Hey @kims
I want to zoom out a bit, and offer you some advice. You’re clearly very passionate about sound design and have good ideas for sounds you want to make, and the H9000 is capable of what you want to do. If we can help you out along the way (my thanks to Puppeteer, who is generously offering you quite a bit of advanced level VSig support here) and help you get where you are going, great!
The learning curve is steeper than I think you are expecting it to be, and the interface for VSig is a step lower than you are expecting it to be. For what it is worth, yes this is not easy stuff to be dealing with, I want to acknowledge that signal processing and sound design are not something you can just pick up and run with; it’s easier to train for a marathon than learn how filters are constructed. It challenged me, it challenged all of my colleagues (both internal to Eventide and outside of it), and it continues to challenge me to this day.
So my advice is twofold: spend some time learning VSig as a tool (what it is capable of, and how you can do that), and get yourself started with simpler problems before tackling more complex ones. As an addendum to that last point, learn to define your challenges and problems first before trying to tackle them – this is a blend of the two points I have to make here, and I believe the biggest source of your frustrations.
Another source of the learning curve’s slope, is learning the features of the language. For what it’s worth, this is common for any programming language – I’ve spent MANY a week learning how to solve a problem in programming, only to learn someone else has a single function or module that solves the problem for me already. I expect you’ll find a similar initial frustration with VSig, and as you learn the library and terminology it will get easier for you.
Reaktor – a well built product in its own right – is a bit higher level than what VSig offers you. VSig is closer to Max, albeit lower level than that even. ALL audio effects algorithms are comprised of three fundamental operations: adds, multiplies, and delays. Anything you can dream of – delays, flangers, filters, reverbs, synthesizers even – are just a combination of those three fundamental properties.
To answer a few of your questions more directly, before moving on to suggested “next steps”:
- You can add more inputs to mixn. You are looking for the ninputs specifier on the module. If you add the module to VSig then click on it, a right-hand panel will open, and you can add more inputs.
- For routing one input to multiple outputs, either chain the output of the mixn module to multiple inputs of new modules, or consider using crossout or audiomux.
- The names of these inputs are, in effect, functional arguments to the module itself. If you want to have it displayed on the H9000 differently, add some interface to it and connect that interface’s userobject out to a menupage, then connect the menupage to the desired adc-kids output.
- You can connect the output of an adder to both adc1-out and adc-2 out to make it, in a way, “stereo out” – you are not restricted to connecting an output to just one input location, only the reverse (an input can only take one connection).
A quick thought… VSig is such a blank canvas, that the notions of mono and stereo don’t even make sense yet. You have by default two inputs, and two outputs; how you wire them up is what decides dual mono, stereo, mid-side, etc. You can add or remove inputs and outputs too, depending on what you want to do. Much of what you’re discussing – and this, I think, stems from your expectation – comes from a higher-level abstraction of what modules are capable of and how to use them. You gotta build all of that stuff yourself; this is possible with some clever routing and VSigging, but you need to adjust your thinking to be lower level and learn the library a bit more.
I suggest you start by learning a few basic building blocks: build a mono gain with a knob you can use to control it. Then think about how it could be made stereo, and the possible ways you could route for simplicity or complexity. Next, move up to a more complicated system like a single delay with time control, then add feedback. Once you learn to add modulation to a delay (there are many delay modules, learn why you’d use one over another), you’re probably at a good point to start exploring the patches already in H9000 to get an idea of how certain classes of effects are built and how some complicated problems are solved. This will also give you an idea of how to build an interface.
I know this is a tall order, but trust me if you stick with it I know you’ll find that the sky is the limit and you’ll build effects and sounds that you are very proud of.
