More CV --> direct control of parameters

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starship
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30 Dec 2018

I see a couple topics that relate to this, and it could be done in multiple ways. Here's 3 that I can think of. :)

a mega combinator with way more CV inputs and an unlimited programmer, so that one could wire up massive CV to widgets.

a built-in MIDI loopback option for use with the External MIDI Instrument and/or a successor that's designed for more/easier CV->remote.

something more built-in to Reason that's akin to how CV->VSTs work.

etc.


Basically some way of ideally making combinator patches but at least songs that can wire up massive amounts of CV directly to knobs and whatnot. Combi patches either with a new combinator or a more streamlined CV->remote path would be great. It can be done right now with a bunch of External MIDI Instrument devices and using remote, but it's kind of a pain for a lot of CV, and it doesn't translate as well as it could when it's inside a RE's patch folder or refill.

Aside from the obvious reasons for this, I'm making a RE(s) that would really benefit from this. :)
:geek:

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Loque
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30 Dec 2018

I am not a big fan of uber complex stuff right the way. Complexity is in most cases a sign of bad design. But there might be situations where you need more complex things, but this should grow with the skill, knowledge and requirements of the user. In other words, the current Combinator is too complex for a lot of ppl and too limited for others. The solution is a dynamically change which can be easily introduced by the user itself. That means, if i want a new button, i add one. If a need a new CV, i add it and so on...this is called customizing and a pretty old technique.

One way for better connections could be some kind of data cable. AFAIK this is actually only possible with a limited workaround where you use CV for data transport in a dedicated audio channel. The max data could be 64x64bit. Not sure if this is allowed anyway...
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starship
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30 Dec 2018

Yeah, CV on audio lines would give a lot of bandwidth. Definitely thought about doing that on my own devices someday. You'd get about 64x the data on a cable (or more if it's packed further, like 2-3x that). It's kinda on my eventual PSDN todo possibility list, or at least was at one point. :)

Not a bad idea on the combinator. Basically I'd like something that gives as much CV access to a RE as VSTs now have inside Reason, but not just modding, actually moving the knobs.

And I really believe in adding mod inputs to my devices.. :) but being able to directly control the knobs/etc. is way more useful with what I'm making right now.

Like if there was a way of stacking player-like devices onto any RE, each of which would act like a combinator, having at least 4 CV inputs and the ability to point them directly to the knobs/etc. And if all of that could be thrown inside a combinator to be saved as a patch. Then one could control as many as one wants.

I'm serious about eventually wanting like 64+ CV->remote mappings. I'd like to be able to fully connect CV to all of a device's remotes/automatables. I don't really care how, but I'd like it to not be a total pain for users and to be self-contained within Reason. Maybe something that I can include in the patch folder with different REs already wired up like that. I could sorta do that with a MIDI loopback and the External MIDI Instrument, but it requires the user to be running the loopback and I think they'd still have to assign all of the remotes. Actually not totally sure about that, should have experimented a bit more. :). But even if it works, it'll be a crap ton of those devices.

So that's doable, and I'll figure out something along those lines in the meantime. But I figure aside from why I want this for future devices, there's a ton of other reasons users would want it.

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Loque
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30 Dec 2018

I am not sure where you wann go, but i understand you want to control parameters with CV. Fine. That is what i want too, but in most cases the values vary from parameter to parameter. I found myself often to have at least a scale or a envelope shape for my CV values. So a LFO is scaled by a envelope before it modulates a parameter. The bad thing in general atm with CV is, that it is not audio-rate. Just imagine you have PW, frequencey for FM/AM/RM, pitch, mix or pan you want to control with a modulator. The new Complex-1 one shows, how audio-rat emodulation sounds on such parameters. VK-2 was another good example. Thor could do this in the past, but the audio rate was sstill not enough, so COmplex-1 got oversampling.

Personally CV is for modulation imo and not for (remote) control. The thing with the Combinator is, that it should act like a instrument or fx, which hides the complexity inside but let you control a few things and in THIS point 4 knobs and 4 buttons with 10 slots each and only 4 CVs is just not enough. If i have a mixer inside the 10 slots are easily filled. Having CV to control those parameter is just a workaround for the Combinators limitations and in THAT situation you wish that the device itself would have more CV in/out. It would be awsome from time to time to "open" the "case" of a RE and outlay a few new cables for more input/output control. But i guess this is where Reaktor and all that stuff comes in place and NOT Reason.
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starship
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30 Dec 2018

Yeah, but you can do it with VSTs now. You can assign as much CV to VSTs as you want, right?

I mean the first time I ever pointed CV at remote with a MIDI loopback was a few days ago. I hear you on normally CV is for modding. But for the particular thing I want to do, which I'm being kinda tight-lipped about, modding is OK but actually moving the knobs is far better. If a combinator type device allowed us to connect unlimited CV directly to the widgets, that'd be great for all of us.

