multichannel volume control

ramy's icon

Hi All,

Is there a clean way to control multichannel volume? For example, sending signals to 8 channels (dac~ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ) it would be nice to be able to attenuate all of them with a single control, like a matrix with gain control.

I've spent a good deal of time trying to do this cleanly, but I'm unable to find a good approach or I'm barking up the wrong tree. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

-Ramy

Tim Lloyd's icon

you can have one gain~ object for each channel of the dac, and then connect the right outlet of one gain~ object to the left inlets of all the other ones. That makes one of them a "master" control for all the others.

Or you could use one *~ for each channel and control the right inlet of each one with the same float object. If you use the *~ you may want to use line~ or line to remove potential clicking when changing amplitude.

Luke Hall's icon

You can use one [gain~] object to control multiple others as shown in the patch below, you could do something similar with one [flonum] box or [slider] and multiple instances of [*~], one for each channel.

lh

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Roman Thilenius's icon

for 8 parallel signal processes (such as [*~ ]) i would
prefer to control them with a signal.

[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]

if you want to interpolate, you need a signal anyway:

[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]
[*~ ]

-110

Tim Lloyd's icon

Didn't think of that! Definitely one to try

seejayjames's icon

you can have multiple faders work together, as mentioned, this is handy but won't preserve relative levels. Hook each output signal up to a hidden second fader, and this bank of 8 is all controlled by a single one. This lets you set all levels differently in the first bank, but have a master that changes the volume of them all (preserving relative levels) at the same time in the second bank. Could cap the second bank at 0 dB, but that's up to you... using a regular slider allows this.

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Chris Weaver's icon

Hi I know this is an old post but I'm new to max and found a real easy built in patch for mixing 8 different channels then outputting back to 2. The Pan mixer (in the beap section on the side under mixers) allows you to mix the volume (gain) for each channel as well as the stereo balance (left to right) before outputting back into your standard 2 channel stereo with gain sliders for each channel (R & L). The patch below I threw together (sorry for the sloppy arrangement, like I said I'm new and just threw it together) has a message int trigger to start all tracks at the same time (0 to stop 1 to play). Ignore the adc~ it was there when I imported the basic audio patch unless you want to use it for the last 2 channels I left open to use your computer mic to add additional data . If you want to record look for a different help topic (I know there are tons out there it was all I could find) like I said I'm new and don't know exactly what I'm doing. ( I apologize for the tracks I used if they actually come with the patch I post I wanted to use default tracks to avoid glitches but they sure do get annoying when thrown together.)

Pan-mixer.maxpat
Max Patch