[Solved] Volume Automation With Vsti's Problem

Hi there! I’m a new user of Renoise, but not of tracker like sequencing (having used several trackers and tracker like synthesizers on the Amiga in the past (f.i. Future Composer <3)).

Worth noting before I describe my problem is that I’m in no way schooled in music terminology so bare with me if I describe something wrongly or in a weird way ;).

I’m planning a kind of personal paradigm shift by starting to use mainly VSTi’s instead of sampled instruments, and considering my background Renoise looks to be the best candidate for this. Thus, my first project consists solely of VSTi’s. Now on to the problem:

I’m trying to use volume envelopes/automation using the automation editor together with my VSTi’s. Everything works fine and dandy as long as I use the instruments monophonically. As soon as I want to use them in polyphony, a problem arises. If I use the instrument on a separate track, Renoise seems to be using the volume envelope assigned to the previous track.

If indeed the automation envelopes are on a per-track basis, this behavior would’ve been expected in a second note column, but not on a different track. Due to a sub-standard mixing environment I haven’t tried this with other types of envelopes, but could this issue cover them too?

Am I doing something wrong?

I would’ve posted this in the beginners section, but I just found the behavior peculiar enough to candidate being here :).

Cheers!

this is a known limitation of VST instruments and there is nothing you can do other than using VST aliases if you really want to use separate effects on the same VST instrument, since the output of each note of a plugin instrument cannot be separated from the other and comes into single output channels. VST aliasing works as long as the instrument you are using is multitimbral (i.e.: has more than one output channel).

also read about plugin routing.

in a nutshell, you are free to put VST notes wherever you want, but each resulting channel output will always be redirected to a single track; with plugin routing, you can decide to which track it will be redirected.

as long as you can, you are encouraged to use multicolumn tracks instead of more tracks for the same instrument

Thank you very much for your tips, you rock :D! As it happens, the current VSTi was multitimbral so I managed to achieve what I’ve been trying to do for several days now (crossfading) by creating a VST alias with a cloned instrument on a separate track. By grouping the two tracks I can easily keep track of (pun unintended) my instrument(s) without the confusion of separate tracks.

Do you have any tips on a way to be able to do some volume mixing with separate VST aliases (since the volume gauge seems to be linked to the ‘host’ VSTi)? I can always do the volume mixing in the VSTi gui directly, but it would be nice and less cumbersome to be able to do all mixing in one place.

each alias receives CC MIDI messages separately; usually, VST (and MIDI) instruments responds to volume messages on MIDI CC #7, so you should be able to send CC#7 messages to each alias separately as they were two different instruments.

if sending CC#7 messages on one alias also changes volume for the other, than this is a limitation of the specific VST instrument you are using.

there are several ways to send messages to VST instruments; the more immediate is using pattern commands: see here

  
not ins vol pan comm  
--- 01 -- M0 077F  
  

the above example sends 255 (maximum value) to CC#07 to instrument 01

assuming you have two aliases on instruments 01 and 02, you can set full volume for 01 and silence for 02 with these commands:

  
not ins vol pan comm  
--- 01 -- M0 077F  
--- 02 -- M0 0700