Reaktor Voice Combiner }

[The Chase]

These are all over the place in ensembles...what do they do? and why would you need them? It says it takes a polyphonic signal and monofies it but why are they placed just before output?

Cheers,
Chase

[jopy]

Let's say you're hitting a basic triad; that's three distinct voices that need to be processed. You want the three distinct voices to hit your oscillators, for example, so they sound out three different notes. However, all audio outs must be combined to be heard in the end. The voice combiner takes your three note chord and makes it into a single signal. The AVC doesn't mean that your chord loses notes, it just means all the audio information is put together into a single signal.

Placing AVC's in the right places before you hit the final signal processing stage (e.g., before you get to effects units) can dramatically reduce CPU use without altering the sound because you can make all the downstream elements monophonic.

I hope that's written in a way that makes sense.

[The Chase]

nice1. Thanks

question. where would you put them on say, a typical V/A? after the oscillators? after the filter?

[Adaerus]

A good analogy for the voice combiner is the master mix buss in a mixer. The number of voices are like the channels on a mixer only that these channels cary one audio signal per voice (see voice number). When you press a bunch of notes, there are three descrete oscilators that sound at the same time (e.g. phisically one string can only generate one tone at a time).
So 3 notes at once = 3 voices at once = 3 descrete oscilators at once = three channels at once. The output connector is monophonic so it can only handle monophonic signals so you thale all those channels and buss them to to the left and/or right channels like in a mixer.

The Audio Voice Combiner is not used only for the output stage as you could see. Sometimes, as jmeier said, you'd want to process signals monophonically to save CPU. But other times you'd want the signal to stay polyphonic all the time and combine them only at the output stage.

[ew]

nice1. Thanks

question. where would you put them on say, a typical V/A? after the oscillators? after the filter?

It all depends. A lot of effects like to see a monophonic data stream, so in that case you'd put them before the effects. If you're building a string ensemble emulator or something that only uses one filter for the instrument instead of one per voice, use them before the filter. If you don't need a polyphonic stream from a certain point down in any circuit (or if the module/macro's input wants to see a mono stream), use voice combiners (there's event voice combiners as well).

ew

[lvicks]

Hi All,

Just for my understanding, how is the Voice Combiner any mathematically different than the "+" operator? I understand that in usage (inside Reaktor) the Voice Combiner can support variable number of voices, whereas the "+" operator needs to have wires corresponding to specific channel, but I'm curious if at the core the Voice Combiner is simply adding the channels.

Thanks!

[pottering]

There is a pdf named "Reaktor 5 Modules and Macros Reference English.pdf" installed with Reaktor 5 (Reaktor 6 comes with new manuals that are less detailed, for whatever reason).

pg. 734

"...
14.3 Audio Voice Combiner
Fig. 14.10 Audio Voice Combiner Module

14.3.1 Overview
The Audio Voice Combiner Module converts a Polyphonic Audio signal to a Monophonic
Audio signal by summing up all Voices.

Application
Use the Audio Voice Combiner Module to connect Polyphonic signals to Monophonic input
ports, if the sum of all Voices still serves the purpose. Instruments can only output Mono­
phonic signals, for example. This means that you need to insert an Audio Voice Combiner
Module before an Instruments outputs if you wish to send them Polyphonic Audio signals.
..."