randy's Recent Posts
Happy Solstice, and here's to change and evolution. This goes out with all my best wishes to everyone for health, peace and prosperity in what has been such a hard year for so many. I hope that, despite COVID, you are finding ways to keep sane and happy, to nurture your body and spirit. A few weeks ago I got away on a short trip to meet some friends at the Pacific Bonsai Museum. That's where the lovely grouping of golden larch trees on the sale image here comes from. Visiting was a meditative, inspiring and world-expanding trip for me and if you're in the Seattle area, I recommend it highly.
From now through January 6 2021, our year-end sale is happening! You can use the code EVOLVE to get 30% off all our software. If you're an Aalto fan but you've been holding out on getting Kaivo or Virta or Aaltoverb, now's a great time. And yes, our simple bundle deal is in effect along with the year-end discount, if you choose to take advantage of them both. This results in some big discounts!
Finally, if you're looking for a last-minute gift, you should know that it's easy to give a Madrona Labs software license! A gift license can even be part of a simple bundle with one you bought for yourself and I'll be happy to transfer it free of charge (and judgement). Just email me at support@madronalabs.com to let me know. I'm taking Dec 25, Dec 31, and Jan 1 away from the computer but otherwise I'll be available within 24 hours (and probably less) to help make your holiday dreams come true.
Yes we do, please email me at support@madronalabs.com and I'll set you up.
From what you wrote, that all looks like it should work. Does the vst~ have its own program change message you can try?
I have to get Sumu out first. My plan is to be working on v2 by this Fall.
Hi, Aalto v.1 does not do MIDI mapping in the synth itself—you will need to use the MIDI mapping features of your favorite DAW.
By popular demand, version 2 will have MIDI mapping.
good to hear it's working well.
Yeah! I was very stoked to see this.
Just wanted to follow up a little late here and say thanks for sharing the nice words and a bit of context about what you are doing. In this pandemic time I've been largely "working in the code mines" and I'm excited to show off the fruits of my labors soon.
Sumu might not have "spectral editing" either—it's very much built around live patching like Aalto and Kaivo. Instead of fiddling with individual partials, you'll have modulation sources that are designed for spectral synthesis and dials on some transformations that will be globally useful.
Hi, this is on my list but I haven't had a chance to get to it. There's a chance I can sneak it into an Aaltoverb update that's coming soon. But if it turns out it's not a quick thing, it will have to wait until after Sumu ships.
Thanks for the feedback. I've gotten a few requests for it over the years and it's on my list of things to add to version 2 of the plugins.
I have to stay focused on releasing a new plugin for now but I'll be interested to see where this goes and will consider adopting it.
It's high on the list. Have you tried using https://github.com/DLTcollab/sse2neon ? Hopefully I can use it to get madronalib working on NEON relatively easily.
Do you mean, play an audio file through Virta? I have not used savihost so maybe someone else can answer.
Hi Scott, thanks—it's been a difficult year! with the coming of Spring and, hopefully, a vaccine on the way I am finding myself more energetic and less distracted. Getting Sumu done is the first step to what will hopefully be a year of progress on all fronts.
Nothing yet, sorry.
I'm definitely interested in hearing other ideas for resonators. I'd like to sneak at least one into a free update, then add some more ambitious stuff with the next major version.
Wind sounds are definitely a gap at present! You can kind of get there with the chime, and I think i have a couple of presets that attempt it. But a real pipe resonator is definitely called for.
The difficulty of the work depends on quite a few things. Even with mathematically simpler resonators, dialing in useful ranges and curves for parameters can take a lot of playing and listening.
I have a list of UI features like this to add to the next major version. This is on there. Thanks for the reminder.
I have verified the problem on my Windows machine and I'm working on a fix to test with Live 11 and release. Thanks for your patience.
Good looking out garf.
Hi Marc, I personally have never used Mainstage so I can't be as helpful as I would like. My advice is definitely to try the Kaivo demo and see how it goes for you. DAWs are usually not too different from one another in terms of performance but really the best thing is to try it.
To scrub a sample position per note, you can use one instance of Kaivo with either poly aftertouch or MPE data patched to the sample offset. It's up to you whether you want to use MPE for this. If you might have other things to control per note that would be an argument for MPE. But not all DAWs support it well yet.
From looking at Iris just now, my reaction is: not very similar. It will be semi-modular like my other synths, for starters.
Thanks for the additional info. This situation looks a bit complicated.
Interestingly, on my M1 Macbook Air here, Kaivo's interface is definitely slower than it should be, while Aalto's is fine—and all the audio processing is very fast. The presence of the emulator definitely complicates things further, however this setup might be a basis for figuring out what's going wrong here where I have a development environment.
I'm nearly certain this is my own problem.
Thanks for the clear description. A really stellar bug report, I have to say. I wish they were all this helpful.
I'm very sorry to hear you're having trouble. I've also heard from other users about slowdowns in Logic. for example here: https://madronalabs.com/topics/8040-extremely-slow-ui-for-all-the-plugins
I can't reproduce these issues here, or I would have put out an update by now. And oddly, it happens on a variety of machines including a setup very similar to my daily driver (MacBook Pro with Mojave). I'm going to look again at what all these setups might have in common and hopefully I can come up with a test to try.
I can also make a version that would collect usage data on the affected systems for debugging. If you have time to try beta versions specifically aimed at fixing this please let me know and I'll be in touch.
@progster to clarify, if you run into this problem you'll see that after you set the MPE bend range menu it just does not keep the setting.
When I can make time for playing, I try to practice my Soundplane. I know the Linnstrument is a good instrument too. In an ideal world I would have one of every MPE controller for testing!
The thread you point to is mainly related to an issue with pitch bend at the start of notes. This got fixed with version 1.9.4.
Sadly I don't have a Linnstrument.
For some hosts on Windows 10 the MPE pitch bend range menu (in the "gear menu") simply does not do anything. So maybe this is what you're running into and the value is set to something small while the Linnstrument is sending out a much bigger range. I'll fix this ASAP. Meanwhile you could try a smaller pitch bend range setting on your Linnstrument.
Hi and welcome.
I don't know if any patch is a canonical start. Maybe I should make an "MPE default."
The settings in the "gear" menu don't change when you change the patch. They are saved in your project in whatever your host DAW is. These things like MPE pitch bend are meant to reflect things about your controller that would presumably stay the same over use of multiple patches.
I hear you about the manual updates. Meanwhile here's a table of the KEY outputs in the different protocol modes: https://madronalabs.com/topics/4718-key-outputs-by-protocol
Are you on Windows? There is an MPE pitch bend issue there where the menu doesn't work. Please share more info or a link to "bend to the moon" because I'm not finding that.
We are not there yet, but getting close. What I said in the newsletter was, I'll be showing off some new features made possible by my new plugin framework. Nothing about a finished Sumu, which is still a little ways off, but I hope you'll enjoy seeing these new LFO / MIDI learn features.
This is old too but should still be correct: outputs from the KEY module described in MIDI, MPE and OSC modes.
https://madronalabs.com/topics/4718-key-outputs-by-protocol
in MPE mode the X output sends out cc#73 for each note by default.
It's a different VST/AU plugin.