Cytomic "The Drop" Resonant Filter

[audiouser720]

I've had The Drop for a while and love the sound, but I've been using it in pretty much the most basic way possible (static high/low passes with resonance/drive) and finally getting around to looking into the more involved stuff.

I'm having trouble getting the keytracking to work. I thought it might be a Renoise thing since tracks/instruments are wired up a little differently there but it's the same in Live. I have MIDI enabled as well as both the HP and LP in the bottom right with the dial at 100% but it seems to have no effect at all, not audibly or in the display.

I'm sure I'm probably missing something super obvious here but I've not had any luck finding it in the manual or Googling. Does anyone have any ideas please?

It works for me perfectly (Logic, Live). Are you sure that the midi routing is correct?



Watch it from 15:00 he explains how to do it (the keytracking as well).

[Mumdad]

Thanks, I had found that part of the video earlier but didn't go back far enough to see the routing - realise the issue was that I had the monitoring on 'auto'

Problem solved, at least! Seems there are a couple of ways in Renoise, might just be easiest to map the built-in keytracker there I think.

[andy-cytomic]

I've had The Drop for a while and love the sound, but I've been using it in pretty much the most basic way possible (static high/low passes with resonance/drive) and finally getting around to looking into the more involved stuff.

I'm having trouble getting the keytracking to work. I thought it might be a Renoise thing since tracks/instruments are wired up a little differently there but it's the same in Live. I have MIDI enabled as well as both the HP and LP in the bottom right with the dial at 100% but it seems to have no effect at all, not audibly or in the display.

I'm sure I'm probably missing something super obvious here but I've not had any luck finding it in the manual or Googling. Does anyone have any ideas please?

It sounds like you've done exactly the right thing. Only remaining thing is to send some midi to the plugin from the DAW. You will need to manually route the a midi channel to the plugin, and send some notes. Here are a few renoise forum posts on the topic:

https://forum.renoise.com/t/sending-mid ... ugin/47691
https://forum.renoise.com/t/sending-mid ... fect/49658
https://forum.renoise.com/t/sending-mid ... ible/47082

[Mumdad]

Thanks Andy, could well be useful being able to have the tracking under direct note control independently of an instrument but I reckon mapping the Renoise keytracker to those parameters is probably enough for my brain to handle at the moment

[andy-cytomic]

I've released a new build of The Drop, nothing major just a few little fixes. For anyone having trouble with authorisations re-triggering (different machine id's being generated for the same machine), especially on Big Sur and Catalina, then this build will help. I've also updated the way the trial version works so people that saved settings in a song can't lose them if the plugin later on isn't authorised, the plugin will just return exactly the previous saved state until authorised, which is a much better approach.

With the new, much more reliable, machine id that is generated everyone will need to re-authorise with this build, sorry. I've cleared everyone's authorisation counts back to zero so everyone has a clean slate.

www.cytomic.com/drop
v1.6.6 (16 January 2020)
• New: Changed trial limitations to only save when authorised, instead of only loading when authorised.
• Fixed: Prevented data loss when loading and saving songs when plugin is not authorised. If the plugin is authorised, and saves data to a song, then the plugin becomes un-authorised (eg new when loading on a new machine), the plugin will still load the saved data from the song, and save that exact same data back to the song so settings won’t be lost.
• Fixed: improved machine id generation on macOS and Windows
• Fixed: labels on bottom row of LFO2 controls are now in the correct order

[gentleclockdivider]

The bug that I mentioned a few months ago is still present in 1.6.6
When setting the env. to trig (input is main ) so it creates an env from the (audio) input signal ( NOT an envelope follower ) and controlling cutoff , it sometimes doesn't give a full modulation .
The input is a full sustained synth sound
Here's an audio example and screenshot of the resulting output , indicating where the filter env. was not fully applied
Topic on the G.S. forum
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/product ... in-46.html
https://app.box.com/s/jb0ntq9gadcu9ecp3dbu5xbyysj46ugy

[andy-cytomic]

The bug that I mentioned a few months ago is still present in 1.6.6
When setting the env. to trig (input is main ) so it creates an env from the (audio) input signal ( NOT an envelope follower ) and controlling cutoff , it sometimes doesn't give a full modulation .
The input is a full sustained synth sound
Here's an audio example and screenshot of the resulting output , indicating where the filter env. was not fully applied
Topic on the G.S. forum
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/product ... in-46.html
https://app.box.com/s/jb0ntq9gadcu9ecp3dbu5xbyysj46ugy

Sorry the bug is still there. Can you please bounce / render the synth to a short audio loop and send it to me? support@cytomic.com

[andy-cytomic]

Ahh, the env is in trig mode, which has a bunch of stuff going on to try and trigger reliably at any volume level. I'll see what I can do, but I'm also mindful of not breaking peoples projects if I change the detection code. One possible workaround would be to trigger the envelope via midi, and create a midi track of 16th notes to trigger the envelope exactly and send that midi to The Drop.

