Timing Smooth-Quant Order

Controls: Gen Dlg >> Stream >> Smooth TC >> Order
Macro: TmOrder

If both Smoothing and Quantization are active, the normal order of operations is to apply Quant before Smooth (Qu...Sm) This button allows you to toggle to the reverse order (Sm...Qu) when needed. Since quantization is a non-linear operation, the output is different in each case.

To see this, start with the Qu...Sm default. Set Wave to White, which produces random numbers over a 65536-value range, one value per output sample. Set Timing Mode to Step and Step Size to 50, so each random value will be held for 50 samples: The trace will show stairs that are 50 samples wide, but at all possible levels.

Now set Quant to 4 and you will see only 4 steps (5 different levels, counting zero) with the same 50-sample width.

Slowly increment Smooth TC up from 1, and each of the steps will be rounded off on the leading edge, and scooped out on the trailing edge. The stairs are formed first by Quant, then rounded by Smooth.

Now toggle to Sm...Qu and you will notice that there is essentially no rounding, but the width of the stairs is no longer constant as you increase Smooth TC. The original 50-sample-wide stairs wave are smoothed before the quantization is applied, so it takes longer for a stair to rise to a given quantizing threshold, and the amount of time that the stair is above that threshold is reduced.

Macro Notes:

L.1.TmOrder=Sm or L.1.TmOrder=1 sets Sm...Qu order for Left Stream 1. L.1.TmOrder=Qu or L.1.TmOrder=0 restores the default Qu...Sm order. L.1.TmOrder=x toggles between the two states.

See also Random / Step Timing Dialog, Waveform Stream Controls.