Selecting Automation Range Along With Track

I want a VST instrument with fades out quickly after say 1 second. There seems no way of going about this without facing obstacles. Let’s review the options.

Option 1: Using CFF, CE0, CC0, CA0, C80 down to C00 in the effect command column
This is okay, except it’s not a smooth fade, but a discrete one with jumps.

Option 2: Using automation for a track’s volume
This solves the continous fade problem, but now I can’t copy and paste notes in the column to put elsewhere, and keep volume fade info as well. This addresses the title problem - is it actually possible for the automation (volume) to select itself as you select notes in the main pattern?

Option 3: Using an LFO device
This would solve it in a kludgy way, apart from one thing - it will control the whole VST instrument, rather than a single note from the instrument. If I have multiple notes simultaneously, it’s easy to see where the problem will come in.

Option 4: Using an effect to control sliding of track volume?
9x and Ax was supposed to control this in the volume effect column, but it didn’t work for me. In any case, I’m not sure 16 degrees is enough

Option 5: Using 07xx or 06xx
These will only work with sample based instruments, not VST.

Option 6: Control a parameter in the VST itself
Not all VSTs have attack, decay etc. settings.

Option 2:Deselect the Automation checkbox in “Advanced Edit” to exclude automation envelope from copy/paste/delete actions.
Though i must notice that i’m curious how you can use option 2 without facing the problem of option 3

Option 4 might be a copy of option 5 (never used those commands on VSTI plugins actually), anyway this would also force Renoise to perform some kind of note retriggering with a new velocity value for that specific note if it would use those commands on the plugin. I guess the dominant disappointing result was not worth it to make these commands applicable to VST plugins or this might just be a bug for those specific commands in the volume column.

VSTI plugins have a lot of limitations that Renoise can’t circumvent that easily.
If it regards the whole audiostream that comes from the VST instrument or effect plugin, you have a good set of options that apply, but as soon as you want to filter out specific components from that stream, either the plugin must have a special parameter for it to offer or being capable of translating standard plugin control commands to perform the desired effect that you need.

You forgot option 7:
Render to Sample and then use the internal Renoise instrument structure to perform on the notes that you want this thing applied on. (using option 4 and/or 5)

Cheers, some good points…

Ah, I think you’re talking about the Content Mask? Just found that, nice feature. Anyway, unfortunately, the volume automation isn’t selected along with the pattern thanks to Renoise not supporting it. I quote from http://tutorials.renoise.com/Renoise/RenoiseAdvancedEdit:

My best bet atm is probably to search for plugins that support suitable attack/decay params… (at least until Renoise supports smoother interpolation). Do you know if commands like 06xx and 07xx will be available in the next version of Renoise?

Specific selection copy is not attached to automation no, in some cases i would have liked that as well.
You do can copy selections in automation however:

That will depend if Freezing will become an option. I guess with freezing, such commands are then applicable as well.

That’s interesting. How come Renoise can work Cxx on VST instrs but not 6xx and 7xx? They both control volume, so it should be able to handle 6xx and 7xx as well.

Are you sure freezing is needed for other controls such as sliding (01xx or 02xx) etc.?

6xx and 7xx are send to all used instruments in the track. cxx is send to the track master volume control which is the complete fader.
Try for instance using a VST instrument and two different sample-based instruments in the same track and then apply the 6xx and 7xx commands.
Then you will notice that both sample based instruments get affected while the VSTI will not be affected.

Freezing was just a general idea of how to achieve results with sample-instrument-only related commands.
For sliding i would just use the pitchbend commands.
With freezing you also get delays when using VST instruments if you have to separate all the streams per notecolumn. A rather doubtful feature than a usefull one as it seems to me.
It would not become a CPU intensive operation but more a memory horting operation.