Fun with Polyphonic Effects

Plugins & Modules
#1

Here’s an idea I had while patching some synth sounds: what if I routed audio through a poly cable, then sent it to a filter, and modulated it using another poly cable with 16 channels of LFO, effectively producing 16 different filters but only using a few modules? Obviously you need 16 channels to process, so I split off 16 outputs into a Merge utility and it works really well. For modulation, Bogaudio’s Polycon16 with random values patched into the FM input of an LFO will give you 16 LFOs at different rates, for example. I then tried Stocaudio’s Polydelay, which is insane, and the brilliant Vult Rescombe is also polyphonic. Happy days, instant whacky sound effects! Sadly, I haven’t found many more effects that are genuinely polyphonic (i.e. they produce a poly output as well as just accepting poly input, which all modules are supposed to do anyway). Also, a lot of modules are tagged as polyphonic in the library, but aren’t, or at least not in the way I want.

Any suggestions? I need more poly FX!

1 Like
#2

It would be unfortunate if a lot of modules are labeled “polyphonic” just because they can mix poly cables on their inputs into a single channel. But I guess you are saying that’s what they do?

#3

Yep, that seems to be the case. They accept a poly signal as input, but don’t output poly channels.

#4

For example, here’s the output from the Polydelay:

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And here’s the Surge Freqshift, which should be polyphonic but only outputs one channel :frowning:

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A truly polyphonic frequency shifter would be amazing.