Surgical Transient Extractor | Deterministic Note Generator. A high-performance MIDI deconstruction interface designed to bridge the gap between raw audio streams and Ableton Live’s internal MIDI environment with sample-accurate precision.

1. The Engine: Dual-Threshold Hysteresis

Driven by a custom low-level DSP core, this device utilizes “Schmitt Trigger” logic to eliminate MIDI jitter and unstable triggering.

  • Hi-Gate (Trigger): The ignition point. As soon as the processed envelope strikes this threshold, a Note On message is instantly injected into the MIDI bus.
  • Lo-Gate (Release): The safety zone. A Note Off is only generated when the energy drops below this line. This differential creates a physical buffer, ensuring clean note lengths and total immunity against “machine-gun” artifacts on resonant sources.

2. Kinetic Architecture: Peak-Track Velocity

The device measures the physical impact of the incoming signal to drive expressive and dynamic MIDI performances.

  • Dynamic Mode (Peak-Track): The engine monitors the envelope during a critical 3ms window immediately following the trigger to capture the mathematical summit. This ensures the MIDI velocity is a faithful representation of the audio’s kinetic energy.
  • Fixed Mode (Static): Bypasses peak-tracking for total stability. Essential for driving drum racks or synthesis engines that require consistent, non-dynamic power.

3. Temporal Shielding: Refractory Guard

A time-locking mechanism inspired by biological neural firing to stabilize the rhythmic output and filter environmental noise.

  • Hold Logic (ms): Once a trigger is activated, the engine enters a “lock-out” state and ignores all incoming activity for a user-defined duration.
  • Deterministic Filtering: Designed for cleaning up “dirty” acoustic signals, filtering out secondary drum-head bounces, or ignoring unwanted harmonic resonances that would otherwise cause ghost triggers.

4. The Display: Precision Signal Monitoring

The interface utilizes high-performance vector rendering to provide a real-time diagnostic of the extraction process.

  • Signal Visualization: Color-coded layers display the Hysteresis thresholds (Red/Blue), the smoothed detection envelope (Orange), and the resulting MIDI Gate (Green).
  • Input Selector: Choose between L, R, or Sum (L+R). In Sum mode, the engine automatically compensates power (-6dB) to maintain threshold consistency across the stereo field.

Tech Specs:

  • Format: Max for Live MIDI Tool / Audio Effect (.amxd)
  • OS: Mac & Windows compatible
  • Requirements: Ableton Live Suite 12+ (or Standard with M4L add-on).

Installation:

  1. Download the file : https://structurevoid.gumroad.com/l/void.signal2midi
  2. Drag and drop the .amxd file directly onto a Track in Ableton Live.
  3. Click the “Save” icon on the device header to store it in your User Library.