Just thought I’d interject seeing as sidechaining is on the table now. I brought an idea up I had in the Ideas and Suggestions forum a whole back about a metadevice that acted as a sidechain, but instead of just controlling amplitude, would be able to control ANY parameter. Below is a hand drawn conceptual sketch cough:
Now, I bring this up because… if we’re really on the road to sidechaining here, I’d absolutely love it if my idea could be implemented as the solution. You see, the ability to control any parameter on ANY effect or VST from a sidechain would make renoise one of the most unique beasts in existence. It would give us sooooo many options to make different sounds that were previously unheard of… enough that I can’t even begin to imagine the different ways this would allow us to mangle sounds.
We’ve discussed this a bit on #renoise, and my primary concerns are:
Losing logical flow. A device on track 1 altering params on track 2, to me, is a bad idea in terms of interface clarity. A generic device on track 1 piping amplitude values to a device on track 2 that in turn takes those values and applies them (much the same way the velocitydevice does now) to effects in its chain makes more sense. Chains need to be easily assessed and read over.
Metadevices should be generic solutions to a wide range of problems, not specific solutions to specific problems. We can chain LFOs to create new waveforms. We can chain send devices to pipe our sound into separate sends and then back into one again. Metadevices today are generic and unspecific in how they’re applied, and thats what they should be; tools. A metadevice that specifically acts as a sidechaining compressor’s source won’t be used for much other than… sidechained compression.
Splitting the solution into multiple generic metadevices strikes a better tone with me:
*An amplitude reader device, taking the amplitude (at the point in the DSP chain it’s inserted) and piping the value out like the LFOdevice does, could allow any parameter to be automated automagically, much like envelope followers in vsts like Antares Filter.
*A parameter broadcaster/receiver device could take any incoming value and broadcast it on a “channel” to all other devices set to “receive” on that channel. The same device could output values to its parent DSP chain, much like the LFOdevice does.
*An optional sidechain input value for the compressor DSPs could be set up to specifically expect amplitude device values.
Instant sidechaining compressors.
amplitude device
parambroadcastdevice (the one device capable of sending to other DSPchains)
velocitydevice
lfodevice
there’s a ridiiiculous amount of depth to be dug out of those 4
If you were to go that way, I’d also want some sort of metadevice that looks at the wave the way a compressor does, and outputs values that would be the same as the volume levels a compressor would apply to a waveform. My idea hinges on that because raw wave data is of no use to me if I’m applying it to distortion gain or LFO values.
Ok… so sunjammer and I decided in IRC that his “amplitude reader device” would be the same as my sidechain device, except with a “raw wave” button … and without track sending… just local effect sending…
… basically the issue is that we need a separate device for track->track routing… considering that we’ve now got things like the velocity metadevice
At first I thought the velocity device would act as an amplitude demodulator, piping through a continuous stream of values that you could direct to any parameter…unfortunetely this is not the case right now, but it’s still a nice weapon to have in the artillery.
I’m all for more modularity in Renoise, send and receive devices would be great. The worry about clarity is understandable, but surmountable if you’re tinkering with these kind of things in the first place.
I’d use this a lot and definitively get’s my vote. Implementing a generic metadevice offers so many new possibilities instead of limiting it to specific internal plugins.
In fact, it just occurred to me that with these two devices, we could finally use DSP effects on metadevice data. All we’d have to do is the following:
on a new track, place a DC +100%vol waveform (looped) sample
place a gainer DSP on the chain, followed by a metadata receiver (that the original LFO/whatever + metadata sender sends to) that points to the gainer’s volume, followed by a DC device set to -50%, and a 200% gainer
place whatever effects you like after this
place an amplitude reader device set to raw wave followed by a metadata sender that sends back the altered metadata
And voila… metadata that’s been filtered/distorted/whatever you like!!!
… this could also conceivably be used to add metadevice data together, or to modulate it … whatever you want really
I apologize for putting this feature request related topic here… I just thought it was fitting at the time because of the misleading “sidechain” label that was on the gate… feel free to bump this over to the ideas forum… or perhaps even merge it with my previous topic and stick it in the prototype forum
