low VST-Paeameter Values

[Astraios]

Very low Parametervalues are needed to control the seven different 
reverbs on my Spire Synth via VST parameters. 
To be more precise, values of less than one percent, as you can see 
in the attached photo. I created an envelope with values of 
Plate 1  0,1%
Plate 2  0,2%
Hall     0,3%
Sparkles 0,4%
Ambience 0,5%
Dmension 0,6%
Aura     0,7& 
and how could you control these values with a MIDI CC (Remote Control) 
since the MIDI CC cannot be below the value 1...? Is there any other
way outside Edit-Filter Envelopes to edit this somehow?

[Wookiee]

Are they controlled by CC @Astraios? Could they be RPN or NRPN? 

MIDI CC runs from 1 to 127

RPN & NRPN go from 0 to 16,383

[Astraios]

Well, I'm trying to figure out what this value in the "Edit Node" --> Level 0.208 means exactly. It's a percentage value - the VST-Parameter percentage value, I think, and probably has nothing to do with NRPN or MIDI CC. This value goes with the envelopenode from 0-100. Spire Synth changes the reverb display when it passes through a node. More I can't say...  Thx

Edited December 2 by Astraios

[Wookiee]

2 minutes ago, Astraios said:

Well, I'm trying to figure out what this value in the "Edit Node" --> Level 0.208 means exactly. It's a percentage value - the VST-Parameter percentage value, I think, and probably has nothing to do with NRPN or MIDI CC. This value goes with the envelopenode from 0-100. More I can't say

To the best of my knowledge there are only MIDI CC, RPN & NRPN to control any parameter in a VST or hardware instrument. Its because of the value I am suggesting RPN or NRPN.

[Astraios]

That's what the Manual says...

 

[Wookiee]

Pan is referring to audio.

[Amberwolf]

i guess it depends on what exactly those vst automations are, and whether they're on the midi track or the vst audio/etc track?

 

for instance (in my very old sonar, so options are probably in different places than newer ones), if i choose to add automation for the controls on si strings, i right click in the audio track for the synth, and choose that synth in the track envelopes submenu.   then i get a dialog for all the various automatable parameters, which include in it's case the enable/disable for the whole synth, master volume / attack / decay / reverb / tone / etc, then volume and pan for each of the three insturments in the synth.

then the envelopes created are all 0%-100% for the values shown as you add nodes or drag segments around, regardless of what the actual automated item is, and what the synth internally processes that value at (for instance the transpose).   same thing if you make a node and use the properties dialog to change it instead of dragging it.  the actual value is 000.000 thru 100.000, so you have actually a pretty fine gradation in values, down to thousandths, but there isn't a way to directly see the correlation between the automation values and the synth's parameter limits or values, unless you can see it in the synth ui as you change it (some you can, some you can't, depends on the programmer's choices when creating the synth).  

 

same thing for fx; such as kerovee for it's transpose it shows just a percentage, so to know where i am transposing to i have to leave it's ui open with the nowtime on the specific spot i'm changing, so that i can watch the change in the ui and see what it's transpose control actually says. 

 

 

in midi tracks, if you insert a midi envelope, then most of them only have 0-127 values available (dragging nodes/segments or in properties dialog).  rpn/nrpn get 0-16535 (i think), etc.    

 

 

if the synth control internally corresponds to a midi event / value range, but allows automation of the 0-100% type in the audio track for it, then i would guess that the reason the synth only responds to the first few percent of the automation range is because some setting that only has 128 possible values vs the automation that can range from 000.000 to 100.000 in 0.001 increments (a hundred thousand possible values) is only a bit more than a tenth of a percent of the possible values of that automation. 

 

   for things like the rpn/nrpn midi that have 16536 possible values, that's a little more than 10 percent of the total automation range of a 0-100% envelope, so it would likely respond only to that first amount of the envelope and be maxed out past that (or would just ignore / filter out any values above that). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Astraios]

12 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

= i guess it depends on what exactly those vst automations are, and whether they're on the midi track or the vst audio/etc track? =

 

As I recently discovered, you can insert any VST entry in the Synth Rack 
into any MIDI track or audio track in the "Automation Track" window (see photo). 

Practically (but perhaps not particularly effective) you can also create a 
separate MIDI track for all or some VST entries. I didn't understand the point 
of this window for a long time...
 I noticed that then the "Parameter Choose" in the Edit filter no longer works 
properly.

 

= then the envelopes created are all 0%-100% for the values shown as you add nodes or drag segments around, regardless of what the actual automated item is, and what the synth internally processes that value at (for instance the transpose).   same thing if you make a node and use the properties dialog to change it instead of dragging it.  the actual value is 000.000 thru 100.000, so you have actually a pretty fine gradation in values, down to thousandths, but there isn't a way to directly see the correlation between the automation values and the synth's parameter limits or values, unless you can see it in the synth ui as you change it (some you can, some you can't, depends on the programmer's choices when creating the synth).  =

 

= in midi tracks, if you insert a midi envelope, then most of them only have 0-127 values available (dragging nodes/segments or in properties dialog).  rpn/nrpn get 0-16535 (i think), etc.   =

= for things like the rpn/nrpn midi that have 16536 possible values, that's a little more than 10 percent of the total automation range of a 0-100% envelope, so it would likely respond only to that first amount of the envelope and be maxed out past that (or would just ignore / filter out any values above that).  =

 

= if the synth control internally corresponds to a midi event / value range, but allows automation of the 0-100% type in the audio track for it, then i would guess that the reason the synth only responds to the first few percent of the automation range is because some setting that only has 128 possible values vs the automation that can range from 000.000 to 100.000 in 0.001 increments (a hundred thousand possible values) is only a bit more than a tenth of a percent of the possible values of that automation. =

 

In order not to lose sight of the original topic, I wonder whether you 
can insert values in the Remote Control View (see photo) under the NRPN 
or RPN input fields that then help control the VST Parameters?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

I have never seen an example anywhere of how to trigger something with NRPN/RPN in the Remote Control window. Do you know how to do this and which values I could try...

