MelaMMela
Oct 14

Polyphony

The wait is almost over. With Mela 4.7 I'm introducing polyphony to Mela 4. I will go into more detail about how things work soon. It's an early beta, and there is still much polishing. But I wanted to get it out early so those of you interested can drive it hard and find issues. Super Short Guide to Polyphony in Mela 4: - The voice-count / polyphony is global to the preset. - Only instrument lanes support polyphony. - MIDI and Audio lanes are treated as monophonic. Meaning if you place a modulator on it it will act like a monophonic modulator. - There are 3 types of modulations: poly-to-poly (this includes mono-to-mono), mono-to-poly and poly-to-mono. - Poly-to-mono modulation can happen when you have a modulator on an instrument lane that modulates a module on an Audio or MIDI lane. In this case, the modulation source is the last voice that was triggered. - Load the Poly4 preset to see a demo of polyphony. - Use the Voice Activity module to help you see what's going on. The module displays MIDI information as well as audio levels associated with each voice of the polyphony. The MIDI information includes note name, velocity and release velocity. - The following modules will no longer be supported on the Instrument lanes: Chorus, Compressor, Envelope Follower, Flanger, Phaser, Stereo Delay and Oscilloscope. But the presets created pre-polyphony will continue to work in a compatibility mode. These modules will only be insertable on Audio lanes. Note that this limitation is introduced as users usually wouldn't want an instance of such audio effects on each polyphonic voice. Having said that, if good user cases come up it will be easy to bring back.
CompletedCompleted
Nov 14, 2023

Implemented in Mela 4.7.

Oct 19, 2023

Exciting! Thanks Nikolozi and Samuel Lindeman!

Oct 17, 2023

**Build 155** Added Voice Allocation Options: Same Note and Voice Priority. Same Note has 2 modes, in Reuse mode, if there's a voice already with the same note it will be reused. The Follow Priority mode makes it possible to have multiple voices playing the same note. Voice Priority allocates voices by prioritising based on whether the note is newest, oldest, lowest or highest. Note how polyphony is saved in presets was changed in this version, so if you have created a preset with previous builds it will have its polyphony reset to 1 on load. Simply change it to desirable value and resave.

Oct 14, 2023

Hi! The polyphony is quite nicely implemented! I know it's still in early stages but 'note/voice slot priority' is something that could be handy?! As an example, if I hold a three note chord with the left hand and play a melody with the right hand the notes start to cut-off. Voice Allocation and Polyphony is always a tricky thing to 'get right'. Let's play with the idea of using four note polyphony. I hold down a three note chord thus 3 'voice slots' are allocated. Now I play a 4th note to play the melody, everything is fine. Now I play a 5th note after releasing the 4th note (ie. 4th 'voice slot' should be free) boom the 1st note I played is 'cut off' when it could have used the 4th 'voice slot' to play the note. This is not specific to Mela 4 but almost every synth that deals with polyphony handles voice allocation in various ways. This is just more noticeable at lower polyphony counts as it easier to reach the limit and the held notes start to cut off even with fewer 'active' voices. If I recall correctly these 'modes' are called to first note priority and last note priority. With first note priority the first played note will always play until released even if polyphony count would be exceeded. Last note priority would prioritize the last note and cut out the previous notes starting with the first one. The 'note-cue' builds up and when it reaches the maximum the 'mode' selects from which end of the cue the notes are 'kept'. So with first-note priority the last note in the cue is 'replaced' with the new note when the voice count is maxed out with 'last note priority' the first note is dropped to make room for new notes... The current 'voice cycling' is like a chain of marbles that goes round and round without any note priority. Once one starts playing with multiple parts (left and right hand) on a polyphonic synth these 'things' pop up, then again one can always use multiple sintaces when needed :) Cheers!

Oct 14, 2023

Samuel Lindeman: Sorry, yeah I should have mentioned that the voice stealing algorithm is super basic. I’m working on fixing that and adding options/rules. Like when to steal / reuse voice.

Oct 14, 2023

I'll also move the polyphony selector to the main toolbar. At the moment it's quite yuk :) But I was just rushing to get the beta out fast. Initially, the max polyphony will be 8 (due to tech reasons), but I'll increase it to 16 at some point.

Oct 16, 2023

In build 154, the newest notes are prioritised when reusing voices. But I'll add more options soon.

Oct 16, 2023

Nikolozi: Well Done! The 'new' voice allocation mode works really well!

Oct 14, 2023

Available for beta testing.