A VCV Rack polyphonic cable carries up to 16 channels so one patch chain voices multiple notes

VCV Rack polyphony packs up to 16 channels of voltage into one (visually thicker) cable. A polyphonic source such as MIDI-CV emits multi-channel outputs, and downstream polyphony-aware modules process each channel independently, multiplying voice count without duplicating every module. It is efficient because such modules use SIMD instructions and auto-vectorization, letting a CPU core handle 4 channels (SSE) at once. Utility modules — VCV Split, Merge, Sum, Viz — route or combine individual channels. All cables are technically polyphonic; monophonic is just the 1-channel case.

Examples

Connecting a 4-voice MIDI-CV to a single polyphonic VCO plays four independent pitches through one oscillator module instead of needing four separate VCOs.

Assessment

Describe how to take a 4-voice polyphonic signal and pass only voices 1 and 3 to a filter. Which utility modules would you use to split out and recombine channels?