> You might already have guessed it, I am interested. Very much indeed!
> A question however: you write " I simply do the arpeggiation in MIDI before converting to CV". I can see that happen from a software pattern sequencer, but from playing a keyboard live, do you route the MIDI from the keyboard through arpeggio creating hardware

Hi Ton!

Hmm, interesting question. I don't really perform live, I generally enter and manipulate notes directly in the DAW (I come from a tracking background), so this isn't an issue for me. I can't think of anything offhand (either hardware or software) that converts polyphonic MIDI chords into monophonic MIDI arpeggios, but it should be pretty simple to make that too, just as with control voltages. Reason's RPG-8 comes close, but that's converting MIDI into pseudo-CV (at least, I think it is; it's hard to tell with closed source software). The only thing I haven't been able to do in MIDI due to the limitation of the spec itself is portamento, as in acid style sliding, although if the controller and receiver agreed on a pitch bend range, that would be theoretically possible. But arpeggios are straightforward, just being lots of regular notes in quick succession, so although I can't think of any such converter, it should be possible to build.

There's a real advantage to automated arepeggiators too, regardless of whether they're software or hardware based: besides being able to play live arpeggios, you can also slowly sweep the arpeggiator's clock speed up and down as you play (which is what I do with RPG-8 in a track I co-wrote and performed, Dagda's Arp, for example), which would be ludicrously difficult to do by hand, even when you're editing rather than playing in real time. The only way I've ever done this is with RPG-8 or, back when I had them, the arpeggiators built into the SH-101 and SidStation. I presume there are plenty of other synths with built-in arpeggiators too, but I don't know of anything that outputs the arpeggiation as another MIDI signal, or CV signal. Shame.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help!

Thanks,
Zoë.