FabFilter User Forum
A feature loss in Twin 2?
Twin 2 is amazing -- a brilliant GUI, the familiar, glorious FabFilter sound (with welcome additions like a third Osc, RingMod, and onboard FX).
However, one nice thing from the original Twin seems to have been lost. In version 1, it was possible to have fixed random values per note. (Frederik describes the technique here: www.fabfilter.com/topic.php?topic=498 .) Unfortunately, I can't achieve this in Twin 2. A random-step XLFO with zero frequency remains "frozen" across multiple notes (no fresh random value is generated for each new note).
I've tried tricks such as randomizing the phase of the zero-frequency XLFO, or using an envelope to kick the frequency up to a nonzero value momentarily. Strangely, these cause the XLFO to produce fluctuating audio-rate noise (in spite of its zero-frequency setting).
Anyway, I'd be really happy if you can point out a way to achieve random values per note in version 2 -- or if you can restore this feature ASAP!
Hi PaulSC!
... I just tested this, and you're sort of right :-p The XLFO's are implemented in such a way that they don't calculate a new step random value at midi trigger. There is a good workaround however:
* Open the 'Clean' preset and add an XLFO, and load its 'Sample & Hold' section preset. Set its frequency to around 20 Hz.
* Now set up the Main EG to fully modulate the XLFO Frequency inverted. This way, as soon as you play a note, the XLFO frequency goes all the way down to zero.
* Now modulate the Master Tune with the XLFO and voila: you can play random notes!
We will think about 'fixing' this behaviour in the XLFOs! Thanks for reporting it.
Cheers,
Thanks for the work-around, Floris! Works pretty well, although for some reason if I play chords, all simultaneous notes get the same amount of offset -- so I get a random transposition of the whole chord, rather than a chord composed of randomly-transposed notes. That's actually kind of nice in some cases, but not always what I'd want (e.g. if I were random-panning, I'd want the notes of a chord distributed randomly across the stereo field, not bunched together). So a "fix" at some point would be nice.
But to return to my opening statement: Twin 2 is a spectacular achievement, and I know I'm going to enjoy working with it!
Sorry for the multiple posts, but just wanted to note that your workaround is actually giving me a new random value per legato group, rather than per note or per chord.
Hi Paul,
This is correct, and is caused by the fact that the XLFO is global (not per-voice), so it can't generate random values for each voice separately.
This would have been the same in Twin 1, and I just tried the random technique in Twin 1, but couldn't get it to work, strangely enough...
Cheers,
It's true, the technique described in the other thread doesn't seem to work with version 1 -- so this isn't a "lost" feature, it's just a request for a new feature.
If the XLFOs can be made switchable between their current (global) behavior and a new per-note behavior, that would be great. But if that's too CPU-intensive, or incompatible with the underlying architecture, would you consider adding a "FixedRand" mode to the MIDI mod source block, which would supply a fixed random value per note. I'd really love to have this capability, one way or another...
Cheers!
Paul