randy's Recent Posts
Nice to hear from all of you. We’ve been in this together a while now :-)
Wait @tikitpok how did you even end up with a 2015 MPB with 10.10? ... Oh, I see 10.11 was released mid-2015.
@muki I hear the feedback about the dragging being coarse! And yeah I forgot to do a section on "dials, general" in the manual—have to fix that
Enjoy your Sunday!
Thanks for the thoughts and nice feedback!
Shift-drag does do a much higher precision drag than the numbers are capable of showing in some cases.
I've thought about more modulation options in the future.
Please send me an email if you want to pay by PayPal and I'll send you a funds request.
Metal: I'm truly sorry to leave anyone out of the fun, for now. Apple is going to be requiring Metal in the near future and I'm looking towards that future with new products. After all this time I'm still just one person coding, with a limited capacity to support different APIs that come down the road and multiple ones at once.
Having said that I will look at adding OpenGL support for older Macs when I have a chance. It shouldn't be too difficult, but I do need a break first!
If anyone wants to purchase by PayPal, just send me an email and I'll send you a money request.
If you were used to PayPal, all you see from your end now that we've moved to Stripe is "PayPal’s gone!" But from my end, things are much easier with Stripe because having a credit card is a much more common thing in the world than having a PayPal account. And I saw many many requests on my end from people who didn't want to or were unable to make PayPal accounts. Ideal would be to support both, but, that is more complicated.
@fernando carvalho can you please send me an email about this bug with a few more details including your OS and Live versions? Thank you.
I sent the license key to your gmail. :-)
done!
If you like, I'll be happy to send a $ request through PayPal so you can pay that way and I'll make your license manually. Let me know.
Thanks for writing! Modulation is a fine idea. Maybe in the future if this thing catches on.
I'm interested to hear why a card is worse than PayPal for you or what's not working. If you don't want to discuss it in the comments please email me at support@madronalabs.com... thanks.
There will be a different opportunity to buy things and save money. Please stay tuned just another week or so.
Thanks for the impressions of how you are using Mac and iThings!
Parameter overrides or locks for any parameter are definitely on my list of things to add to all the instruments.
just download the demo from https://madronalabs.com/products/aalto and install. No need to re-register.
I'll have to take a listen to the u-he instruments. If a synth is doing poly legato without something like MPE to tell it which "vibrating object" a note is on, there's always a decision to be made about which note to connect to a new one. Without getting too much into it here, I'd say it gets tricky pretty quick. :-)
I think you are going to have to use one Aalto in unison mode per "string" right now. Voices will want to reassign to new incoming notes and aside from the unison switch there are no switches on that algorithm.
I do appreciate your idea of the "MPE Legato" mode and I can see adding that at some point. I'll add it as a feature request.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hi there, I'm happy to help you diagnose what's going on. Getting a movie of the data from you is the best way.
You can record the screen using QuickTime Player: https://support.apple.com/guide/quicktime-player/record-your-screen-qtp97b08e666/mac
I'm assuming you have the latest software v. 1.8.3: https://madronalabs.com/topics/1691-sticky-soundplane-client-for-mac
Please go to the Touches page and set the view mode to "calibrated." This shows the closest thing to a direct pressure readout from the sensors. Then make sure "view scale" is at the default of 1.0.
Then capture a video of running a single finger slowly across the surface from left to right on each row of keys. You could take around 5 seconds per row.
Then try to capture one of your stuck-note events, again on the "calibrated" page, so i can see what that looks like.
This should let me look for electrical and mechanical issues at once for an initial diagnosis.
Fingers placed on adjacent keys are going to be recognized as the same touch. This is a limitation of the current sensor software. I plan to improve this in software in the future.
Noise when the sensor is at rest is normal. Not enough to trigger random notes, obviously, but it is OK to see the noise. Every sensor has noise—most just don't give you a way to see it.
Forums are a great way to get in touch but not good for sending videos—please direct followups to support@madronalabs.com. You can share the videos using Dropbox or something similar.
Thank you for sharing, Pierre! I've tweeted about it and found it very interesting as well as evocative sounding. I appreciate your crediting Kaivo.
