randy's Recent Posts

A few people are seeing errors with presets installation. I do not know what the problem is yet. I have had people check file permissions and so forth, but there are no clues.

A solution for now: get the following zip file:
http://madronalabs.com/media/temp/Aalto_presets.zip

Unzip it, and put the resulting "Aalto" folder into ~/Library/Audio/Presets/Madrona Labs. Then you will have done what the installer does, and the presets will appear in the top menu inside Aalto.

To get to your Library folder you can hold down the Option key while selecting the “Go” menu from the Finder. Sorry this is a bit complicated, it’s Apple’s decision to make ~/Library hard to access, and why I’m moving the presets again in the next version. 

Hi, sorry about this! I know, it's been an issue for a while and will be fixed in the update after the coming 1.6. Please stay tuned.

Sorry, only smalls left now.

There's been a lot of work done with Madrona Labs’ instruments and OSC (Open Sound Control) lately. I’m not sure why the sudden flurry of developments—maybe winter is suited to working on these plumbing/scaffolding types of activities. In any case, I'm very happy to see it. Open Sound Control is much more suited than MIDI for handling the high-resolution, rich, per-touch data that comes from instruments like the Soundplane.


First, here are a couple of videos from António Machado, showing his work with a Haken Continuum, Kaivo, and Aalto. He uses the EigenD environment and an “agent” (EigenD object) written by Mark Harris to give high-res, note-per-touch data to Aalto and Kaivo. It’s rare to see a techy video that is this enjoyable to listen to in its own right, so a big thanks to António and Mark, and please enjoy...


With his Soundplane, Mark goes further into the details of the agent and builds a modular synth step-by-step in the EigenD environment in a series of videos:


Mark has been busy— he has also put together some instruments that work in Reaktor over OSC. Reaktor-enabled Soundplane owners take note! These can be found here on the forums.


Developments like these get me excited to support the next steps with new software features. I plan to offer more and more flexibility for expert users. But in a way, that is the easy part. The flexibility needs to be there, but without getting in the way of the simple experience, where you just plug the instrument in and it works immediately, offering an intimate connection to your music.

Yes.

Thanks for the report. This will be fixed in the next update.

First I've seen this, thanks for the report.

being sent over UDP, t3d messages can theoretically arrive out of order. I have never seen this happen myself however.

possibly this could be circumvented, by watching frame messages, and if we haven't had an update since N ms, then turn the note off.

I think this is the best solution, since for most applications receiving OSC it doesn't seem to be a problem. We could also add an optional "resend touch off" to the Soundplane app.

I have more work to do on timing, and plan to use the bundle timestamps to remove the jitter you are seeing. Practically, it doesn't seem to be a big issue for the continuous data. I find that a slower rate like 100 Hz or even less is enough to transmit anything my fingers can put out.

This could be just an oversight. I guess that the channel for a note row can override the overall channel set by the UI dial.

see your email.

Will the sale run until a certain time tomorrow (Dec 10)?

Until the end of the day today, Pacific Standard Time.

Hi Reptil, In the past I have heard of some issues with multithreading that affect Xeon machines in particular. I have made a bunch of changes in Aalto 1.6, coming very soon, that might fix some of these problems. They will also be rolled into the next version of Kaivo soon. I hope you will stay in touch, test these coming versions, let me know if things improve on your system.

Hmm, odd. Thanks for the good and detailed feedback. I'll check into what changed from 1.0 to 1.1. A rate of 0 is weird from a math perspective sometimes, but makes sense as UI meaning "never loop unless triggered." It's possible there are some subtle issues here I missed.

Thanks for the feedback. This will be fixed in the next update.

Kaivo is not an application, it is a plugin in VST and AU formats. You will have to use it with a VST or Audio Unit host. Some of the popular hosts are Ableton Live, GarageBand, FL Studio, and so on. How to load Kaivo depends on what host you are using.

The plugin should be in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components. To get here in the Finder, the path starts from "Computer" then "Macintosh HD" or whatever you have your system hard drive called, before "Library." But there's no reason you should need to go to that directory. The plugin will show up in your host, however your host accesses the list of plug-in instruments.

The multiple channels in the granulator source are like a palette of waves. The sound comes from a crossfade of the two tracks bordering any x, y position the grains are coming from. So, the number of channels in the file doesn't really have any connection to a multichannel output.

I might do quad versions of all the plugins if there is a demand. So far just one or two people have wanted this so it's a ways down the list.

Glad to hear, enjoy!

OK! Thanks for the feedback.

I have to get the Aalto update out first, then will address this ASAP.

Hi Rastko,

First thing I'm wondering is, did you do "select carriers" for your Soundplane? This looks at all the possible frequencies and chooses the ones with lowest noise. If you do this you may stop seeing the jittery areas. Go to Expert -> select carriers. The result will be saved in the Prefs file.

In any case the Jitter is radio-frequency noise at some frequencies. Normally the "loudest" noise is from the Soundplane's own power supply, because the frequencies in question do not travel far. But it's possible there may be external noise sources. So if you do "select carriers" when you are seeing the worst noise, you will guard against that particular noise source.

