Burst Cycle

Macros: BurstCycle, BurstCycleMod

This sets the overall time between bursts. Silent time is added after the end of the Fall interval to reach the requested cycle time. If you try to set a Burst Cycle time that is too short, it will automatically be forced to the sum of the other Burst intervals.

An exception to this is if all the active burst stages are using Burst Time Modulation. Since modulated values may go to zero, the overall Burst Cycle may be set to zero. For example, you may have only High and Lag active and both modulated by random values from another stream. By setting Burst Cycle to zero, you indicate that if both random intervals turn out to be zero, no additional time will be added to that (non-existent) burst cycle.

Note that Train Cycle will automatically track Burst Cycle if Train Count is set to 1. If a higher count is used, Train Cycle will automatically increase as needed to meet the product of Train Count times Burst Cycle, but it will not automatically decrease if either of these is reduced.

The maximum Burst or Train Cycle time is 2^32 - 1 samples, which is over 24 hours at a 48000 Hz sample rate.

Burst Cycle Modulation

Normally, you can ignore the small Cycle pushbutton and just use the edit portion of the control. The button opens a Burst Time Modulator dialog that allows the Burst Cycle time to be modulated, either by a sine wave source with adjustable frequency and phase, or by some other stream source. You can also set the base Burst Cycle value from that dialog (it's just a duplicate of the main Burst Cycle control), as well as the modulation depth.

When modulation is applied, the effective Burst Cycle time is equal to the sum of the base Burst Cycle value plus the modulator scaled by the modulator depth. For example, if the depth is 10% then the effective Burst Cycle ranges from 90% to 110% of its base value. If the base Burst Cycle is 1000 samples, the effective Burst Cycle will then range from 900 to 1100 samples.

Note that when Burst Cycle modulation is used with Train Count set to 1, burst Sync will be disabled. You can usually get equivalent results with Trigger Mode set to Normal; see Train / Burst Sync for a discussion of the technique.

Macro Notes:

L.1.BurstCycle=1000 sets Left Stream 1 Burst Cycle to 1000 samples, assuming Smpl mode. It will set 1000 seconds in sec mode. To be safe, use a SmplSec command to set the desired mode before using this command.

L.1.BurstCycle=>1 increments and L.1.BurstCycle=>-1 decrements by one sample, even in sec mode. Only +/-1 sample steps are allowed.

If the Burst Dialog is open, BurstCycleMod=1 opens the associated Burst Time Modulation dialog, BurstCycleMod=0 closes it, and BurstCycleMod=x toggles between open and closed. See further information under Burst Time Modulation.

See also Burst Overview, Burst Dialog Controls