Re: audio rate CV.. it's a lot more bandwidth. I mean having CV the way it is allows a crap ton of CV vs. if they were all at audio rate. But I don't see why RE devs can't just put audio mod inputs to use actual audio with, and then have "CV" devices that can send it via audio. I mean it's impressive, if a device can do it, because it's kinda intense cpu-wise, but for a lot of stuff, the current rate is good enough and easy enough to do. There's a lot I wouldn't want to try modding at that rate b/c the calculations would be way too intense to do 64x a batch.

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Loque
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30 Dec 2018

starship wrote:
30 Dec 2018
Yeah, but you can do it with VSTs now. You can assign as much CV to VSTs as you want, right?
Not unlimited, but the way it can be assign is pretty cool. A few others mentioned that way for the programmer matrix in the Combinator. It would be much easier with drag&drop, shift+drag or "learn" to programm the mod matrix in the Combinator. And just make it scrollable.....

The different between CV->remote and normal CV is quite simple, it removes the ability to set the base parameter for the CV directly in the GUI of the device. You need to go into the programmer and change it there.

For a "real" view and more knobs, buttons and sliders a custom display need to be used for the Combinator. Sadly the Combinator cannot be replaced by other devs, since we already had a much better one - i am sure.
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starship
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:)... honestly, I have barely used VSTs, like once. I'm a RE kinda guy...

Yeah, setting limits in the programmer is great. I mean the whole reason why I bring up remote is b/c I think that's the way I have to do it, and I'd rather not. :) But it might be easier for the props to facilitate that? I dunno. Lots of options.

But at the same time, the RE(s) I'm working on can set those limits, though not as explicitly as seeing the actual values in the combi programmer.

Yeah, I'd also like to be able to duplicate mods in the combinator to other devices, setting up mods for one device and then just applying that to all or some of the other devices of the same type.

Hmm... yeah, I like what you're saying about a new combinator. I think it's a great idea! Or something like I said, a player-like combi that you can attach to a combinator or device that adds the same functionality. Even just the combinator code in some kind of player-wrapper that will attach to any device, re-skinned maybe. I mean that'd be fairly doable. Hint, hint. :) pretty please, etc. :)

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Loque
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30 Dec 2018

starship wrote:
30 Dec 2018
Yeah, I'd also like to be able to duplicate mods in the combinator to other devices, setting up mods for one device and then just applying that to all or some of the other devices of the same type.
Oh yea...please...
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30 Dec 2018

hehe.

Re: player-like combis, I really think that'd be an easy answer to this... Instead of making some kind of variable-sized combi, just have small units one can add to get as much control as one needs.

And make a few variants: the works, a normal combi-type; just knobs or buttons, fader sliders, a pad, etc; just CV-in with labels on the front. So then one could add a few choice controls into a combinator patch for some extra control over everything. One could add like 16 CV-only that are 1U when the programmer is folded, and have say 64 direct CV to parameters going.

Maybe even one designed to "mod" parameters, changing the value of the widget without "moving" it. It also seems like something they could open up in the SDK like they did with players. Make a whole new "combi" class of devices with a few basics by the props to start with.

That'd be kinda badass. Maybe even really badass. :) :)

remo101
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30 Dec 2018

Something I would really like to see from a device like this would be the ability to convert CV to automation and record it into an automation lane. This way I could record a bunch of fancy LFO patterns produced by CV RE's and then chop up the parts and sequence them really easily.

I've done something like this a few times using MIDI loopback and an external MIDI device and found it to be a very productive kinda workflow, but it would definitely be nice to have the ability to do it "out of the box" without the need for an external MIDI program running.

Also - the CV input to VST pseudo-combinators is just really nice and easy to use so it seems kinda 'sad' that we can't do that with RE's which are designed specifically to work in Reason.

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30 Dec 2018

remo101 wrote:
30 Dec 2018
Something I would really like to see from a device like this would be the ability to convert CV to automation and record it into an automation lane. This way I could record a bunch of fancy LFO patterns produced by CV RE's and then chop up the parts and sequence them really easily.

I've done something like this a few times using MIDI loopback and an external MIDI device and found it to be a very productive kinda workflow, but it would definitely be nice to have the ability to do it "out of the box" without the need for an external MIDI program running.

Also - the CV input to VST pseudo-combinators is just really nice and easy to use so it seems kinda 'sad' that we can't do that with RE's which are designed specifically to work in Reason.
You can already do that. Connect the CV to a combinator knob and record that.
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remo101
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30 Dec 2018

theshoemaker wrote:
30 Dec 2018
remo101 wrote:
30 Dec 2018
Something I would really like to see from a device like this would be the ability to convert CV to automation and record it into an automation lane. This way I could record a bunch of fancy LFO patterns produced by CV RE's and then chop up the parts and sequence them really easily.

I've done something like this a few times using MIDI loopback and an external MIDI device and found it to be a very productive kinda workflow, but it would definitely be nice to have the ability to do it "out of the box" without the need for an external MIDI program running.