12 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 3 by Astraios

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Astraios said:

I have never seen an example anywhere of how to trigger something with NRPN/RPN

RPN/NRPN messages are part of the MIDI 1.0 standard and thus originally designed to control hardware synths. Some soft synths will have particular parameters that respond to RPN/NRPN messages (usually things that have traditionally used them like Pitch Wheel messages), but the vast majority will use the 'normalized float" values that run from 0 to 1.0 (100%). Internally these are 64-bit floating-point values offering waaaay more resolution than the thousandths of a percent that the Sonar UI presents, but that resolution is about 6 times what an RPN/NRPN running from 0 to 16535 would offer.

As pointed out, you can enter those small increments in the automation node properties dialog. Many Sonar parameters can be fine-tuned by holding Shift while dragging; unfortunately this does not seem to be implemented for moving automation nodes. This would ba good candidate for a feature request, possibly including the abillity to scale the automation display range so you could easily see what an envelope is doing when it's only varying from, say, 0 to 1%.

Finally, I'll just mention that the extremely small values you're having to use for Reverb level could probably be mitigated by lowering/shortening the Decay and raising the Damping.

[Promidi]

It should be noted that if you open the PRV of any MIDI track that is routed to any VST plugin that has automatable parameters, those automatable parameters will also be available in that MIDI track’s PRV NRPN parameter dropdown.    Curiously, the Cakewalk user guide does not mention this (not that I have found anyway) 

[Astraios]

as soon as I press the start button, Sonar freezes within half a second since I started messing around with the NRPN

I had selected rev_mode

the range is just as limited here - editing is hardly possible

 

Edited December 3 by Astraios

[Astraios]

On 12/2/2024 at 8:50 PM, Wookiee said:

Are they controlled by CC @Astraios? Could they be RPN or NRPN? 

MIDI CC runs from 1 to 127

RPN & NRPN go from 0 to 16,383

You are right - in my case, the 0-100% value of the envelope triggers a NRPN value of the synth...

[Promidi]

58 minutes ago, Astraios said:

the range is just as limited here - editing is hardly possible

Because NRPNs have such a high number of possible values (16384), any graphical method of editing NRPNs (in any DAW) will give you this issue when editing really low values. 

The values will, however, also show in the Event List View. In there you will be able to enter (or edit) specific entries. 

[Astraios]

Okay, I killed all the NRPNs in the Event List and now Sonar stops freezing 😇

[Astraios]

But still, it's all a mystery - I tried a few NRPN entries, but they don't trigger any effect, unlike the envelope track, which shows all reverb types

[Promidi]

4 minutes ago, Astraios said:

But still, it's all a mystery - I tried a few NRPN entries, but they don't trigger any effect, unlike the envelope track, which shows all reverb types

How many reverb types are there?

[Promidi]

27 minutes ago, Promidi said:

How many reverb types are there?

Scratch that , I downloaded the demo.....

Looks like the reverb types are very small NRPN values and you cannot MIDI learn the reverb type like you can other parameters.

Also, in Cakewalk’s PRV, only two values actually change the  reverb types between Plate_1 and Aura

[Wookiee]

41 minutes ago, Astraios said:

But still, it's all a mystery - I tried a few NRPN entries, but they don't trigger any effect, unlike the envelope track, which shows all reverb types

Have you established how the NRPN entries are being generated? 

I have an issue with a couple of Arturia synths dropping Sysex messages when stopping recording MIDI. 

[Astraios]

11 hours ago, Promidi said:

Scratch that , I downloaded the demo.....

Looks like the reverb types are very small NRPN values and you cannot MIDI learn the reverb type like you can other parameters.

Also, in Cakewalk’s PRV, only two values actually change the  reverb types between Plate_1 and Aura

Thanks for your efforts on my topic. It is strange, though, that the method in the first photo of the thread works smoothly and all 7 reverbs are triggered one after the other... Reveal Support already told me there is no chance triggering the Reverbs by MIDI CC.

Can the "pizmidi convertor 3" perhaps solve the problem? ♨️

""midiConverter3 - Change and convert between CC, Channel Pressure, Poly Afertouch, Program Change, Pitch

Bend, NRPN/RPN, Note On/Of, and other messages in various ways.""

Edited December 4 by Astraios

[Astraios]

8 hours ago, Wookiee said:

Have you established how the NRPN entries are being generated? 

I have an issue with a couple of Arturia synths dropping Sysex messages when stopping recording MIDI. 

Oh, unfortunately I don't know exactly what you mean by that - do you mean these LSB/MSB values?

I have been using the Spark2 from Arturia for many years and what I would give to find out which Sysex commands the hardware version sends to the DAW