Preserve reverb tails and delays after turning off effect?

[gtodd876]

Would it be possible to build a device that could monitor audio output from an effect after you turn it off to preserve the effect tail? So after the volume goes below a certain threshold then the effects can really be turned off to save cpu cycles. That way you could emulate the behavior of guitar effect pedals and the way Mainstage handles effects. I would use Mainstage but I have run into too many bugs already. I have spent most of my free musical time learning and troubleshooting the computer than making music. I returned to hardware for looping as I ran into way to many obstacles along the way, trying to loop the way I wanted, with my computer. I would like to use Ableton just as a virtual pedal stompbox hosting Abletons and 3rd party AU/VST plug-ins. Then the audio will be routed into the hardware looper and then monitored. I need to control Ableton with a midi foot controller so the current way effects racks in ableton are handled doesn't work well. The chain selector works much better with a knob or slider not a midi foot controller. If this works it will be a much smaller footprint to bring this tiny looping pedal and laptop to gigs than to cart boatloads of pedals around.

Summary:
-Audio Track with instrument input
-All the effects you would want to use are added to the track in the order that you would like and all turned off (Virtual Pedalboard)
-When you turn off audio effects and the effects is still producing output then it continues until it goes below a certain threshold

I also own a max/msp license so if you think that would be a better option for building this I am open to those suggestions as well and going down that path of learning. Although I have VST and AU plug-ins I would like to use and I think the AU msp object might still be in beta?


If it is definitely possible I will put in the work to learn maxp/msp well enough make it happen. I don't want to waste my time though going against the grain like I did trying to make Ableton do song style looping for me when this Boomerang 3 pedal did the job right out of the box.

Thank you o' wise ones for any help guiding me in the right direction,

Todd

[ibdk]

If the effects are still there tailing off after you turn the effect off, I don't think that you would save any CPU cycles since it has to process somehow after you turned it off. Impossible, like the chicken before the egg. a max patch would need to constantly analyze the signal like an accurate binary envelope follower that has smoothing (or else the on/off switch for the effect would jitter like crazy and most likely crash the computer), then dynamically turn on and off your effect, predict the future and when you start playing again on that channel, and turn the effect back on just as a signal reaches that channel. I would use a knob if realtime, or automation if this can be done in post.

But if you want tailing and to save CPU cycles and have realtime control, why not use external devices like another computer or hardware effects box. you would take some load off your computer, and easily have trailing effects after you turn the output off in ableton. It doesn't have to be all in the computer.

I have spent most of my free musical time learning and troubleshooting the computer than making music

If you plan on learning MaxMSP, this is gonna happen w/o a doubt. The first year I got Max, I hardly made a sound.

[gtodd876]

Thank you for the advice. Your probably saving me from premature baldness:) I wonder how software like mainstage solves that problem to emulate hardware pedals? I think your right that I will be happiest using hardware to get that job done.

Todd

[zlatko]

you just have to mute your signal pre-effect rather than switching the reverb off, you could fix a m4l device that would switch the reverb off after the ammount of second it reads from the decay parameter, upon muting the signal, but that seems an overkill....