B.Vibratr

A "flavoured" vibrato as an instrument LV2 plugin.

Key features:

• Effect plugin, but play it like an instrument
• Modifies sound of other instruments / samples

Installation

a) Install the bvibratr package for your system (once established).

b) Use the latest provided binaries.

c) Recommended: Build your own binaries in the following three steps.

Step 1: Download the latest published version of B.Vibratr. Or clone it including its submodules from this repository:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/sjaehn/BVibratr

Step 2: Install pkg-config and the development packages for x11, cairo, sndfile and lv2 if not done yet. If you don't have already got the build tools (compilers, make, libraries) then install them too.

On Debian-based systems you may run:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install pkg-config libx11-dev libcairo2-dev libsndfile1-dev lv2-dev

On Arch-based systems you may run:

sudo pacman -S base-devel
sudo pacman -S pkg-config libx11 cairo libsndfile lv2

Step 3: Building and installing into the default lv2 directory (/usr/local/lib/lv2/) is easy using make and make install. Simply call:

make
sudo make install

Optional: Standard make and make install parameters are supported. You may build a debugging version using make CPPFLAGS+=-g. For installation into an alternative directory (e.g., /usr/lib/lv2/), change the variable PREFIX while installing: sudo make install PREFIX=/usr. If you want to freely choose the install target directory, change the variable LV2DIR (e.g., make install LV2DIR=~/.lv2) or even define DESTDIR.

Optional: Further supported parameters are LANGUAGE (two letters code) to change the GUI language and SKIN to change the skin (see customize).

Running

After the installation Ardour, Carla, and any other LV2 host should automatically detect B.Vibratr.

If jalv is installed, you can also call it

jalv.gtk https://www.jahnichen.de/plugins/lv2/BVibratr

to run it stand-alone and connect it to the JACK system.

Usage

Step 1: Connect B.Vibratr

B.Vibratr doesn't generate any sound by itself, but it manipulates sound using MIDI inputs. Thus it needs to be connected to both, a MIDI input and a (stereo) audio input. And of course a (stereo) audio output.

                ┌───────────┐ 
audio_in_1 ---> │           │ ---> audio_out_1
audio_in_2 ---> │ B.Vibratr │ ---> audio_out_2
midi_in    ---> │           │ 
                └───────────┘

There are at least two ways to realize the MIDI input:

• In series after a synthesizer that offers MIDI through. In this case, you can use both, MIDI and audio signal comming from the synth.

              ┌───────┐                  ┌───────────┐
              │       │ --> audio_1  --> │           │ --> audio_out_1
              │ Synth │ --> audio_2  --> │ B.Vibratr │ --> audio_out_2
  midi_in --> │       │ --> midi_thru--> │           │ 
              └───────┘                  └───────────┘
  

• In parallel to an audio stream-producing instrument or sampler. In this case, you can use the audio signal from your instrument, but you will need an additional MIDI input to use all the MIDI features from B.Vibratr.

             ┌───────┐                  ┌───────────┐
             │       │ --> audio_1  --> │           │ --> audio_out_1
             │ Synth │ --> audio_2  --> │ B.Vibratr │ --> audio_out_2
  midi_1 --> │       │              ┌-> │           │ 
             └───────┘              │   └───────────┘
  midi_2 ---------------------------┘
  

Step 2: Set a trigger

You can apply vibrato upon a MIDI trigger or you can make B.Vibratr permanetly play a vibrato, depending on your settings.

Select the MIDI channels and the MIDI note (or any note) to use as a trigger. If you use B.Vibratr in series after a MIDI instrument that offers MIDI through, then think about to select channels or notes which are not used the instrument. Unless you want to get the B.Vibratr effect on a specific instrument or channel.

You can select one or multiple channels to trigger B.Vibrator to play. However, if you select no channel, then B.Vibratr is permanently running.

Step 3: The vibrato waveforms

You have got an ADSR envelope and up to three oscillators to generate waveforms for the vibrato pitch changes. In addition, you can combine it with a tremolo change in volume.

The depth of the pitch change can be set using the depth parameter. Naturally sounding vibratos are in the lower cents range and up to 30 cents. The depth parameter can externally be cotrolled using the MIDI CC option (e.g., modulation wheel) without plugin signal routing/automatization.

