Table of Contents

Mixing Curves and the Technical Guts of the Mix Pad

Use the Mix Curve dropdown [graphic] to select the mixing curve. Basically, mixing curves change the way the Mix Pad maps the distance between the Blender and the terminals onto changes in volume, pitch and pan.

The material below gives further explanation of the Mix Pad and Mixing Curves. You should get a fell for how the Mix Pad works before reading this. This is the most complex piece of documentation, and if you can hear what is going on, you needn't bother with it.

How jambient Calculates the Mix

The Mix Pad mixes four different signals, coming through the four corner terminals. You set the mix by moving the Mix Blender between the terminals. The steps for calculating the mix are as follows:

Jambient calculates the distance between the Blender and each of the corner terminals of the Mix Pad.

For each of these distances, jambient does the following to calculate what to do with the signal at the corresponding corner terminal:

  • Calculate a fade value by mapping the distance onto a fade curve. In the Fade after Centre curve, all distances between the terminal and the centre of the diagonal of the pad map onto a fade value of "full on," and distances after that map onto a fade value that drops from 1 to 0 in a linear fashion. The Fade after Side Centre curve is similar, except values begin to drop from 1 to 0 after the centre of the side of the mix pad. In the Fade Diagonal curve, fade values drop from 1 to 0 in a linear fashion across full distance of the diagonal.

  • Map the fade value onto a modifier for volume, pitch or pan. If the fade value is "full on" then the modifier for volume, pitch or pan will leave them unchanged.

Otherwise

volume is mapped so that at fade value 1 the modifier will give full volume, at 0 it will give no volume;

pan is mapped so that at fade value 1 the modifier will push pan 500 clicks to the left, at 0.5 it will not change pan, at 0 it will push pan 500 clicks to the right;

pitch is mapped so that at fade value 1 pitch is dropped to minimum, at 0 it is pushed up by the maximum amount (300 or 400%, depending on the mix pad type)--but jambient skews the scale so that 0-100% pitch always maps onto fade value 1 to 0.5, so that 100% pitch is at the diagonal centre, which allows the centre to be the neutral position.

The volume, pitch or pan modifiers are used to modify the values specified by volume, pitch and pan knobs.

Visualizing Fade Curves

The icons in the Mix Curve drop down are meant to visualize the fade curves in the following way:

You can think of the fade curves as describing circular regions in which certain values hold. Consider the white terminal. In the Fade after Centre curve, when the mix blender is within a circle whose centre is the white terminal's corner, and that goes through the diagonal centre of the square, then the white terminal will be "full on". If you move further away, then values start dropping.

Similarly for the Fade after Side Centre Curve, except the "full on" circle goes through the centre of a side of the Mix Pad.

You can see that these two curves define different areas where the "full on" circles of the four terminals overlap--in the Fade after Centre curve, they overlap in the centre of the Mix Pad, and overlap in middle portion of each side, in the Fade after Side Centre they don't overlap in the centre, and just touch on the centres of the sides. This is important because when the Mix Blender is in a "full on" region, the signal from the correponding terminal is unchanged.

How jambient Calculates the Twist

Calculation of the Twist is almost exactly the same as calculation of the mix pad, except that distances are calculated along one dimensional line between the ends of the twist, rather than distances from corners. So the distance from the white and black terminals will always be the same, and signals on these terminal will be effected in the same way.





last modified 10-29-200