Berlin Bound for Superbooth 2018

I'm doing one last load of laundry, have my boarding pass printed out, passport on the desk where I won't forget it, excited to be headed to Berlin for Superbooth 2018 in a few hours. It's the first public event of its kind I've done in a Madrona Labs capacity for several years, at least. I plan to meet a bunch of my customers, hear some concerts, and do a lot of talking about what's next in the World of Shiny Things that Make Noises.

We already know what the next shiny thing from Madrona Labs will be. The Soundplane-cv is a 12HP Eurorack module that powers the Soundplane and listens to it over USB, and puts out up to four touches as control voltages and gates, for a total of 16 outputs: gate, and assignable x y and z per touch. Brian and I did a big push on this project this month, and we now have finished hardware to poke at and talk about. The Mac still does a much better Soundplane demo, so we won't be demoing the Soundplane-cv, but we are very close to completing it. They will be available this summer.

Now where's my passport?

It's Aalto T-shirts!

Five years ago, I did a small run of Aalto T-shirts. It was fun making them but with all the printing and shipping and paperwork it took up roughly a couple of weeks of my time so I've never done it again... until now!

The key was finding a US-based fulfillment company called Printful that prints shirts to order. I made a test shirt using their process and I've been wearing it a lot. The charcoal tri-blend fabric is very soft and has a nicely textured look. This detail photo shows it after being machine washed four times, and the colors haven't faded at all. I like that the digital print is not crackly like plastic process shirt inks are and so far, it seems more durable. These are very nice shirts.

Another big benefit of using Printful is that they print to order in Europe! This means that my European customers can actually get a shirt for an affordable price. Wherever you are located, I hope it will be a pleasure to purchase through them because I'm very protective of your experience when you do anything Madrona Labs-related. So please keep me posted.

tl;dr: simply click the following button to...

Get that sweet Aalto T-shirt!

A form will pop up to enter your size, then a second page lets you select your shipping and payment options. I've set up shipping for North America and Europe. Shipping rates should be as follows: USA: $5 (first shirt) / $1 (each addl.) Canada: $8 / $1. Mexico: $10 / $1. Europe: $9 / $5. If you can't find your country on the form, give me a shout and I'll see if I can add it. Enjoy!

NOTE: The European shipping rates include the VAT of $4 per shirt.

Soundplane version 1.6 update

Another Soundplane software update is available. This release is recommended for all Soundplane owners. It's coming out hot on the heels of the 1.5 version in order to fix a problem that some users were having under Mac OS 10.10.

To keep up with Apple's code-signing recommendations I'm now distributing the application as a signed .dmg file. Just drag the Soundplane app to the Applications shortcut to install in typical Mac fashion.

Finally, latency is also decreased with this version, for the first time since the initial release! I hesitate to throw out precise numbers yet, because latency measurements are hard to do right. Roughly speaking, an underlying isochronous USB layer that added 10–20 milliseconds of latency previously is now down to just a few ms. I'm looking forward to doing some accurate tests. Maybe this will make a cool movie?

For those of you who write computer program and are doing things like compiling Soundplane apps for Linux, the C++ API is now settled down, so that you won't have to keep up with any further changes for a long while. As always the code is available on github: https://github.com/madronalabs/soundplane

Direct link: Soundplane 1.6.0.dmg, 5.9MB

version 1.6 changes:

• improved isochronous USB driver: lower latency, allows restart after pausing app
• fixed an issue selecting cleanest carriers after "select carriers"
• now distributing as signed .dmg
• fixed a possible crash on shutdown

Stay tuned for a maintenance update of Aalto, Kaivo and Virta very shortly.

Soundplane software version 1.5.0 release

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.

Summer sale 2017

Dear music makers,

In appreciation for your support, we are having a summer sale this year. Use the code MRJACKPOTS on any of the product pages to get 25% off any Madrona Labs plugin. From now through August 20.

photo: @photoboothkt

Kaivo 1.3.3 beta available

I've fixed a few issues and uploaded a new beta version for intrepid Kaivo users: Kaivo1.3.3b1.

This beta is for Mac OS only. I plan to ship the final Mac version as well as the Windows version next week. I'll also update the other plugins with the relevant fixes then.

changes:

• bugfix: the sequencer was not retriggering from reset input
• bugfix: .kbm mappings were not always using all notes
• bugfix: .kbm mappings were not setting reference note properly
• fixed a rare condition where the metal string resonator could lock up

If you noticed any changes in how your patches behaved after installing Kaivo 1.3.1, hopefully the sequencer fix will get them back in shape.

Soundplane 1.5 beta available

For the last few months I've been working on a brand new way of extracting touches from the Soundplane pressure data. I'm very happy to send out the first public demo of that work today, as Soundplane 1.5.0b1.

The new touch tracker algorithm is a fundamentally new approach, and fixes small but annoying inconsistencies that players had to work around with the old one. Some of these showed up as stuck notes, or lingering phantom notes that would follow a touch.

I've been playing my Soundplane a lot while working on this. Now, when the sounds aren't right, I'm finding more often it's a problem with where my fingers are and not the software. So I'm very happy to switch my focus a bit more from algorithm development to practising!

Soft touches are no longer subject to a time-varying rejection filter, and should feel much more stable and less spongy. Positions of touches should be more accurate and consistent. Adjacent touches should maintain their positions better over a range of pressure.

Generally speaking, the new algorithm uses spatial filtering in a lot of places where the old one used temporal filtering. So latency should be much better, and in general it should reflect whatever your fingers are doing right now, which is kinds the point. Read on for details.

Hooray, it’s a spring all-plugins update!

All of our instrument plugins, (that's Aalto, Kaivo and Virta, for those of you listening at home) have received essential updates. Please download and enjoy.

If for some reason you skipped the previous release or two, note that back in December I rolled out a new registration system. Instead of the old "My downloads," there is now a "My licenses" link where you can get the license keys for all your purchased plugins. Just paste the key into the demo plugin to register it. If you have any questions, I'll be here.

My work the past two months has been on platform compatibility, bug fixes and optimization. The stuck notes in certain hosts including Reaper are no more. Audio glitches that popped up sometimes in Kaivo have been put to rest, I think. CPU use should be around 20% less across the board.

I'm particularly excited about the CPU improvement this time, because there's more on the way. The gains this time came from rewriting parts of madronalib, my DSP library, but the plugins haven't been completely converted to use the new code. When I can do that, there should be another big boost in efficiency.

First, though, the Soundplane app needs some much-awaited love, and I have a shop to put together so I can prototype instruments here again. Stay tuned for gripping wood shop action. Stepper motors! Sawdust!

Aalto 1.8.1, Kaivo 1.3.1, Virta 1.3.1 updates

Hi all, and happy new year. i've just released a .1 update of all three plugins to address some things that were broken in the recent extensive updates. I think of these x.0.1 release as the little cut scene after the credits—now we're all sitting around eating shawarma or whatever and everything makes a bit more sense.

The updates are all on the product pages. I've changed the web site to explain the new license keys a bit better as well.

Winter sale.

Dear music makers,

In appreciation for your support, it's time for the annual winter sale. Use the code MAYTHEREBEPEACE on any of the product pages to get 25% off any Madrona Labs plugin. From now through Jan 5.