Expert Sleepers Silent Way v1.7.3 - Manual (Page 37)

‘Master’. The adjacent ‘Ply/Vox’ (short for ‘Polyphony/Voice’) knob controls the maxi-
mum polyphony i.e. the number of simultaneous voices that will sound. This should be
set to the number of additional Voice Controller plug-ins that you’re going to set up.
The voice plug-ins should have their Poly Mode menu set to ‘Voice’. Each plug-in should
have its Ply/Vox knob set to a different value - this is telling the plug-in which of the
polyphonic voices it represents. So for example if in the master plug-in you set the po-
lyphony to 4, you need 4 more voice plug-ins, with their voice set to 1, 2, 3 & 4 respec-
tively.
Route the voice plug-in outputs to your synth hardware as normal, bearing in mind that
each voice will need separate outputs. Unless you have a monster audio interface, it’s un-
likely that you’ll need all 6 outputs from each plug-in.
The input from your synth that would normally go into each Voice Controller should be
connected only to the input of the master plug-in. The master distributes this signal to the
voice plug-ins as necessary.
The final step is to connect the master plug-in to the voice plug-ins. Exactly how you
achieve this depends on your host application, but in general the idea is to route the mas-
ter’s output 1 to the input of all the voice plug-ins in the most direct way possible. Sugges-
tions for various popular hosts are as follows.
Host Comments
Live Set the master’s output to ‘Sends Only’ (effectively disabling
it) and set each voice to receive input from the output of the
master’s track.
Logic Set the master to output to a bus, and use this bus as the side-
chain input for the voices. NB remember to prevent the bus
from directly outputting to an audio output.
Digital Performer Set the master to output to a bus, and use this bus as the side-
chain input for the voices. NB the voice inputs need to be
mono (or DP won’t let you load the plug-in) so use a stereo
bundle (e.g. Bus 1-2) for the master output and a mono bundle
(e.g. Bus 1) for the voice inputs.
When in polyphonic master mode, the Voice Controller continues to output envelopes etc.
via its outputs 3-6 as usual, as set up via the output matrix. However, the envelopes are
now held in the sustain stage for as long as any note is held down. You can use this to rec-
reate the playing styles of some vintage string synths, which were polyphonic but only
had a single envelope shared between all the voices.