There are three oscillators to generate the vibrato pitch waveform. The first one (OSC1) can either generate LFOs or use low frequency wavetable. In both cases, you can set the frequency. Frequencies of naturally sounding vibratos differ from instrument to instrument and are typically in the range between 4 and 8.

The other two oscillators (OSC2 and OSC3) are LFOs and can be used to manipulate the waveforms generated by the previous oscillators. Thus, OSC2 can manipulate OSC1, and OSC2 can mainpulate both OSC1 and OSC2. Supported manipulation are signal addition (add), frequency modulation (FM), phase modulation (PM) and amplitude modulation (AM). In addition to the oscillator frequency, you can also set the amplitude (amount) of the respective oscillator OSC2 and OSC3.

┌─────────────────────────┐
| Osc_1:                  |
| Sine, triangle, square, | ------------> vibrato
| saw, wavetable          |      ^
└─────────────────────────┘      |
           ^                     |
           |  FM1, PM1, AM1      | Add
           └-----------------┐   |
┌─────────────────────────┐  |   |
| Osc_2:                  |  |   |  
| Sine, triangle, square, | -┴---┘
| saw                     |  ^   ^
└─────────────────────────┘  |   |
           ^                 |   |
           |  FM2, PM2, AM2  |   |
           └-----------------┐   |
┌─────────────────────────┐  |   |
| Osc_3:                  |  |   |
| Sine, triangle, square, | -┴---┘
| saw                     |
└─────────────────────────┘

In addition to the vibrato effect, you can apply a tremolo volume effect. The tremolo is parallelized to the vibrato change in pitch (or antiparallel in the case of negative tremolo values). For positive tremolo values: The higher the pitch, the higher the volume. And for negative tremolo values vice versa.

Finally, B.Vibratr uses a standard ADSR envelope to control the vibrato depth and the tremolo amount. There is also an option to (re-)synchronize all three oscillators with the ADSR start/stop. If this option is activated (default), then the oscillators are reset up start or stop vibrato playing. This results in a highly reproducible vibrato effect. If you want more flexibly sounding vibratos, then deactivate resync and optinally combine it with the use of wavetables.

Appendix: Wavetables

You can import (low frequency) wavetables into B.Vibratr from simple .wvt text files. It contains one floating point value on each line for each sample. Up to 65536 total samples per wavetable are allowed. For more details see wvt.md.

You can also import wavetables created for other synthesizers in the .wt (Surge XT), .wav (Serum) or other audio formats. They often have got 256, 512, 1024, 2048 or even more samples per frame depending on the synthesizer created for and the respective specification. B.Vibratr supports these wavetables with a max size limit of 65536.

The uploaded wavetables are used by the B.Vibratr algorithm to calculate mathematical integral wavetables which are then used by the oscillator OSC1.

Note: Wavetable files usually contain raw audio signal data in the dependency of time in a high frequency. The frequency of the signal represents its pitch. However, B.Vibratr expects pitch signals in the dependency of time.

Internationalization

B.Vibratr now uses the dictionaries of the new B.Widgets toolkit and all labels are now automatically shown in your system language (if translation is provided). The dictionary for this plugin is stored in src/BVibratr_Dictionary.data. If you want to add a translation to your language, simply edit this file in your text editor und use the (POSIX) language code (format: language_TERRITORY) of your language.

E. g., if you want to add a french translation of "Help", simply change

    {
        "Help",           
        {
            {"de_DE", "Hilfe"},
            {"it_IT", "Aiuto"}
        }
    },

to

    {
        "Help",           
        {
            {"de_DE", "Hilfe"},
            {"fr_FR", "Aide"},
            {"it_IT", "Aiuto"}
        }
    },

Once you changed the dictionary, you have to re-build the plugin. And please share your translations with other users by either submitting a git pull request or notifying me (issue report, e-mail, ...).

What's new

• Dynamic latency report, largely reduced latency
• Scroll wheel behaviour harmonized

TODOs

• Internationalization other languages (community)
• Presets (community)
• Multiple keys (later versions)

License

See LICENSE

Links

TODO