LdC and BTDSys PeerTrigger

Installation

Put LnB PeerTrigger.dll in your Gear\Effects folder.

Overview

PeerTrigger triggers other machines from a percussive input. Basically it "listens" to the input and when it hears a "hit" (when the signal rises sharply in amplitude) it triggers whatever other machine's parameter you tell it to.

To use:

• Add PeerTrigger to your song.
• Hook up some input to it (very short percussive sounds - like clicks - work best, but feel free to experiment).
• Right click PeerTrigger and select Assignment Settings.
• In this dialog, choose the machine and parameter you want to control.
• Click OK.

If you've used LdC Trigger, you'll be right at home with this machine. In fact most of the following parameter descriptions are copied and pasted from that machine's help file :)

Parameters

All parameters are track parameters.

• Manual Trigger - Any value triggers a sample hit at that velocity, FE being the maximum. This column is used by the Record option to record your playing.
• Record - When set to On, every hit will be recorded in the currently playing pattern. IMPORTANT: This is nothing to do with the usual Buzz recording button. Use the Buzz recording thing for recording parameter changes and stuff, use this to record hits. Remember the recorded hits will be quantized to the nearest tick, so best set to a high TPB if you don't want your playing to sound quantized. Also if you are in the pattern view, you might not see the hits appear in the Manual Trigger column (even though they are there) because of the way Buzz updates the screen.
• Sensitivity - How loud the input has to be to trigger a hit. Lower values make it more sensitive.
• Anti-Flam - The minimum time between hits. Values of 30ms or so seem to be good. This stops the machine from setting off unwanted "flam" type hits all the time. IMPORTANT: this doesnt stop you playing a proper (intentional) flam, just stops the machine accidentally triggering off more hits than you actually played. maybe i shouldve given this parameter a different name ;-)
• Filter Type - Filter used to "clean" the input so that it triggers more accurately. LP filter seems to work good, as does BP. HP and Off settings are pretty useless.
• Filter Freq - Cutoff freq. of the above filter.
• Filter Q - Q of the above filter. i used a pretty lame filter algorithm (since sound quality isn't an issue here since we never hear the filtered signal ;) so im not sure this parameter works how you would expect. seems fine just left at 50%.
• Note - If you're controlling a note parameter, this parameter chooses the note which will be triggered. You may notice that two parameters are provided for the same quantity - the only difference between them is the ease with which the note can be chosen in the parameter window and the pattern view. It doesn't matter which you use in practice.
• Switch val - If you're controlling a switch parameter, this parameter chooses the value which will be triggered - 0 or 1. Normally you'll just leave this on 1, but the option's there if you need it.
• Volume - Allows the triggered volume to be raised or lowered. Only matters if a numeric parameter is being controlled.
• Dynamics - This controls how much the triggered volume follows the volume of the input signal, so, for example, when you hit the drum pads harder, the sound gets louder instead of being the same volume regardless. IMPORTANT! When you set this to OFF, slightly less CPU is used, and also there is less latency (but not a lot, only about 1.5ms at the standard settings) between the input "hit" and the actual triggering of the samples. This parameter only matters if a numeric parameter is being controlled.
• Track - Sets which track on the controlled machine will receive triggers. Only matters if you choose a [T]rack parameter in the assignment dialog.

Attributes

• Trigger Signal Coefficient - Altering this affects the coefficient used to process the input signal to make it more suitable for triggering. so fiddling with this may improve triggering, though you might have to alter your sensitivity setting to compensate. 975 seems to be a good value... this value is actually divided internally, so 975 is really 0.975, and so on.
• Dynamics Latency - This determines how many samples the machine analyses when determining the dynamics of an input hit. larger amounts should be more accurate, but will produce slightly more latency. small amounts will probably make it too inaccurate. the latency produced by the dynamics routine is only a few milliseconds, but some people might want to fiddle with it. also if you run buzz at a different sample rate you may have to change this... maybe future versions will compensate for this.

Tips

If you are having trouble triggering accurately from a signal source, try "cleaning" the signal with other effect machines, for instance filters, noise gates, and so on. You can use the LdC Destroyer machine to basically zero-ify samples below a certain range, which can help the triggering too, and its a good idea to put LdC Automax before the PeerTrigger so that the maximum peak of the input is about 32768, so it tracks dynamics to the full range.

Docs and code © Lee du-Caine (LdC) and Ed Powley (BTDSys)