Since the official Audible Instruments Macro Oscillator 2 (Plaits) now got some updates, I might need to think about some further upgrades for my fork…Some ideas that have been floating around : make it a more fully featured synth with an advanced envelope/LFO/filter etc, merge Braids and Plaits into the same module…(Possibly with an updated GUI designed by Pyer!)
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Those sound like awesome ideas. Turn it into a new thing entirely. Really push it!
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Sure, I need to think about it, but it’s hard to come up with something really new that couldn’t be achieved just by patching together existing modules…
Sure, I need to think about it, but it’s hard to come up with something really new that couldn’t be achieved just by patching together existing modules…
Don’t underestimate the power of convenience! 
Honeslty, a well thought out set of features/design is worth a lot. Thinking of oscillator type stuff, could you maybe add a multiple voice unison detuning with detuning? Simulate analog drift? Maybe double up the oscs and have one osc sync to another with the LPG acting as an Pitch Env filter? Built in Ring Mod or Amplitube Mod?
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Yes, I’ve thought about most of that stuff and most should be possible to implement, but it needs some planning and testing. Even the current 16 poly voices in Plaits appear to be using so much CPU that I feel uncomfortable going much past that. (Maybe Rack 2 will somehow improve the situation, though…)
Something great to have, though a sizable development task, would be to reimplement the Mutable Instruments code without Audible Instruments’ STM32 emulation. This way, SIMD could be implemented which would help a lot with that CPU usage.
I’m just beginning to learn about DSP and SIMD; otherwise I’d offer to help…
Besides that, there are two standout features in my mind that I’d like to have in Plaits: an envelope output so that the LPG modulation could be “exported” to other modules, and an audio input which would run through the LPG inside Plaits.
I gave a go at implementing the envelope output, but so far I’ve only managed to make a lot of (unpleasant) noise.
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It’s possible to get the envelope output pretty easily out from the Plaits code, but I realized it really isn’t that interesting. It’s just an exponentially decaying envelope with no particular magic. The code that does the actual LPG processing for the audio outputs is slightly more interesting, but not really complicated in the end. (I still do find the sound quite fascinating…)
I must have been overthinking it.
The exponential decay by itself might not be so interesting but I think it would still be useful in order to tightly synchronize the motion of other sounds with that of Plaits, for example when using Plaits as a layer in a voice to be played via MIDI, especially when the LPG decay time is being modulated.
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Personally I’m for VCA-LPG (expander maybe?) with poly in\out to proceed desired CV or audio together with triggered Plaits instance which are expanded). So many ideas actually but pretty interesting what you’re gonna do!
I am still thinking about all this, but it’s going to take some time.
I have worked out most of the abbreviations and acronyms used here, but what is LPG please?
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Low Pass Gate
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