Long time listener, first time caller.Diva version: REV 8791, 1.4.3, VST3, 64-bit
Host: Ableton Live Suite 10.1, build 2019-05-14
OS: Windows 10 Home, 64-bit
I'm trying to design a patch where the sound pans from left to right based on the position of the note on the keyboard. Ideally, I'd like it to pan from left to right over just a small range of keys - say, 2 octaves.
While I can of course instantiate multiple copies, pan them accordingly (in Diva or in the DAW) and split notes into separate MIDI tracks as if they were multiple monophonic synthesizers, I'd rather do as much in Diva itself as possible. What I want to know is: is my reasoning correct, and is it possible?
In ACE, I would use the Mapping Generator and route it directly to Pan.
Here's my approach.
Open up Diva
Init the preset
Switch off all oscillators but the first
Set Filter cutoff wide open so I can hear what I'm doing
First, a small sanity check.
Diva has a Pan Mod source which is by default set to LFO2. Turning it up gives a pleasant tremolo-ish effect, but the modulation amount is not very extreme. In Live's little VU meters (which are of course not perfect), the most extreme position with the Triangle wave enabled (lowest rate at 1/1) looks like this:
https://imgur.com/pVwYUsI The Square Hi-Lo is much more extreme - L and R pans drop to completely zero at the lowest rate.
However, it wasn't about LFOs; it was about keytracking. When I change Pan Mod's source to Keyfollow, I expect that the sound pans from left to right depending on which note I play on the keyboard.
This works. At the G8 note, Live's VUs show this: but I would've liked that the panning would be more extreme in two ways:
- pan the sound all the way to the right instead of just halfway
- pan the sound all the way to the right at a lower key than G8
While the pivot point of E2 (according to the manual) is not changeable, it's something I can live with - I'll just have to tranpose everything accordingly.
I am assuming that keyfollow is a value that linearly increases/decreases depending on the distance of the pivot point.
Luckily, Diva has a set of modifiers that allow some maths.
Approach 1: use Add as a modulation source for and enter Keyfollow + Keyfollow.
The sound is now panned all the way to the right at C6 already. However, my assumption of Keyfollow's linearity seems to be wrong; on note B5, the signal on the left is already very strong; on Live's VU meters playing B5 shows the signal at half the strenght of what the signal on the right is. Going down the keyboard suggests that this results in a curve that looks more like x^3 than 2x. At G#0, the sound is panned all the way to the left, and E3 seems to be the pivot note with the oscillator set to 8'.
Approach 2: Use Multiply to apply gain to KeyFollow
This means that I need a constant value to multiply. I can use the Voice Map modulator for this; just turn each trimmer all the way up. Some experimenting shows that Voice Map stays under unity gain, but no worries: I can just use Add for this and do VoiceMap + VoiceMap, then in Multiply choose Add * KeyFollow.
While this retains the (seeming) linearity, it's still not enough. If the constant value in Multiply could be made large enough, some kind of value clipping would (hopefully) occur that would just flatline keyfollow and give me a curve that would resemble the one in ACE's Mapping Generator.
Approach 3: Finding a bigger constant value
Since the sanity check showed that the LFO2 Square Hi-Lo could generate some pretty extreme panning, perhaps we could set it to a really slow rate, restart at gate, and multiply this value with Keyfollow, or a derived signal.
This, sadly, also doesn't work as intended. The effect is not any stronger than in Approach 2.
So:
- are my assumptions correct (re: KeyFollow linearity, generating constant values, clipping)
- is there a way to do this that I have missed?
If there's no way, it's not a dealbreaker: workarounds are available in various forms. I also understand and appreciate that Diva does not have to do everything for everyone in exhaustive detail; that's what Zebra's for
