BTDSys Peer LFO

Installation

Put BTDSys Peer LFO.dll in your Gear\Generators folder.

Overview

Peer LFO is an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) which you can use to modulate any parameter of any other Buzz machine.

• Add Peer LFO to your song, along with some other machine.
• You don't need to connect anything to Peer LFO in the machine view.
• Right click Peer LFO and select Assign Parameter, then click an unassigned track.
• In this dialog, choose the machine and parameter you want to control.
• Click OK, open the Peer LFO parameter window, and switch On/Off to On.
• If you want to control more than one parameter from the same LFO, add more tracks to the machine (Pattern view, Ctrl +). Then assign them as above.

Parameters

Global (machine) parameters

• On/Off - activates or deactivates the machine.
• Amp - global amplitude, affecting the amplitude of every track. Can be used to "fade" the LFO effect in or out.
• Manual Phase - allows you to manually set the phase (position in the cycle) of the wave.
• Wave Shape - the type of wave to be used.
  • Random sets a new value of the parameter at every time interval specified by the Rate.
  • Wander is similar to Random, apart from it travels smoothly to the next random vlaue rather than jumping straight to it.
  • Wavetable uses a user-defined wave stored in the Buzz wavetable.
  • Min, Max and Center send constant values, the minimum, maximum and center of the defined control range respectively. These allow you to set the range parameters up while watching the changing values in the controlled machine's parameter window.
  • The remainder (Sine, Tri etc) are simple oscillator waveforms as you may expect.
• Wave Number - if Wave Shape is set to Wavetable, this is the wave to use from the Buzz wavetable. If it's a stereo wave, only the left channel will be used.
• Min Diff - when using Random or Wander modes, this specifies the minimum difference between consecutive values. This can be used to guarantee a noticable change in the parameter every time interval.
• Rate - sets either the period (in Ticks/16 or ms) or the frequency (in Hz/4096) of the wave.
• Rate Unit - sets the units of the Rate parameter, either 16ths of ticks, milliseconds or 4096ths of Hertz.
• Inertia - glide time for Amp, Min, Max and Period parameters.

Track parameters

• Min and Max - the minimum and maximum values of the LFO wave (given as a percentage of the controlled parameter's range)
• Center and Amplitude - an alternative way of setting the LFO's range.
• Extent Mode - sets which of min/max and center/amp is used. The other is simply ignored. Note that from the machine's right-click menu you can synchronise the two pairs of values (so they represent equivalent ranges).
• Update Freq - sets how frequently the LFO actually sends its values to a parameter, if you don't want it to every tick.
• Phase - sets the relative phase offset compared to the "global" phase.
• Track - if you assign to a [T]rack parameter, which track will be controlled. If it's set to All, then all the machine's tracks are controlled. If you assign to a [G]lobal parameter, this has no effect.

Attribute Heed Stop Btn defines whether the LFO switches itself off when you press the Stop button in Buzz. By default, it is set to 0 (meaning no, it doesn't).

Other Notes

• PeerLFO can only change the value of a parameter once every tick. This is due to the way Buzz works. If control isn't smooth enough, either increase the TPB value of your song, or use inertia (if the target machine has it) of length 1.0 tick.
• Note that PeerLFO continues to be active, even if it is muted or another machine is in solo mode. However, if it is muted when it is loaded (eg because you added it while another machine was solo, or because this was its state in a loaded song file), it will not initialise itself (ie it will remain inactive) until it is un-muted.
• If you import a song file containing machines whose names are already in use in the current song, the new machines will be renamed by Buzz. However, any Peer LFO machines in the imported song will no longer recognise the renamed machines, and will control the "old" named machines which were already in the song. To work around this, please make sure you give your machines unique names in all your template files, and don't import a file into itself.

Contact

If you have comments or suggestions, or if you find any bugs please email me.
Also visit my website.

Docs and code ⌐Ed Powley (BTDSys), June-July 2002
Thanks to everyone who alpha tested this machine, suggested features and pointed out bugs, without whom this machine would suck a lot worse