randy's Recent Posts
cool!
Hmm hoodies are kind of pricey. But you can't fly your Aalto colors in the Winter with a t-shirt. Decisions, decisions.
I'm close to finishing the Aalto 1.3 upgrade. I had a request for a sneak peek, so here you go. The 1.3 version leaves the sound engine exactly the same, but adds a few of the MIDI and usability features most requested by users. Mostly people complained that Aalto's UI was just too big overall. So I hope you enjoy the new, smaller version:
Cute little guy, ain't he. Wait, what? You said it was too small already? OK, enjoy the new, bigger version:
And yes, you can smoothly resize between the two.
If you look closely, you can see evidence of new capabilities that will be coming. The list is not set in stone and will include some things depending on whether I have time to finish in the next couple of weeks. So I'll hold off on announcing new features until the release is out.
Since my site update this morning, there has been a problem with downloading registered copies of Aalto.
I'll fix this ASAP and post an update here when it's done. Sorry for any trouble.
[EDIT] Fixed.
OK! I even played around with colors a while ago. I'll do this after I mail out some Soundplanes and take a quick nap. So, first half of June-ish.
[EDIT] yeah, right.
The second run of 30 Soundplanes is under way! I am taking orders now for mid-December delivery at the price of $1,895. Please visit the hardware page for new ordering info and new photos.
Cool trick! A bit esoteric to include in the synth itself probably.
Not gonna happen. Not a bad idea. But the voices can't interact with each other or I couldn't optimize them in ways that I have already done and ways I have planned.
Think of them like voice cards in a polysynth that all are controlled by the same motherboard.
Hello and welcome aboard!
Well, this is a pretty general question and I think more of the answers will only come in a little time, after you have tried different things with your Soundplane yourself.
We are all just beginners with this instrument, so if you dive in, you'll quickly be as much of an authority as anyone!
I designed the Soundplane to make a new level of expressive control possible for software synthesis. I think a computer is the best way to try a lot of different sounds and setups and approaches to the instrument, especially since you already have one. It certainly offers enough room for a lifetime of exploration. You could use your Mac, really dive into it, and eventually think about what's missing, if anything.
A Kyma would offer more polish in terms of the synthesis software-- it has a very high quality of synthesis algorithms and dedicated DSP for a very solid platform.
Though my softsynths and others are getting really good, analog modules still offer a real kind of punch and unpredictability that is hard to duplicate in software.
That's my view from 10,000 meters.
Thanks for writing. This feature is done in 1.3 and coming out very soon!
re: AAX, like RTAS, I'm not sure the number of people who want synths for that platform is not sufficient to pay for the time I would spend writing and supporting it. After 1.3 is out I'll take a look at the new SDK.
In Aalto it's more like a modulation matrix. There are as many source/destination pairs as you want. Except I guess there is only one mod amount parameter per destination in Aalto rather than an amount for each modulation pair.
This is right. Each of [sources x destinations] slots in the matrix would only need one bit representing whether a patch cord is there or not. Then each destination has a level amount.
That would 14 x 31, or 434 matrix parameters, in the current version of Aalto. So, more than you ever want to scroll through and see! I am sure there is a better solution, and I'll find it for version 2.
I am completely sold on the utility of this---it would be super fun. But it's a little harder than you suggest. The thing is, in Aalto you can plug as many cables into one destination as you want. So using MIDI it's hard to see how to automate the cables individually. There are just too many parameters.
With NRPNs ( a little-used feature of MIDI, but like controllers ) there is enough data to do the job, but some popular software (Ableton and others) simply does not support them.
The trick is to do it in a way that not only works, in some imaginary perfect MIDI environment, but is actually useful in most DAWs and helps people make music. I welcome any ideas, truly.
Decibel Festival is one day away. Eek! I'm busy making software and hardware so I won't go on and on about it, but this year's lineup has some really amazing treats and the weather actually promises to be amazing. The town is quivering with potential. Wish me and my liver good luck.
