Can anyone explain bipolar Behaviour in this context

The term is introduced in the manual on page 86 under the heading “Configuring a Macro”. I can’t see any explanation of what it is - Duckduckgo only led to articles about music and mental health!
More curious than anything!

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I can try: in a “normal” macro, the knob has a range of 0…127, but a bipolar macro has a range of -64…+64.

That means that a bipolar macro can both increase and decrease the target parameter’s value, while the unipolar value can either decrease or increase it, but not both.

You can try this with cutoff:

First set cutoff in the engine page to the center position.

Now go inside a macro, delete all other mappings and set cutoff as target, and the scaling factor to around +15. Make sure bipolar is off.

When you turn the macro’s knob clockwise, the cutoff frequency increases. If you turn it fully counterclockwise, you have the original cutoff value.

Set the scaling factor to -15, now you can decrease the cutoff when you turn the macro knob up.

Now set the macro to bipolar, again with a factor of +15. When the macro knob is centered, cutoff is at the preset value. Turn the knob cw to increase, or ccw to decrease the cutoff.

Now set the scaling factor to -15. That inverts the macro knob, turning it ccw now increases the cutoff, and vice versa.

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Does the manual’s use of this term make you feel extremely sad or angry?

:laughing:

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Thanks, it actually dawned on me what it’s meant to be eventually. Doesn’t seem like an appropriate term for it but I suppose it will do.

Can you mark my post as an answer to your question, so that people can see this is no longer an open question?