Thanks very much for sharing!
A bug report identifies a problem with the software and gives the developer facts that will help lead to a fix. Nearly always, it should be short and sweet.
First, before reporting a bug, please look at the topics in this forum to see if one matches your problem. If so, post in the existing thread. If not, then start a new thread with a title that describes the problem briefly. A good report contains:
Title: A very brief description of the issue and when it happens
Environment: all of the software and hardware the issue happened on, including:
- Plugin or software and complete version (found at upper right in Madrona Labs plugins)
- AU/VST host and version
- OS Version, full version like "OS X 10.14.6" or "Windows 10 Pro version 1903"
Steps to reproduce: what causes the problem, told in a way that a developer can repeat it. Numbered steps are often helpful here.
Reproducibility: when the steps are followed, does the problem happen every time, sometimes, or rarely?
Expected result: what you thought was supposed to happen when the steps were followed.
Actual result: what happened instead. Did the DAW crash? Did the plugin stop making audio? Please try to be specific—"the button didn't work" may just mean that we have different expectations about it.
Evidence: if you are able to get them, screenshots or audio captures can be very helpful to describe the problem.
Thanks for your help in improving our software!
Thanks for the notes and offer of help. I've been in touch with Jim at Five12 and I think I know what's going on here. I'll be able to focus on this in earnest in a week or so.
stay tuned...
Do you remember which change made it start working again?
It's also possible that it doesn't happen every time.
This is very cool, thanks! I'll try to point some more people to it in the next newsletter or similar.
It would be useful to have this feature. I design things "from the knobs in" and so the difficulty here right away is, how would the UI look and work?
Now if there were an arbitrary function generator that you could run the vox output through, as well as other things, that would be one solution.
I updated Numerology and I can't reproduce this issue anymore. Numerology is 4.2 (build 178) here. I'm on MacOS 10.14.
Please let me know if that works for you. If not, you could also try this Aalto 1.8.3 installer: http://madronalabs.com/media/aalto/Aalto1.8.3.pkg
It turned into a pretty ambitious project and I'm reworking a ton of the enabling technology as well. I appreciate that you are still interested!
I have put some of the behind-the-scenes work into a smaller new release. More info on that in the next couple of weeks.
I've finished version 1.5.0 of the Soundplane software. This release is recommended for all Soundplane owners. It fixes some possible crashes and has an entirely rewritten touch tracker, almost a year in development. The benefits of this new tracker should be obvious as soon as you play it!
Direct link: Soundplane 1.5.0.zip, 5.9MB
version 1.5 changes:
- new touch tracker algorithm:
- consumes much less CPU
- improved latency
- improved pressure sensitivity
- improved pressure uniformity
- improved position accuracy
- allows better tracking into corners
- lengthy normalization step no longer required
- fixed hanging touches
- fix Kyma connection
- improve selection of lowest-noise carrier set
- fix a possible crash when switching zone presets
- fixed a window-related crash on shutdown
- fixed latency issue when in background for an extended time
In case you missed it, you can see me playing a Satie piece using the new software here:
I'm taking on some "real pieces" in addition to improvising, to feel out what changes will make the next model of Soundplane the best instrument we can make it.
The documentation does not reflect many aspects of the new software yet. Please post in the forums or email me anytime if you have questions.
NOTE: to install this version of the software I recommend removing the existing files in ~/Library/Application Support/Madrona Labs/Soundplane. Then running the new version the first time will run the carrier selection and create new defaults.
After the new prefs are made, select "default" from the OSC destinations menu to get OSC flowing again.
If I did this I would probably make it quantize to whatever scale is selected in the KEY module. Then adding a scale that just has the dial detents in it should give you what you want also.
Can you turn on record automation to record the manual tweaking of the knob you are doing? That should work. Then if you want to edit it you'll have all those values in the automation track to cut and paste.
I forgot to add that search is on the Resources / Support page.
No idea of when exactly. But it's clear tablets are a big part of the future.
Been vector-based here since 2009. I don't see all the trains coming, but I saw that one.
Yes, I can invoice you via PayPal. Please email me at support@madronalabs.com.