There's also a great lineup for the conference part of the festival which is bigger than ever. I'm excited to talk and demo the Soundplane on a panel this Thursday. And even more excited that Roger Linn, one of my heroes in the world of electronic instruments, will be aboard for stimulating discussion. Also joining us will be artist / inventors Moldover and Tim Thompson.
The panel is at the Broadway Performance Hall at 1 pm Thursday. Get the full details here:
I survived! Now back to the shop.
It should be very soon! Just a few bug fixes to do now. I've been hoping to finish up for some time but Soundplane work keeps needing to happen. Thanks for your patience.
Extreme slime bursts! Pow!
working hard on it!
Not long now!
i would love to see some sort of preset system or user defined startup template for the soundplane client so when you set and save it every time you open the software it opens the same configuration.
This is planned Real Soon Now but I've been working more than expected to get the few remaining Soundplanes out. Sorry, I know the lack of this feature is a little annoying. I'll get to it as soon as I can.
I guess you mean for Aalto. I'll probably do one in late Fall again.
All the surface area of the strips is needed. It's a parallel plate capacitor on each junction. So a wire would not give any appreciable surface area.
If you want to make something different but based on the same principe, it's easy to experiment with. I would try setting up a single-point sensor and seeing what happens.
I don't know much about raspberry pi. Probably just about any computer could do one junction. As you do more it takes more processing power, and it takes a pretty fast DSP to do what the Soundplane does (8 x 64).
I seem to remember trying this and not having it do anything useful. Good suggestion though. Maybe something to revisit.
I will work with fxpansion to test the beta if possible, though I can't promise they will have any time to test it. If not, hopefully I can find some users willing to beta test with PT. This will take less of my time than installing ProTools here, and will not force me to violate my moral code by using an iLok. (just kidding) (kind of)
Meanwhile, glad to hear about the Reaper solution!
Hi,
I'm just back from vacation and getting to this reply-- if the answers are too short for you, please feel free to ask for more clarification.
I'll announce more about the second round of Soundplanes in a couple of weeks.
X and Y precision are determined from pressure information via a fairly complicated piece of software. Because results from many sensor points are used for a single touch, the question of resolution in those axes is not a simple one to answer. The best thing to do is probably measure it and make a video. In my experience there is sub-cent resolution.
You can map the surface to any tuning or combination of notes you like. If you want one semitone per x space only, then yes there are 30 such divisions. I would probably have to sell a lot more Soundplanes at the current size before I made a bigger one. It seems so far that there is less demand for that. But I see no big technological barriers to doing so. Between the Continuum, Soundplane, and the forthcoming Linnstrument, there will be quite a few choices in pressure-sensitive instruments soon, and of course I hope this leads to the instrument category being more visible and widely understood as a more sensitive alternative to MIDI keyboards.
I am going to rethink this substantial software challenge when there is time. A physical prosthetic would not help. The difficulty is between sensors and data, not mechanical. There is definitely a lot of improvement left to gain.
Thanks for your comments.
-Randy
Marking a big day in a project that has been over three years in the making, I just gave the first ten Soundplanes to a UPS driver. They've all been play tested, and I know more than ever that they're instruments with amazing expressive potential. I can't wait to hear what their owners do with them. And to spend some time playing mine.
(click images for closeups)
Hi Bob,
Good to hear from you. Your list seems correct, all these quantities come out as signals in the Aalto for Soundplane pre-beta I sent.
The Max example patch here in the forums should show the OSC data. I'll see what I can do to polish it up and add a Max MIDI patch in the next day or two.
-Randy
Thanks for the good report-- others have reported this and I am working on a fix for 1.3.
Hey there. It's two more midi CC outputs . because I want to keep the UI simple and not take any more space, they are set to the channels n+1 and n+2 where n is the "mod cc" channel set by the dial.
In short, lots more MIDI control!
Makes sense. Thanks for the suggestion.