Removing instrument fx / putting it to mixer level back

Ideas & suggestions
1

Hi,

what about removing the dsp/effects stuff completely from the instruments for Renoise 3.1 again? This would solve a lot of headaches like one track limitation, no ms-delay support for each track etc.

Also it would be much more easy again to handle. I tried the fx section in the instruments a lot, but I came to the conclusion, I will do no use it anymore, since there are only drawbacks if using it.

Wouldn’t a remove also simplify the LUA api etc again?

If there is no instrument fx at all, we also do not need some kind of track routing anymore, since the instrument is playable on every track.

For that Renoise 3.1 just could copy all fx channel 1:1 to newly created instrument tracks for 3.0 songs.

2

The track routing limitation only comes into play when the instrument has an FX chain. If it has no FX chain, then it will behave “normally” just like before, and it will be playable on every track.

If you don’t like the FX system, then can’t you simply ignore it?

3

hi dblue, I didn’t want to offend you or other devs. Only wanted to mention that the fx chains do not seem to give any advantage… I looked into the lua Renoise api,and I guess it’s very hard for you devs to change now anything in the structural concept, because any change will require also a complete fix/patch of the api + all these compabilities between Renoise song versions. Must be quite complicated to manage.

So I thought does any actually require the fx chains because of any new possibilities ? E.g. why not remove them and instead introduce a instrument file format that saves an instrument + track settings that should belong to it. Removing fx chain would also purge Renoise.

Regards

4

So I thought does any actually require the fx chains because of any new possibilities ?

I guess I’m using FX for approx. on third of the sounds I make.

You can make complete effect networks (parallel processed effects, even a vocoder :-), would be absolute hell IMO if all that stuff had to sit in the Renoise mixer.

So one definite advantage would be the self-contained nature of an effect-enabled instrument.

I’m not saying it wouldn’t be better if we had total freedom to just throw instruments around from track to track, but the way I do things, I actually prefer to make a particular instrument sit in a particular track. To me, it makes the song easier to “read” (currently drafting a tool to make this track ↔ instrument binding completely automatic).

@Jurek: I guess you have tried various approaches - what are you doing, putting a particular instrument into different tracks in order to create structure?

5

I guess I’m using FX for approx. on third of the sounds I make.

You can make complete effect networks (parallel processed effects, even a vocoder :-), would be absolute hell IMO if all that stuff had to sit in the Renoise mixer.

So one definite advantage would be the self-contained nature of an effect-enabled instrument.

Hm, that’s true, Vocoder is a good example where you want the complicated structureencapsulated from the normal view. But what about if send track could be placed everywhere and also could be minimized? And also a instr save format that can save multiple tracks?

I’m not saying it wouldn’t be better if we had total freedom to just throw instruments around from track to track, but the way I do things, I actually prefer to make a particular instrument sit in a particular track. To me, it makes the song easier to “read” (currently drafting a tool to make this track ↔ instrument binding completely automatic).

Ok, same feelings here, but this could be solved just by some visual grouping possibilities. And of course you can do music in a very good and almost time saving with Renoise, if you experienced in work around the limitations.

@Jurek: I guess you have tried various approaches - what are you doing, putting a particular instrument into different tracks in order to create structure?

Well I did lot of synth wave drum kits, because the encapsulated structure seemed to be made for this. But then I realized especially drum sets are very limited, because I can only play one one track, have no timing/delay for each track or sample and cannot play on multiple tracks, e.g. if I simply don’t want some sample to be played thru the drum compression.

So lately manually moved all fx chains to single tracks, then removed the fx chains and realized that’s much more easy for me to work with, since the structure is flattened.

Ok, it was just a thought. I still miss flexible send tracksthen.

Thanks for taking part of the discussion :slight_smile:

6

But then I realized especially drum sets are very limited, because I can only play one one track, have no timing/delay for each track or sample and cannot play on multiple tracks

Yeah, for drums easy access to a per track-delay is definitely a nice thing. I mean, you can work around it by using the delay-column, oradding a delay DSP (but then it’s a little bit of a catch-22 because the FX section is tucked away inside the instrument…)

7

It’s not really made for drums. It’s handy for stuff that would need around3 or more send tracks.

