Sell me on stackable inputs!

VCV Rack
1

This new feature is fine as far as it goes but it does something that drives me nuts: You can no longer CTRL-Drag a wire from an input to another input to make the output connect to both. This is important to me because I don’t make any small patches, and I could CTRL-Drag from an input that I know is connected to the source I care about, without the source being on screen.

Aaaand… if I combine 2 signals into one input, I almost always want to be able control offset and amplitude for each. I rarely want to do this kind of “wire-or” connection where the signals are mixed.

Of course you can use mod sources like the Bark S&H/T&H which has a scale and offset controls. But usually you end up needing additional modules for the Scale/Offset. @synthi’s ConstAddMult is good for this but won’t work to sum more than 2 signals with offset and scale control.

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2

It looks like this has changed to Ctrl+Shift+Drag:

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3

Thanks. I can live with that. I was confused for a while by the 2.x module selecting/dragging but now I don’t want to go back to the old way.

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Yes. I requested to support that the Ctrl+Drag functionality remain as it was, and the Shift+Ctrl+Drag be for the new behavior. But unfortunately that did not make the cut.

I also requested that the port context menu also get another entry - one for Ctrl+Drag, and one for Shift+Ctrl+Drag. Again, that change was not made.

But I am very happy that Andrew implemented my request to remember and re-use the previous cable color when auto rotate is disabled.

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I am having to re-train myself in my patching workflow. This is going to take a while.

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I tried 2.51 and went back to 2.41 because of this cable change. Why not CTRL drag as it was before and CTRL+SHIFT as the new future? Lovely cable salad.

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7

+1 for making Ctrl+Grab act like the old grab, and using Ctrl+Shift+Grab for the new one. I’m stumbling over it every single time.

I do like the extra features though, and having summable inputs feels like a neat and weird convenience.

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8

Honestly, I thought I’d like cable stacking more, but it surprisingly gets in the way. Is there going to be an option to disable it?

I also feel like they switched A and B on the Nintendo controller and now I can’t play. They really should have left the key mappings alone, or added the new function to a new key IMO.

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9

Stackable cable are great for gates. Want an extra snare hit but only in certain bars?

Also liking them as a poor man’s mixer for quick patches.

Modulation does often need tweaks before stacking inputs, but this is avoidable if the modules you use allow customisation of the output.

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Annoying, since remapped Ctrl still doesn’t work either: Rack 2.1.2 doesn't respond to extra Ctrl keys

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I am totally puzzled by this new feature… I think that it has very little application since as mentioned by much others, when mixing we almost always need to scale and/or offset…

And at the same time I see a loooot of actual use for the option to take a stack of cables at one output and being able to move the whole at once to an other output, which AFAIK still isn’t implemented.

Still loving VCV and using it everyday but this isn’t making any sense to me…

Being sensible about CV ranges is modular 101…

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Agreed. Not only because we’re all used to it, but I suspect I’m not alone in thinking that duplication is something a user is going to do much more often, and having the extra key press should be assigned for the lesser used function.

On top of that, The context menu incorrectly shows that CTRL-DRAG is still used for duplication, adding to the confusion.

image

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Oh thank god, I use it a lot too. And yeah, he should have kept the old key-mapping and added a new. The old one is definately easier and more used.

Also, it’s just dawning on me that if you use stackable inputs the patch will probably only work on Rack >= 2.5.0. That’s going to confuse/piss off some users for a while, if sharing patches with others not upgraded yet. At least it should be documented somewhere when incompatibilities are introduced.

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14

One thing that could be interesting with input stacking is if that meant having a weird nonlinear response (because of the output to output patching it actually is).

But this obviously is not gonna happen, so, back to no interest / confusing / bad to teach modular synthesis. :thinking:

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15

Especially since there’s no mention of it in the changelog as far as I can tell. Honestly not sure I wanna update due to this, and the move of the user files.

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Indeed. I’m sticking with 2.4.1 until something compels me to upgrade.

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17

OOh I like it. Stack up outputs to a common input and the outputs feed back into the parent module and cause it to fry, or the common input gets overloaded causing it to catch fire. VCV could then simulate some purple smoke and let it drift over the front panels.

Of course I’m joking, but when you think of VCV as an educational tool to teach modular synthesis, the input stacking is actually a bad practice in the hardware world. Many of the fancier expensive modules are now protected against input patching, but you can still toast your friend’s DIY project in 2 seconds.

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18

Yeah, output protection is way more common now, but it always feels like a bit of a gamble. Last week-end I was at the Synthfest in France and saw a demonstration by one of the guys from Joranalogue, and he was patching really fast and got a output to output situation quite often, and nothing happened, obviously, I laughed and told him “oh and your modules have a good protection on the outputs too”, he laughed it off and confirmed that since they love feedback and feel a strong connection to Serge designs, they indeed think at this kind of connection as an extended technique, and the modules have been designed in conscience of this…

If there was an option so that input stacking meant average mixing, maybe that would be something that could have some interest, but definitely not as the default behavior… (think of the modulation bus on the ARP 2500)

And yes, it is a really bad habit to just do that without knowledge of the modules, and IMO it takes something from the “virtual eurorack” badge that VCV still wears on the front page…

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19

It’s okay if VCV innovates on features that can’t really work in Eurorack, it’s for music after all in the end. But I totally get your point, and I’m such a purist as well, I had a bit of a hangup over putting my first context menu into a module since ‘real modules don’t have those’.

Now if some Eurorack designer would just figure out Poly cables, we’d be set! :slight_smile: Maybe they could build little CPUs into the cables. New Apple cables practically have this capability already, if you’ve ever seen a take apart video of one of their cables there’s honestly more in there than in a typical eurorack filter design.

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20

I actually can think of 2 cases where summing inputs is very useful.

When I (in nearly every patch) use AS Delay Plus Stereo with an AS BPM module, I use an Synthkit Addition to get rhythmic subdivisions like 9 16th notes.

You don’t need the Addition module any more, you can just plug in more than one voltage.

Using it as an OR for gates can be even more useful. With the VCV Pulse Matrix, I use the Submarine OG 106 to combine two trigger rows, in order to add occasional random triggers.

See, all I had to do about it is to sleep on my own question :grinning:

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