[gentleclockdivider]

Yes , the envelope is in trig mode
I love using the drop just as an insert on a full sustained sound , since trig mode creates an envelope we can essentially use it as a synth
Yep I am aware of using midi trigger but that kinda kills the workflow , sine I need an additional midi channel to trigger the drop
It's not so much of a problem and I remember you said it was not an easy task to get it 100% right

[andy-cytomic]

Yes , the envelope is in trig mode
I love using the drop just as an insert on a full sustained sound , since trig mode creates an envelope we can essentially use it as a synth
Yep I am aware of using midi trigger but that kinda kills the workflow , sine I need an additional midi channel to trigger the drop
It's not so much of a problem and I remember you said it was not an easy task to get it 100% right

Another option is to automate the Trig button for the env you're using.

(edit: Env1 Trig, or Env2 Trig are the parameter names to automate, which you can use like velocity on the upward rising edge, and set the source to Manual to ignore triggering from the incoming audio)

[andy-cytomic]

Also it looks like the triggering difference happens to be exactly the same as your loop length, every 15 notes, so I suspect your software may be sending some sort of reset to the plugin, which will reset the baseline loudness that triggering is relative to (part of the logic that gives consistent triggering not matter the overall loudness of the loop), which will cause every 15th note to have a slightly different amplitude from the others until the loudness detection settles.

[andy-cytomic]

Sorry the bug is still there. Can you please bounce / render the synth to a short audio loop and send it to me? support@cytomic.com

I tried to reproduce the issue but couldn't. Can you please send me through the bounced dry input you are using? I think it's going to be to do with the length of your notes. Try making the note length shorter, and also possibly use a faster release time as well. There needs to be slightly more gap between the notes to reliably trigger from audio alone at 110 bpm 1/16th note. I would highly recommend just triggering the envelope via the Env1/2 Trig parameter, as this will work at any speed you want, and you can also draw in different velocities via the automation height.

[gentleclockdivider]

I could be totally wrong about this one , but lfo set to beat mode 2 is the only mode where the lfo restarts together with the host , but the lfo's tempo is not synced when the host bpm is adjusted
It only functions correctly ( no double triggerering when host is 120 bpm)
When modulating by lfo 2 set to sync 1/8 note ( beat 2 ) ,so that lfo is resetted to the host
The next cycle is double triggering ( you can cearly hear this i the supplied audio file ) , spread is set to 0 degrees , host is 100 bpm
For the bug to be reproduced correctly , the lfo should be set to 8 or 16 steps , only utitilising the first step to be an exponetial curve ( assymetrie 100 , negative curve ) , the other steps shoud be flat
Tried in both renoise and reaper

See screenshot , lfo 2 is modulating shift , the lfo waveform is just and exponential decaying curve

Edit , bug also happens when lfo is set to lower steps (4 ) and rate 1/4 it is just less noticeable
https://app.box.com/s/qwdpctwynjn3adqcnunbhzg9xm6a1pvl
here's another example
https://app.box.com/s/rpxayziqj87kpstnhqnz62x1byw3uisr

[dematy]

i love it

[andy-cytomic]

I could be totally wrong about this one , but lfo set to beat mode 2 is the only mode where the lfo restarts together with the host , but the lfo's tempo is not synced when the host bpm is adjusted
It only functions correctly ( no double triggerering when host is 120 bpm)
When modulating by lfo 2 set to sync 1/8 note ( beat 2 ) ,so that lfo is resetted to the host
The next cycle is double triggering ( you can cearly hear this i the supplied audio file ) , spread is set to 0 degrees , host is 100 bpm
For the bug to be reproduced correctly , the lfo should be set to 8 or 16 steps , only utitilising the first step to be an exponetial curve ( assymetrie 100 , negative curve ) , the other steps shoud be flat
Tried in both renoise and reaper

See screenshot , lfo 2 is modulating shift , the lfo waveform is just and exponential decaying curve

Edit , bug also happens when lfo is set to lower steps (4 ) and rate 1/4 it is just less noticeable
https://app.box.com/s/qwdpctwynjn3adqcnunbhzg9xm6a1pvl
here's another example
https://app.box.com/s/rpxayziqj87kpstnhqnz62x1byw3uisr

Thanks for spotting this major bug in the bpm sync of the LFOs. No BPM information was being sent to the LFOs since I was checking to the wrong variable to see if modulation was active. I've fixed the issue and will release an update tomorrow.

There is one other little thing noticed that I may want to change as well which perhaps everyone can help chip in with what they think is the most useful behaviour. Beat 2 mode jumps to the new phase when there is a mismatch between the current LFO beat time and the song phase, so all good there. Beat 1 mode is meant to smoothly ramp up or down the rate until the phase of the LFO matches that of the song for the new beat synced time. This works great if the song phase continues to increase, but if you place a loop on the timeline then the song phase jumps backwards when it loops. So what is most useful for Beat 1 mode which is meant to be smooth?

a) Ramp the LFO phase smoothly to the newly reset song phase (current behaviour)
b) Jump the LFO phase so it immediately matches the newly reset song phase

Please note that this is only an issue if the loop length of the DAW is not an integer multiple of the beat time of the LFO, so for example a 4 bar loop beginning at the start of the song with 1/8d beat time of the LFO will play fine the first pass, but when the loop jumps back to the start of the song you either have some a few wrong beats then it's back on track, or a a discontinuity and jump to the right beat straight away.