Also - the CV input to VST pseudo-combinators is just really nice and easy to use so it seems kinda 'sad' that we can't do that with RE's which are designed specifically to work in Reason.
You can already do that. Connect the CV to a combinator knob and record that.
Oh wow - I knew I could control combi knobs via CV, but I didn't realise I could record it as automation ... cool!

OK - I just tried it out and I couldn't get that to work. I mean I can record combi-knob movements made by hand BUT that doesn't seem to include the added values coming in through the CV inputs ... maybe I'm doing something wrong though?!?

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starship
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30 Dec 2018

Doesn't work for me either! I thought duh, that should work! :) It doesn't seem to work for both CV and the combi knobs. You can record the combi knob, you can record another device's knob sending CV into the combi, but the target doesn't actually record.

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starship
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30 Dec 2018

You can use the CV->External MIDI Instrument->MIDI loopback->remote to turn CV into a knob's curved automation. But IMO this general shtick should be streamlined. :)

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theshoemaker
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31 Dec 2018

remo101 wrote:
30 Dec 2018
theshoemaker wrote:
30 Dec 2018


You can already do that. Connect the CV to a combinator knob and record that.
Oh wow - I knew I could control combi knobs via CV, but I didn't realise I could record it as automation ... cool!

OK - I just tried it out and I couldn't get that to work. I mean I can record combi-knob movements made by hand BUT that doesn't seem to include the added values coming in through the CV inputs ... maybe I'm doing something wrong though?!?
viewtopic.php?t=7497444
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remo101
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31 Dec 2018

theshoemaker wrote:
31 Dec 2018
remo101 wrote:
30 Dec 2018


Oh wow - I knew I could control combi knobs via CV, but I didn't realise I could record it as automation ... cool!

OK - I just tried it out and I couldn't get that to work. I mean I can record combi-knob movements made by hand BUT that doesn't seem to include the added values coming in through the CV inputs ... maybe I'm doing something wrong though?!?
viewtopic.php?t=7497444
Yeah that works BUT it is still a convoluted way to achieve something which is essentially very simple: I mean now we're talking about converting CV to audio so we get the ability to sequence pseudo-CV clips which are actually audio clips, which we then have to convert back to CV via Thor. While that works it's a bit over-complicated and has some limitations (ie you can't use all the usual editing tools to modify the recorded CV output as you can in an automation lane).

I'm really thinking about 'convenience' here rather than the simple ability to achieve a result: I can already use MIDI loopback to do what I wanna do and it works fine, but I think that CV is kinda like Reason's USP and so it should (IMHO) be something which is a total cinch to achieve.

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Loque
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31 Dec 2018

Might be a stupid question, but is it possible for a Player to record CV as Velocity (or other suitable data) by just converting it? It should be possible to record it as Gate or Note, but i am not sure if the resolution is good enough.
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remo101
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31 Dec 2018

Loque wrote:
31 Dec 2018
Might be a stupid question, but is it possible for a Player to record CV as Velocity (or other suitable data) by just converting it? It should be possible to record it as Gate or Note, but i am not sure if the resolution is good enough.
I can't think how to do that off the top of my head, but there might be something in it (anyone else have any good ideas about which Players might be able to achieve something like this?).

However I still think it's kinda moving "off road" by introducing even more kinds of data (ie 'Player' patch data). My real wish is to smoothly bridge the gap between automation lanes and CV generated LFO's/envelopes (ie the 2 different ways to generate control curves) because ....

The 'best' (IMHO) way to create curve patterns is by fiddling with knobs and dials on various RE's. .... But the 'best' (again IMHO) way to pull those curve-patterns together into a complete song-sequence is by editing automation-lane curves and clips....

... But maybe this is just me wanting everything to support my own personal workflow - I dunno how many other people would like this approach .... is it just me or do others like the sound of this way of working?

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starship
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02 Jan 2019

remo101 wrote:
31 Dec 2018
However I still think it's kinda moving "off road" by introducing even more kinds of data (ie 'Player' patch data). My real wish is to smoothly bridge the gap between automation lanes and CV generated LFO's/envelopes (ie the 2 different ways to generate control curves) because ....

The 'best' (IMHO) way to create curve patterns is by fiddling with knobs and dials on various RE's. .... But the 'best' (again IMHO) way to pull those curve-patterns together into a complete song-sequence is by editing automation-lane curves and clips....

... But maybe this is just me wanting everything to support my own personal workflow - I dunno how many other people would like this approach .... is it just me or do others like the sound of this way of working?
I think it's a good idea! I think you're right about needing to smoothly bridge that gap, so CV can truly do anything. It really expands on the possibilities with Reason.

I also think that, humbly, the idea about player-like combi-like wrappers is a great way to solve this. Make combi-controlled params automatable, and give us another combi-like player-like device that we can add as many as we'd like, adding as much combinator programming as we want. Both to individual devices and combis themselves (including both in the combi patch). And do a few variants. :) Maybe open it up in the SDK, maybe not.

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