Combinator LFO Question

[Puckboy2000]

So, I am creating a Kong combinator with a Lil LFO to pan one of the channels (hi-hat) on a 14:2 mixer.
I have LFO 1 into CV1 of the Combinator.
Then I have the CV1 with a Sine Wave controlling the pan on the hi-hat channel.
When the song is running, the pan only goes from middle to the right, and never to the left at all.
When the song is stopped, it pans to hard left then hard right.
Why won't it pan to the left when the song is running?

Please help - Thanks

[Laser Rot]

sounds to me like your CV out from the little LFO is coming from a unipolar cv port. Since you didn't show the back routing I can't tell for sure, but maybe see if that is the issue. It's needs to be outputting from the bipolar cv output.

[Olivier]

Your LFO is set to time synced. As soon as the song starts running, the LFO gets synced to the tempo and if needed the phase adjusted.
So the only thing i can think of is that you have set a loop in the sequencer so short that the loop resets the LFO before it actually goes to the left. Is that it ?

[Puckboy2000]

I have it on bipolar for both the LFO CV and the Combi CV. It's wierd. It pans all the way left to right when I stop the song, but when the song runs it only pans center to right.

[Benedict]

Have you tried taking the LFO CV straight to the Pan CV for Ch 4 instead of going through the Combi?

[Olivier]

You really don't have a loop enabled ?
Its the only way i can achieve what you are mentioning with those settings.

If that's not what's happening post your songfile, i'd be happy to try

[Puckboy2000]

Cool. Thanks for the replies. It's past 1 AM and the wife is making me put away laptop... I will revisit it tomorrow and advise if your tips resolve the issue.

Eauhm.. I have the song on loop enabled. Is that what you mean?

Benedict... I was hoping to keep it all in a combinator. My goal is have a master Kong set up where I can use different Kong kits, and use the Glitches for each drum pad to randomize as needed, and the Little LFO to target different parameters of each pad as needed.

[Olivier]

Eauhm.. I have the song on loop enabled. Is that what you mean?

Yes.. it is. How long is the loop ? If its a very short loop, let the song play on beyond the boundaries and see if its still happening.

[Puckboy2000]

And yes.. If it is still doing the same thing when I open it up tomorrow (sometimes things in Reason act wonky but resolve when I close it and reopen it) I would be glad to post the Combi file and let you have a crack at it. . Thanks.

[Puckboy2000]

Just a 4 bar loop that I made while testing the combinator. Kick, closed HH, open HH pattern drawn in.

[Olivier]

Just a 4 bar loop that I made while testing the combinator. Kick, closed HH, open HH pattern drawn in.

Thats the issue.

If you set the time for the LFO to 32/4 then an entire cycle for the LFO takes 8 bars. A 4 bar loop doesn't give the LFO enough time to do its entire cycle. The LFO gets reset when it loops back to the beginning of the loop after 4 bars only having done half its cycle.

To see what i mean you can either:
- disable looping and let the playhead go on past your current right locator
- set the loop to 8 bars
- change the LFO speed to 16/4 so it will do a complete cycle within a 4 bar loop

[Puckboy2000]

Just a 4 bar loop that I made while testing the combinator. Kick, closed HH, open HH pattern drawn in.

Thats the issue.

If you set the time for the LFO to 32/4 then an entire cycle for the LFO takes 8 bars. A 4 bar loop doesn't give the LFO enough time to do its entire cycle. The LFO gets reset when it loops back to the beginning of the loop after 4 bars only having done half its cycle.

To see what i mean you can either:
- disable looping and let the playhead go on past your current right locator
- set the loop to 8 bars
- change the LFO speed to 16/4 so it will do a complete cycle within a 4 bar loop

I will try this. Thanks a million!
How do you know this? I would have never known about how long the LFO cycle is and that it resets on a 4 bar loop.
I bow to you like a villager to the explorer who brings fire!

[Olivier]

Just a 4 bar loop that I made while testing the combinator. Kick, closed HH, open HH pattern drawn in.

Thats the issue.

If you set the time for the LFO to 32/4 then an entire cycle for the LFO takes 8 bars. A 4 bar loop doesn't give the LFO enough time to do its entire cycle. The LFO gets reset when it loops back to the beginning of the loop after 4 bars only having done half its cycle.

To see what i mean you can either:
- disable looping and let the playhead go on past your current right locator
- set the loop to 8 bars
- change the LFO speed to 16/4 so it will do a complete cycle within a 4 bar loop

I will try this. Thanks a million!
How do you know this? I would have never known about how long the LFO cycle is and that it resets on a 4 bar loop.
I bow to you like a villager to the explorer who brings fire!

A tempo synced LFO is well.. synced to the tempo
Lets consider a bipolar sine tempo synced at 32/4. It would take 8 bars for a complete cycle.
What little LFO will generate is basically this:

sine32_4.PNG (8.21 KiB) Viewed 965 times

And it will always generate it like this.
When you start at bar 5, because tempo sync is on, little LFO knows what part of the phase of the signal its supposed to be in. It knows this from the position of the playhead and the tempo value that you have set.
If you start at bar 7, you are at the lowest part of the sine. Thats what tempo syncing will do.

Why is this important ? Because sometimes we want predictability. If you would for example make a wobble bass and have an LFO that would do the wobblin for you, it would be nice if its synced to the tempo exactly the same every time you play it, from wherever you start playing. Thats what tempo syncing does for you.

So, when tempo sync is on, if you only have a 4 bar loop, and you go from 5.1.1.0 back to 1.1.1.0 little LFO knows it has to change the phase of the signal it generates, hence it resets, hence it your pan only goes to the right and back in the first 4 bars.

[Puckboy2000]

Makes total sense now. Thanks a million Eauhm. And again, I bow to you.
I feel like Daniel in the Karate Kid. Lol.