I figured it would be good to share any tips and tricks for Hermod.
[edit: the latest OS adds functionality within Settings > Clock to do this properly]
I’ll kick things off… want an adjustable tempo / clock divider? Need a gate to go high when Hermod is running and low when it’s not (eg; for sequencers like Metropolis or Tempi?)… read on.
Create a Modulation track. Add a Gate that runs the length of the pattern. Unfortunately, the Gate always momentarily goes low when the sequence loops which will mess with your sequencer, here’s how to fix that. Add an Arpeggiator effect and set the Gate within the effect to 100. Now when you start Hermod the Gate goes High and when you stop the Gate goes Low.
To add a clock to the track simply add a LFO effect, set it to Square and sync’d. You can get up to 16PPQN resolution with this when it’s set to 1/64. You can then also use the Mod Matrix / manually control the LFO to divide that down (or up).
I smooth out certain Modulation tracks by using the Glide midi effect.
For example, if you record a slow LFO sine wave, you’ll notice “stepping” on the output, which I think is due to the midi resolution.
A Glide midi effect using the default parameter settings “smooths” the output.
I’m thinking the only way to do this would be by using a modulation track - note values are CV after all. So I would add your gates where you want the notes to be, then set CV values to taste. It’s a little fiddly, but it will work especially once you remember what values sound best.
Would you /someone mind clarifying for me if the glide effect trick, to smooth out (slow rate) stepped modulation, is just for midi pitch modulation (ie pitch bend), or if it also smooths out LFO modulation for general CV output via the jacks … ?
I’m pretty sure the resolution of the lfos to cv doesn’t need smoothing as stepping isn’t audible (I’ve never noticed it unlike the modulation from PNW).
I’m also fairly sure Hermod can run with everything on across all channels. It would have been posted as a bug if that was the case (I also don’t think Squarp would make a product that chokes under its own functionality)
It’s possible that reports of stepping when using LFOs could be due to the stepping of through midi notes, which I suppose would make sense, and then glide dealing with that.
I’m looking to invest in a Hermod, and just checking a few last points. Pleased with my findings so far!
Hmmmm interesting, so it appears that the LFO’s do have stepping when outputting to CV and to remove the stepping you do need to add a Glide effect. This audio demo has a sine wave LFO adjusting the pitch of an oscillator. You can clearly hear the stepping in the higher octaves when Glide is off (example 1) and this is no longer audible when Glide is on (example 2).
Warning, do not listen to this loud (apologies, I had to upload this to the Internet Archive as this site does not allow audio file upload… which is a shame/odd for an audio company. Also moderators, this thread has deviated from the overall topic, please feel free to split if necessary).
This is workable - but ideally I’d prefer not to have to add a default Glide effect to remove this stepping. I’ve emailed Squarp.
Hopefully the CPU can keep up if all channels have glide enabled at the same time. I’m just curious to know if this was set intentionally to allow the CPU to operate without overloading…
I would if I had the device here… I’m doing some investigation before purchasing a Hermod.
I guess it becomes a little more complicated, as from what I understand, you can have multiple LFOS on each channel / track, each of which may need smoothing out.
Ive not seen anyone complaining about issues with the Hermod running out of cpu when using fx.
iirc, its using a more powerful processor than the pyramid, which also works fine.
you only have one output per tracks, if you have multiple lfos on a track they are combined… so it would make sense to use ONE glide after the lfo instances - so you’d only be using 8 glides IF you only used hermods for LFOs (which id guess is unlikely)
whilst LFO->GLIDE->LFO->GLIDE theorectically produces a slightly different results to LFO->LFO->GLIDE , but in practice the results would be similar … also Im not sure if the hermod would ‘resample’ in the first instance anyway.
finally, glides are basically just filters, they are not particularly cpu intensive… I guess, max cpu load would be if you modulated glide time since then you have to recalc the co-effecients of the filter, but again at control rate that is not that cpu intensive.
