Directly assign/exclude each channel of stereo pads independently

[ocuvox]

The ability to independently assign the left and right channel of stereo samples would be of immensely useful.

This would allow a user to put two mono tracks in one stereo sample and assign each channel to both main outputs or split to different outputs.

Being able to mute a left or right channel would also be helpful, in order to exclude channels that were recorded as pairs.

[ocuvox]

To add some more context:

A lot of drum loops have Kick on the left channel and the rest of the loop on the right for sidechaining.

Being able to independently address the outputs would make these usable in that regard.

[ocuvox]

Some other use cases I found:

1: Audio sample on the Left and CV on the right.

This would let a user have an audio representation of the sample, while still having the raw CV for variation.

2: Audio version of the Kick and a Gate/Envelope on the Right for sidechaining.

*speaking of, if the compressor was CV mappable and this was a thing, compressor driven internal sidechaining would be possible.

3: Two variations of the same (or different) audio on one track with Pan used to crossfade between them.

Such as fast/slow leads. Or different percussion tracks.

4: Audio on the left and CV on the right being fed back into the Micro as a modulation source.

Again, with Pan being used to turn on/off the modulation. Or fade out the audio portion and keep mod.

Seems like it could really open up a world of potential with relatively low impact on the current implementation.

[Steve]

You should know that we just reworked the output logic for the micro. This last set of changes was the third time we touched that portion. We did this at the request of (many) micro users. The current implementation appears to have satisfied the many requests and I would not expect it to change again - or at least any time soon.

[ocuvox]

Interesting.

To clarify:
I'm not suggesting this replace the current implementation.

The proposed method would have additional options in the drop-down for alternate output mappings for the left/right channels.

What would be the barriers to implementing this as an additional option, considering the benefits?

What specifically do you think of the use case scenarios?

[Steve]

I understood the request. Simply put, we’ve touched/changed that code three times since release. I don’t see us touching it again. Certainty not any time soon.

[ocuvox]

Then I must not be understanding.

Just to be clear.

Because you updated some code related to audio outputs, you're not considering user requests?

[Steve]

I absolutely never said that.

[Aaron]

Dear Ocuvox,

Thanks for your suggestions. We appreciate them.

Please understand it is not practical for us to contemplate the pros and cons of various ideas as they come in. We're too busy working on new and existing products. I promise we will consider your ideas for micro output routing at the next opportunity. That could easily be 6-12 months from now.

We appreciate your patience and look forward to hearing what other people on the forum think about this topic as well.

[ocuvox]

Cool. That's all I'm looking for.
Just some indication that it'll make it to the drawing board for consideration.
Appreciate the candor about timeframe as well.
You guys have made an awesome module and I appreciate all the hard work.
Thank you.

[djphazer]

You can already satisfy some of your use cases I think.... set a stereo sample to Outputs 3/4 and you can totally have a separate Kick / Perc Loop, for example, or some CV. Modulating Pan works like you've described, fading out one or the other. Mults and/or external mixers might be necessary... don't forget to think outside the (Bit)box

Unfortunately, however, it seems when assigning a stereo file to a mono output - you only get the Left channel no matter what. I think a worthy improvement would be to automatically downmix to mono, respecting Pan as a crossfade.

(I'm currently running v2.2.3)

[ocuvox]

For sure. I have it set up with Kick running on 3/4 to a Cockpit 2 for sidechain.

I'm actually building an overkill custom mult RN to easily switch the inputs to the Micro (gate/cv pairs, dry returns, etc.) to bypass the limitation of not being able to directly sample cv/gate from the cv/gate inputs, and to switch audio inputs before they run through master FX (NTS1).

The problem of assigning stereo to a mono output was something I hadn't run across, but another good reason to have L/R independent assignment.

I like the idea of it automatically downmixing stereo pads as the default for stereo pads assigned to mono.
Hopefully that would come with the ability to independently map L/R to output as it would solve that issue and open up a a bunch of other possibility (especially with CV).

The main reason I picked up the Micro was for CV/GATE sampling, but there are some small things that are keeping it from hitting its full potential.

I think this is one of those small things that would unlock that potential.

As well as effectively doubling the tracks we have on not just the Micrto, but all Bitboxes.