I would like a device that would take two (or more) snapshots from states of effect parameters within a track and slide between them with a slider. Then I would not have to painstakingly set up hydra or automations for doing some simple morphing, I could just tweak-snap-tweak-snap and I would be ready. Parameters that would have identical value in both snapshots being used would receive no modulation thus remaining under normal control. For multiple states there could be multiple snapshots in one device. If something like multiple anchor points could be put into one slider it would be even possible to morph between multipe points with just one slider, otherwise assignable and automatable ends could be used to change between snapshots if desired, and if even that would be too complicated for audience that renoise is targetting then multiple devices could be used, though that would increase effect clutter so I would not like that. There could be multiple sliders in one device or just one, again many instances could replace an extra slider but then again I cannot give devices unique names so its kinda ugly to have many same kind of modulation devices when I cannot always tell what are they doing from the name list.
I kinda like a thought that I could name snapshots, otherwise it could be difficult to recall what was set to which snapshot.
Taken to the wild side a snapshot device could have a way to store global, pronounced “all tracks”, snapshots. To distinguish they could be stored in different color if the snapshots would have store-buttons a, b, c and d for example, or marked otherwise if the snapshots menu would be a dropdown list for example. Or some global modulation devices group could be invented where there would be global snapshot device. Or there could be global-button in the corner of the device making it song-wide.
Global presets would allow you to do for example horseshoe-endings with effects or make some whooping song-wide break-sucktion. Then again I probably would tweak the parameters on one-track-at-time basis anyway so no real benefit there.
Let your imagination fly and join the conversation.
yes i like this too.
last weekend i wondered how i could just make a slow morph in my track presets with the minimal fuss. and using the automation for matching approximately 25 parameters it was a real hard work.
yes that indeed can be a problem (and a performance issue if you are likely to change a lot of them). anyway this device should support a fixed number of parameters, say 1024 for each snapshot.
if you are likely to have some track dsps with more than 1024 parameters then you will run into partial working snapshots.
So what if it would be just a-b fader or have multiple pairs, or sequental snapshots, like a-b-c where latter is always compared to former. Then when taking snapshots all the params with equal values in compared pairs could be excluded all together, would decrease processing load I guess.
Did not think about VST thing so much since I generally use only simple effects and tend to use internal ones almost always. I haven’t come actoss with VST effect which would have such a huge parameter list that would be a problem, maybe some commercial monster synth as an effect? Absynth? That is possible, right?
yes, that would be obvious, but what if you change the preset of all you 10 devices and take a new snapshot ? the changed parameters could increase dramatically. i’m thinking at the worst case here, not about implementation details.
The point in not discarding equal values between snapshots when taking them rather than when choosing ones to be compared is that you could use any two and have them morph together with maybe different results.
I think that using the device so that machine used can handle it would be more in user responsibility. It would be pretty much stupid to expect several thousands of automated parameters not to have significant effect on processor load.
So maybe the global version should be forgotten.
If it would be possible to choose what devices to automate and what not it would of course be possible to have more control to what is happening, so if someone has a VST that has several thousands of parameters he could exclude it from snapshot. Of course similar results are schieved by not changing the parameters when making the snapshots. I really don’t think it would become a problem for me at least, because I rarely have such a huge need for modulating that much parameters.
Then I don’t know what should happen if value of snapshot controlled slider is changed from other source, maybe automation or pattern command would override, but there is similar problem with all other modulation devices because none of them work relative so I guess that is not any problem.
Maybe it would be kickass to have also ability to morph from whatever current state of tracks effects are to some snapshot, like having it take a temporary snapshot and using it as reference for that once, so that you could always morph to specific state of effects whatever had you done before. This could have its own symbol in snapshots. It would be like a parameter state variable. This would allow also to avoid stupid value jumps that couldotherwise happen when changing parameters after the morph and then morphing again. It could also be just one shot function that would morph effect in given time in lines to snapshot specified. Automated in pattern effects like xyzz, where z value would be the number of lines.
rofl
morphing feature in Polac’s VST loader.
And it won’t even work in Renoise.