General MIDI Polyphony

Hi All!

I am doing work in General MIDI format at the moment in Elements 6. I wonder if anybody could provide any tips on monitoring polyphony usage when doing this.

Short of just counting the notes manually :slight_smile: it would be useful to find a plugin or something which displays how much polyphony is currently being used.

Also, I believe the General MIDI standard is 24 notes polyphony; or maybe 32 for v2. Anyone know if this is correct?

Many thanks in advance,

Jake

Hi,

It is not possible to monitor polyphony usage, in my opinion. This is not just about the fact, how many MIDI notes are switched On at the moment. If you switch On your Sustain, and your MIDI Note is Off, it sounds. So you have to add this MIDI Note(s) to overall polyphony too.

Release Time of Notes is problem too. If you are using long Release Time, you have to add these Notes to your overall polyphony too.

I think, there is no polyphony restriction in the GM standard. It depends on the instrument only. In my experience, lots of HW uses 32 voices polyphony, as minimum.

Aloha j,

If I wanted to monitor polyphony it would be at the VSTI end.

My SampleTank plug for example has a lil window that shows
how much polyphony is being used at any one point in time.

The indicator jumps around quite a bit as I perform. (as it should)
HailionSonic SE might even have the same feature. Dunno. I’ll check.

What sound sources (VSTI’s) are you using with ‘Elements 6’?

{‘-’}

OK just checked.

HASE does indeed have a Polyphony indicator on the ‘Edit’ tab
of the plug. In the ‘Voice Pitch’ section.

However the indicator is not dynamic.
It does not show polyphonic usage.

It only allows the user to set the polyphony
for one specific sound/patch/voice.

This could still be very helpful by freeing up some polyphony from
things like percussion or bass and giving more polyphony to chording
instruments like keys or guitars etc.

HTH (hope this helps)
{‘-’}