Hi, just picked up a lovely Behringer CAT today and had lots fun with it already. It is characterful and going to be fun to use and sample!
I’m trying to get it all set up nice for use in Renoise and I’ve spotted an issue.
The CAT appears to be operate in auto-legato mode with no triggering of envelopes when a note comes in without a note-off first. I can add explicit note-offs in the track to get “normal” behaviour, though this could get rather messy. Is there a way I can have Renoise send them automatically? A specific retrigger mode or something.
I haven’t found anything about this on the CAT side yet, but I’ll keep looking, maybe I can switch the synth behaviour.
Note Off Tool seems to be operational in 3.3, though I don’t grok the controls, all settings apart from 1,0 don’t seem to do owt. I should probably search the forum for relevant discussion
I am considering maybe seeing if working around this using MIDIpipe is an option.
I have 4 Behringer synths. And especially my Model D has trouble with re-triggering fast notes. So since I’ve got that one I’ve gotten very diligent in entering note-offs. Even if I’m not using that synth.
In regards to the Model D, I seem to recall Behringer stating this retriggering issue is authentic behavior for the Moog model D it is based on, and their clone. If I’m remembering correctly and that is true, maybe something similar is happening with the Cat.
Anyway, I’m sue you’ve tried this already, but just in case… Make sure your CAT’s firmware is up to date. Maybe that their Synthtool SYNTHTRIBE allows you set the note priority? And what position is your Keyboard Control Mono/Poly switch at?
According to the manual:
KEYBOARD CONTROL switch control show the keyboard controller interacts with VCO1. When the switch is set to the MONO position, VCO1 generates the lowest note that is depressed on the keyboard. When set to POLY, VCO1 generates the highest note depressed on the keyboard, while VCO2 handles the lowest note in order to allow two notes to be played simultaneously. (VCO2 is always controlled by the lowest note played on the keyboard.) When set to the OFF position, VCO1 is not affected by the keyboard.
Alas, there’s no note priority options in the App. I haven’t upgraded the firmware yet, but the posts I’ve seen suggest the first update made things worse and the second not much better. I will try the new upgrade though when I can figure how much better/worse it makes thing
Certainly the envelope triggering behaviour does not match the description from the original CAT manual and it seems to be tied to the note priority handling.
The firmware upgrade improves the note priority slightly, but it still doesn’t re - trigger as the manual documents. Running an envelope in from the Microbrute sort of works though, so maybe I’ll just them as a sort of hybrid synth.
A pity that the firmware update doesn’t help solve your problem. But it is good to know you can work around it a bit with your Microbrute.
And that is is part the of the joy of analogue synths, learning to work around to the machine’s limitations. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating, i know.
You’re not wrong. The Microbrute was my first synth back in 2016 and I made myself figure out how to synthesize a full selection of drums in order to learn synthesis. That was pretty challenging on such a quirky synth. No real noise source, 1 osc and 1 envelope! Still I got a passable kit of (very) electronic drums synthesised in the end.
My unit was quite unstable though, you could only LFO audio rate for a few minutes before it failed and required a full synth on/off cycle! Wonder if I still have the original samples I recorded.
