The image below illustrates my challenge with using polyphony creatively: In this case there is a single polyphonic Oscillator->VCA->Filter signal path. To control 3 voice, I have 3 pitch sources and 3 gates.
To do that (with one Turing Machine controlling 2 volts expanders, and extra gates coming off a pulse expander) is to merge 3 pitch voltages and 3 triggers using 2 VCV Merge modules.
To get any control voltages – to modulate filter cutoff on a per-voice bases – into the polyphonic world you need to use another Merge module. This patch uses 5 of them.
So my request is that someone come up with some polyphonic modulators. For example, a random voltage source that generates 16 different voltages, in response to 16 different triggers. Or a polyphonic LFO that outputs N different phases of the waveforms on a polyphonic cable.
For the v1 release of Computerscare Modules (still in progress) my “Debug” module can function as a polyphonic random source, accepting 16 unique triggers (clock mode: poly, input mode: internal) or polyphonic sample & hold with poly input & triggers (clock mode: poly, input mode: poly). I’m not finished migrating all my modules yet, so there is no release, but if you’re able to build my v1 branch from source I believe that the Debug module works properly as I described:
SurgeRack, which we just released (thanks community team!), has a polyphonic LFO. The default mode is monophonic but if you add a gate to run the envelope then you get one independent enveloped LFO per channel of gate in. While the rate knob has only one value, if you send a polyphonic modulator to the rate CV then each LFO will have a distinct rate. etc…
Oh of course, that means the LFO willl retriever and reenvelope when the gate toggles; so send in 16 always open gates, set attack hold decay etc to zero and sustain to 1 and you will get what you want.
You can try my Rotor-module. Not exactly what you described, it modulates one signal using a second signal across polyphonic channels.
I also have a polyphonic shift register coming up.
Slightly off-topic but an equally useful thing would be for a way to “demix” polyphonic audio signal outputs into their discrete voices. This opens up lots of potential for poly patches… not sure if this is viable in the current vcv poly approach, but worth asking the question?