X and Y are absolute positions from 0-1 across the surface. dX and dY are the change in position after a touch is started, until it ends. So, moving right makes dX > 0, moving left makes dX

The matrix switch sends the raw touch matrix over OSC. It is not normally needed. You can see the example Max/MSP patch for an example if you are interested and Have Max/MSP.

Please see your email.

It’s educational


I’ve always been happy to offer educational pricing deals for my plugins, if someone asks. I have not generally advertised it because the selling mechanism was a bit of a pain to deal with for both me and the buyer. Thanks to some improvements to the web site, that is no longer the case, so I'm spreading the news more widely now.


A 50% discount on all Madrona Labs software is available for any person currently enrolled in or teaching school or university. If you would like to use this discount, please do the following:

  • Make a Madrona Labs account if you don’t have one
  • Send an email to support@madronalabs.com including a picture of your current student or faculty ID, and telling me what you want to buy (Aalto and/or Kaivo). Please keep the image size small (< 1Mb) or the mail may bounce!

When I get the email I’ll send you download coupons that you can use at purchase to get your educational discount.


I plan to keep this 50% discount on software available indefinitely, so there’s no hurry. Madrona Labs would not be here without the past support of my research by the University of Victoria, and its future will be shaped by ideas presented at conferences like DAFX and NIME.


For site license pricing, please contact me at support@madronalabs.com.


FAQ


I’m only taking one class, is that OK?

Yes, thanks for asking.



My school or university doesn’t have IDs.

Then it’s probably not an accredited educational institution, which is kind of where I draw the line.



Is there a discount on hardware?

No.



Is this educational version different in any way from the normal software?

No. It is the same license, for commercial or non-commercial use, and does not expire. It will qualify for the same upgrades as the full-priced version.



Can I use the educational discount along with another sale discount?

No, only one discount at once.

You didn't say what software you mean. I'm going to talk about Aalto --- all this should apply to the Soundplane and Kaivo as well.

When you make a view for a new Aalto instance for the first time, it comes up with a default size of 1000x600 or something. This is not adjustable. When you drag the window resizer to change the size this change is saved with the DAW file.

I think you have exactly the right ideas in mind. Most of the difficulty in the touch tracking is doing multiple points. A single-point tracker could just look for the highest peak and would be very simple.

Hi Mark,

The Soundplane is a continuous controller first and foremost, not a keyboard. So the protocol reflects this. The touch number is the only thing that two ongoing touches cannot share. It's fine for them to be on the same note. Or for a touch to start on one note and end on another. So we don't want to be comparing notes to tell touches apart in any case.

I tried to make t3d useful in any environment that can receive OSC controllers and treat them as control signals. The idea would be to have a controller /t3d/tch1/z for touch 1 amplitude and so on. I don't know if Reaktor makes it easy to build things at this level. I know that Max/MSP does.

A visualizer would be pretty easy to do in Max. I believe I already have one in my Max examples folder that came with the Soundplane distribution.

Hi Scott,

It sounds like you are finding the right stuff. I took a look at SoundplaneDriver.h where the whole isoch buffer format is documented in the comments. This should be the main info you need. All the code that runs the Soundplane app is in the repo.

The low-level stuff in SoundplaneDriver gets the isoch data. SoundplaneModel::processCallback() is called on its own thread to get the latest frames.

My guess is that a Due will not have the CPU needed to run the algorithm I am currently using for touch detection. The emphasis was on speed and sensitivity, but CPU use is rather high. I am going to be working on the efficiency thing, so even if it doesn't work on your platform at first, I hope you push forward and see what happens, and we can work on this together over time.

The Soundplane's output protocol has not changed since the first Soundplanes were released.

December.

I'm glad to help you play with this stuff. It is not documented anywhere apart from the C++ code, though I hope that is very readable. One reason it's not documented better is that the algorithm is fairly often in flux as I try and do a better job. In particular there will be a big change coming within a few months as I do a rewrite to make adjacent touches work better. If this is a big step up, then spending some time documenting things will make sense at that point.

Some algorithms are really clean and profound, this one not so much. I am using quite a few techniques to get smooth yet fast touches and increase the sensitivity. It's like a grab bag of everything that helped. So explore and feel free to ask questions along the way.

The basic interesting idea is that it's not just peak picking, but distance comparing the 2D images from a template representing the ideal touch. This helps pick light touches out of noise.

The matrix output over OSC is calibrated to set levels but otherwise unfiltered, if memory serves.

I support your efforts to get something going in Max, but in my experience that is a pretty bad environment for this kind of task. Or rather, flow-based programming is not a good fit. If I had to do something in Max I would use javascript in max.

I realize this only scratches the surface but feel free to ask more questions.

You won't see Aalto or Kaivo in Pro Tools because there are no RTAS or AAX versions.

Here's an article from the Pro Tools Expert blog that covers some options for using VST plugins in Pro Tools: http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2013/7/10/7-ways-to-host-vst-or-au-plug-ins-in-pro-tools-11-and-earlie.html

DDMF Metaplugin is a kind of super wrapper that lets combinations of AU or VST plugins run in Pro Tools. It may be another option for you.