Hello Rackheadz!
I have been playing with the amazing Caudal for a while… It’s glorious!
There’s only one thing that I really really miss: a speed control for every “segment”.
I know it might make little sense, considering the origin of this plugin but, considering the use of it, maybe it could make sense?
An idea could be something we can call “FRICTION” to alter the speed of single segments but again I really think that a single speed control is… Uhm…
UNLESS, of course, I am missing something that I haven’t noticed. It happened in the past that I’ve missed a function of some plugins so it could well be.
Tee hee!! @modlfo, a good name could be: CAUDAL 4 ENGINES!
But seriously… The more I use Caudal, the more I crave for separated speed controls! Damn, am I the only one???
In my last couple patches I used three instances of Caudal. One at default, one at 11:00 and one at 10:00 for all of the required CV and triggers for the patch. Many times I’ve used one at default and one at 10:00 for what I needed. The top 4 outputs are all I use per module. No reason to have different speeds on one module, just use another module.
I was seriously considering to use more than 1 Caudal but I am going to circumvent this in a way or in another. Maybe with some attenuverter and some multiplier?
I have to experiment…
Initially Caudal was gonna allow to control more parameters, like friction, mass, gravity, etc. After using the prototype of Caudal I found a few issues that were not very good.
Controlling the friction: this may produce very anticlimactic results. Many arbitrary values end up slowing down the pendula and it just bounces at the bottom. On the other side, no friction makes the pendula accelerate until the simulation starts producing errors and the outputs are just noise.
Controlling the mass and gravity. These two parameters are related because they define the force subject to the pendula (also the length of the segments). Changing them is a little bit disappointing because the only thing one can see is that the outputs are still chaotic and there’s no immediate effect.
These problems arise because Caudal is an accurate physical simulation.
What ended up doing is, based on the equations, I defined the “Energy” parameter that affects the mass, length and gravity at the same time. For the friction, Caudal has a smart control that changes the friction in order to keep the pendula moving at approximately the set speed. That way the pendula never stops or goes out of control.
I have in mind a new version of Caudal, but rather than changing the core pendula is gonna add more features on the signa conditioning side.
Check this video I just posted regarding Caudal. The resulting signals are quite nice and they practically increase the frequency of the original signals.
To slow down the signal a bit, you can use the Leakage module. Just turn the Rate knob in the follower section. Switching follower modes (and using clock signal) gives different results.