New and Improved uQuant V6 (Same Notes - Less Fat!)

stschoen · Screen Shot 2018-02-09 at 12.05.26 PM.png

While I was working on the Sandcastle demo I discovered it wouldn't run on my iPad. I was a bit surprised to find that the uQuant note quantizer was big part of the problem. I've spent the last couple of days fooling around to see if I could simplify things. This is the result. I've managed to reduce the CPU load by about %30. I think it's debugged :) I pulled the Encoder out since it adds to the load. Delete it if you don't need it.

RobertSyrett

New colors as well I see! Ty for the upgrade, I only use the uQuant in every patch!

stschoen

The spiffy new colors are the result of simplifying the logic for the lights. Instead switching blue off and green on for the active note. I turn blue on low so you can see the keyboard, green on about halfway for the notes that are in key and red on full for the active note. I also use the uQuant almost every patch so it was worth the work. The new binary to decimal and decimal to binary converters are are definitely more efficient. The revised quantizer logic was difficult to get right. I didn’t want to give up the feature where it outputs the closest note to the input rather than the lower or higher one. Hopefully Taylor will do some further optimization on the expression node and I won’t need to do the same to too many other modules. I really prefer using the expression node rather than the add and multiply where it makes sense.

RobertSyrett

The expression node is the best, agreed. Well thanks for the upgrade nonetheless. If you wanted to, you could even remove transpose function. I can't think of a time where I have used it in ages since it doesn't update the display.

And I'm not joking when I way I use it in every patch. Being able to generate random and exact scales with one value is just too handy.

stschoen

RobertSyrett

@biminiroad These CPU tips might be worth including in documentation.

viilis

I was trying to think up a way of modifying the scale converter module so that I could input chords from a keyboard. Just wanted to hit a 4 voice chord to enter a new scale. Didn`t really get very far... Any ideas on how to approach this?

RobertSyrett · Screen Shot 2018-03-24 at 5.44.15 PM.png

That's an interesting question. I think I was able to make a hack to my Quad Note Meter to display a decimal code for the STS V6. Let me know if it meets your needs. The one bug I can't work out is that it always has 4 notes with the way polyphony currently works with midi. So no triads possible, sorry.

On a side note, you might try just stuffing some notes into a mono to quad node and transpose it. That's what I do when I want a specific chord in a sequence.

edit: added a demo with a use case.

edit2: Remember to clamp your keyboard's Hz output, as 0 Hz will produce white chords when converting to the 1/o signal.

RobertSyrett · Screen Shot 2018-03-24 at 6.43.00 PM.png

@stschoen I think there might be a bit of a bug somewhere in the V6 overhaul of the quantizer. I'm seeing (and hearing) out of scale notes when quantizing polyphonic messages. Attached is a patch that demonstrates the behavior I am describing, hope this is helpful. I tried to piece it together but was left scratching my head.

stschoen

I’ll have a look as soon as I get a chance. I’m in Palo Alto visiting my son. Should be back late Thursday.

RobertSyrett

You are in Palo Alto, California? That's where I am!

viilis

Thanks! Didn’t get a chance to play with it much yet, but I think this is more or less exactly what I wanted! I knew there was some neat expression that would do it.

Not sure what you meant by the mono to quad node thing, though. My idea was more about being able to ’play’ the quantiser with a midi keyboard instead of just entering a chord and transposing that up and down.

Anyways - much appreciated, as always.

stschoen

It should be relatively simple to convert a poly keyboard input into a feed for the quantizer. I’m out of town at the moment but I’ll be back next week and have a look

stschoen

@RobertSyrett I see what you mean. It’s definitely outputting out of selection notes. Could be a wiring error, I’ll track it down ASAP. We went to Bananas Music in Santa Rosa today because my a son was looking for some guitar effects. We’re planning to go to Stereo World to check out their synths on Tuesday. My son just bought Ableton Suite and a Push controller so I’ve been playing with that.

RobertSyrett

@villis Ah, I think I misunderstood what you were trying to do. Glad the patch works for you :)

RobertSyrett

@stschoen Nice! Sounds like your son is setting up a pretty sweet home studio also. Send me an email if you end up back in the Peninsula and want to grab a cup of coffee.

stschoen

Love to get together! I don’t have your email so I sent you an Instagram IM

stschoen

Here’s the fixed module. I had to add some additional logic to properly handle cases where A was not in the scale.

stschoen

I’m working on a keyboard interface for the quantizer and I’m trying to decide the best way for it to work. It’s fairly simple to set it up so that the interface outputs the notes that are currently being played, but I thought it might be more useful if it latched in some way. One possibility is that it latches all played notes until you lift off all notes and then continues to latch until you play a new set. What do you think?

viilis

Great! Maybe just make a switch to toggle between the two modes? I see uses for both scenarios.

stschoen

Here’s the keyboard module. It has two modes. Unlatched (trigger off) it outputs the keys currently held down and will go to 0 when all keys are released. In latch mode it captures the notes as you hold down additional keys and will output them even after all keys are released. It resets on the next keypress. Remember that the quantizer outputs 0 with no keys down so you will always have some note present

RobertSyrett

A very nice package!

stschoen

Thanks! The latch logic could still use some work. Currently it looks at the number of keys down and resamples if it increases. I would prefer if it resampled any time a note changes but I haven’t worked out the details. I guess I need to play with it a bit to see what might be useful.

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