that if the current delay device is in fact achieved by a buffer with feedback changing the curve of outputted repeat volumes then it is clearly not as simple a change as I may of liked.
I hope you do see the advantages of having feedback at the actual output point though. It’s true that most of the simple things I would like to do could be achieved by cascading many Delay devices (6 would probably be enough in most cases) it makes it a huge headache and if you want to try changing delay values it severely complicates things even more! (Although possible with the Hydra a little more it may make this part of it a fair sight easier…)