8

I use FX chains a lot as well so don’t think the right thing to do is to remove them… I would love to have the ability to assign different fx chains to different tracks though…

For example i have a sliced drum loop and I then put kicks, hats, snares all through their own fx chain and fatten up the sounds. Then I tap out a beat onto a track… Now I want to sidechain stuff from just the kick drum but I can’t, so I have to use the filters on the signal follower to isolate the kicks but it’s never the same… It’s so close to being perfect but not quite there…

9

Please do not do this.

If you don’t want to use instrument effects, don’t use instrument effects! Then it works exactly the same as it did before… as if there were no instrument effects.

I know that people love to bitch and moan about the limitations of the instrument effects implementation, but many of us have managed to see the GOOD side of what this offers instead of writing it off completely due to limitations.

I’d much rather give the renoise team time to IMPROVE the implementation than have them remove it completely.

It really pisses me off how people will openly talk trash and criticize the team and call this feature worthless. It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty damn useful, and most of all OPTIONAL.

10

I guess I’m using FX for approx. on third of the sounds I make.

You can make complete effect networks ( parallel processed effects , even a vocoder :slight_smile:

In particular, this. I love this new functionality in Renoise3, because it makes the type of thing that I was pretty much already trying to do, so much easier. And it opens up so much cool possibilities. … like a vocoder :wink:

Hm, that’s true, Vocoder is a good example where you want the complicated structureencapsulated from the normal view.

In all fairness, while it’s cool this was possible, I don’t think “otherwise it gets too messy to hack a native vocoder in Renoise” is a very good reason. However the general ability to do extremely cool stuff like that is a very good reason :wink:

I do get your problem with making drumkits a lot, as well. Recently I built this pretty cool gated-reverb FX chain for snaredrums, which I wanted to include in a (small) more general drumkit, with the snares tweakable to (IMO) incredibly versatility while still being actual snaredrums (I even had a 3-4 macro controls left over I could’ve used to perhaps tweak the other drum sounds pitch or decay or whatnot), but that idea simply didn’t work too well, because the instrument was of course limited to a single track. In the end I ended up rendering a couple of different settings for the gated-verb snares to different samples and make a drumkit out of that, but myeah, hmm no.

BTW you can sort-of get individual delays in a single instrument kit with FX to work if you use single-hit phrases with a delay column. Basically like my drumkit-autohumanizing trick, minus the maYbe randomizing. I dunno if that would work for your workflow, of course. Also it doesn’t solve the other problems.

What afta8 said, the ability to route different FX chains to different tracks would be really cool. Although I get the feeling that is easier said than done, it’s got a few snags, because you’d get a sort of bi-directional binding between instruments and tracks. And currently these two objects in Renoise aren’t really bound at all. Which is a good thing IMO. Maybe a better approach would be to have more controls on the individual note-columns in a single track. Post-mix gain and ms delay, basically. Oh and also easier selection/copy/pasting of stuff in single columns :slight_smile: (unless there’s a way to do that I haven’t figured out yet)

Either way, the call to remove it doesn’t seem like a good idea at all. Especially since everybody’s been using them for about a year now :slight_smile:

11

Hm. Thinking: Put the current inst. FX chain concept into its own shell, kinda like multichannel doofers? Bind to these chains in the instrument (keeping the ability to address multiple fx lanes), but instantiate in a pattern, or in its own space, and have different patterns receive from those chain’s outputs. When using an inst multiple times, you could choose to reuse the same fx chain, or instatiate another chain and have 2 real instruments working from the same. And combine output of multiple instruments into the same chain.

Such sollution would have several benefits, not only for inst fx’s, but also open doors to more modular fx chain types (think of having a track as input for a chain lane instead of a sample from an inst), expanding doofer concept further, etc.

12

I wanted to express something like you wrote: separating inst fx from instr again, but building another fx container for it. Kind of instr fx rotated in 90 degree like kind of multi send track…Believe would solve a lot of problems and simplify the structure, too. And this in combination with free placeable send tracks.