Making volume more even

VCV Rack
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Greetings. I have simple bass patch, as part of a larger overall patch, that I am playing from an Akai MPKmini. The bass part consists of the VCV MIDI/CV module into Nysthi’s TZOP in conjunction with BogAudio’s ADSR and the VCV VCA. It’s a very straightforward bass voice. When I play the keyboard, the lower octave is not as loud as the upper octave (I’m only using two octaves on the MPKmini). Is there a way to even out the volume level between the two octaves? Would a compressor help here? I hope this is somewhat clear.

Thanks.

Ron

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Hi Ron, Just to make sure, can be that the speakers\headphones you’re using don’t go low enough so the bass frequencies don’t go through?

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Lower notes have lower CV, higher notes higher CV. Invert that note CV, put an attentuverter inbeteen and use it to control your volume output.

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It could be the velocity sensitivity of the akai, I have the mk2 and I usually press the “full level” button and the volume throughout the keyboard evens out. Try that…

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use the BZMapper to map VCA actions…

(and BTW for the TZOP there is the TZEN, if you put it on the left of the TZOP, is already connected and doing VCA)

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Omri: thanks very much. The speakers are very good - JBL 8" series 3 (LSR308) - so I’m pretty sure that’s not the problem. Your response is much appreciated.

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Everyone: thanks very much for your responses. I’ll look into each of them further.

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Human hearing works in a way that we hear high frequencies much louder than low frequencies, in addition to that it is very difficult to get a good and even bass sound, mostly because of room acoustics (I for example also have good speakers but I can only hear full bass if I stand close to a corner of my room).

My solution is usually to just add a low pass filter and adjust it to taste, then maybe make it track pitch and adjust that until you’re happy…

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Hello, what would i need to invert, is it an inverter =) Sorry, noob here.

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A compressor could definitely pull the levels of the lower octaves up to that of the upper octaves. It would squeeze the peaks to the higher octaves and move the lower ones to this flat region. You might also play around with EQ, or pop the low ends up a bit, or something like that. But that balance, whatever way you go, it’s all about smoothing things out!

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regarding the compressors i dont understand them yet and also like EQ they come later in the sound chain, Lets say a 9 step sequence has 3 low, 3 middle and 3 high pitched steps, then what i would want to is be able to (with a mixer maybe) emphasise and de-emphasise these 3 groups, so sometimes high pitch is in the front and sometimes low or middle pitch. One could use 3 separate voices and play with their separate volumes but my objective is to maximize the capacity of one voice as of now.

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I found this in another thread regarding muting:

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would it be possible to feed some kind of “comparator” to seperate between low middle and high hits and route them to separate volume vcas?

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Check out the bass effects available with this: VCV Library - Airwindows Airwindows Suite for Rack

image

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compressor is a good suggestion - that’s exactly what it does. But if a more complex solution is required, then so be it.

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I will start to work with compressors. My current idea of them is that they will have a spill over effect as EQ does. So when raising the high with eq then not only does the high in the high pitch increase, but also the high in the low pitch. Isnt it so?

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Thanks =) I will try this one out also.

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Yes.

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19

My go-to inverter and CV modifier is Bogaudio’s OFFSET. Set the “scale” to a negative value and add some positive “offset”. I keep a copy in my “New” template.

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OFFSET is my go-to, too, especially because it is fully polyphonic, so you really have an up to 16-in-1 module with very little real estate.