randy's Recent Posts
but why is magnitude 1/distance, and not 1/ distance squared?
That is a very hard question to answer. Why do the laws of physics do one thing and not another in this case? It would be a long answer and I would have to look a bunch of stuff up. And then ultimately we would get to some aspect of quantum electrodynamics as we currently understand it and then same question would be there: why is it that way? And ultimately, we don't know.
I guess maybe the question you really want answered is, why do I say it is one over the distance, how do I know that? And the reason is that I looked up the equation for the capacitance between parallel plates. I really don't understand it any more deeply than that.
...so 15 volts p-p?
sure, or whatever your audio interface is capable of putting out. It would depend on the interface. What you don't want is distortion. So use an oscilloscope or similar and make sure you don't have it.
what is the optimal distance between strips to stop cross-talk
I used to use bigger gaps but capacitance between the edges is very small. a few mm should be fine.
Or is the design less for striking and more more for touching
The design is for striking, touching, whatever. So as a basis for all these things you need an accurate position, the rest of the behavior depends on whatever you do with that data. Most of the time I am controlling envelopes directly with pressure. Or in a physical modeling setup I may be adding energy with velocity. I don't think about MIDI ever unless I have to, it is very limiting.
My overall advice as always is just to experiment with one or two junctions before you build a whole array.
I remember the B-spline is only needed for the audio synthesis. If you just want a controller, you are probably fine using the magnitude data directly. There is a paragraph somewhere in my thesis about the filtering being in some sense optimal. It doesn't preserve all the bandwidth but for sending controller data to an audio signal it's probably more important to avoid audible glitches.
how do I extract velocity information from this set?
Phase is just a detail of the FFT, which is being used as a multiplexer for real data. So you put real data in and get real data out. The magnitudes are proportional to 1 / distance. So the range of physical distances you use is very important. Having the magnitudes you take the inverse to get position and to get velocity you take the derivative.
Yes, sounds useful. To varying extents in different DAWs, I guess. Thanks for the tips.
I'm working hard to get a beta out this month, at least.
Maybe Dec 15-20? Timing will depend a bit on my Virta work so please stay tuned.
Thanks for getting back with the solution. I'm glad it's sorted.
You mean each voice on its own stereo pair of outputs? That's a lot of outputs (when we get 8 voices for Aalto anyway). Would one per voice be as useful? What software would you use to route them? Curious about your application.
OK, I see, thanks.
Yes, the version is your problem. You are running 1.4.6. You have to find that old plugin and remove it.
I don't know anything about Studio One, but some DAWs can have an optional VST Plugins folder of their own.
Are you sure you are running the Aalto 1.7.0? You can check in the registration area in the plugin. An older version will not load newer patches. A newer version should load older patches just fine.
/AppData/Roaming ... is the right place. It will use the current user's files, so you could have problems if for some reason it was installed as Administrator and now you are running as a different user, or vice versa.
I hear this would be cool, but to be honest it's not high on my list of features to add. The main reason is that these areas where the plugin communicates with the host are the ones that give me the most trouble. Different hosts can behave differently and require a lot of testing to get things right. The clock input is one example. Getting clock sync right across all the different hosts I'm testing on took a long time.
Meanwhile rendering out a click and triggering other sounds with it as you suggest, is a cool idea. I always prefer working in audio over MIDI anyway.
p.s. until we add a search bar you can type "site:madronalabs.com mysearch" into Google.
Weird, I'll check it out.
Very nice sound design and demos!
For patches like "ARP Mad Sciencist" and "PER increasing feedback" it would be helpful if there were some notes, so people know that they need to turn the host clock on or whatever.
I know it would be cool to put notes in the patches themselves. I have this as an Aalto 2.0 feature.
Hi, I'll try to answer your questions about Aalto CM. It should work well but is lagging behind the main Aalto release in several important features. I believe it's at par with version 1.5. For a list of new Aalto features since then you can look at the README for Aalto: http://madronalabs.com/media/aalto/_read_me_first.txt
If you install a newer version of Aalto it will install over the CM component. You can save the CM component by copying it from /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components to a safe place.
CM edition is not Retina ready. The release version is better but you may still see some blurry displays. This is because drawing all the animating dials simply takes too long on a Retina display. In the future, I will use OpenGL to accelerate the drawing.
I am planning to add a search button here. Meanwhile you can use Google to search for things on this site. Type in Google's search bar "site:madronalabs.com Aalto CM" (for example).
There are a bunch of ways you could make Aalto start up when you want. I would automate some parameter that turns the sound off / on. Like the gate level. Or you could modulate something outside of Aalto, like the channel level.
Or, you can change the patch so it only plays when a key is held down to get more control. turning on 'key trig' in the sequencer and using the envelope to get the signal, you can get a key-controlled drone, then just use a long MIDI note to control the sound.
There are sometimes glitches with the sequencer with Live 9.x and Aalto 1.7, after a few minutes of playback like you describe. There will be a fix for this coming soon. To work around this you can add key control as I'm describing above and then restart the sequencer with a new note every few bars or something so it will stay in sync.
Hmm. I have heard good feedback about El Capitan. I'm not sure how to go about reproducing your issue.
Possibly your Audio Units cache has a problem. You can try removing the cache at ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.audiounits.cache, and then removing and reinstalling the AUs.
Yes.
I tried to implement the canDo as per Bitwig's suggestions, a simple thing. Too bad to hear it is not working. I am in touch with Bitwig and will investigate. Though OSC is going to be more important long term, I want to help make MPE support as smooth as possible.
OK, I'll reexamine all this after I get the Virta beta out/ Thanks for the detailed feedback.
Are you moving to Bitwig as your main DAW now? I guess that means you are liking it? I haven't heard from too many Bitwig users yet.
Cool, thanks for the update.
I'll definitely announce any sales via the email list as well as the website.
Getting there!
I haven't done pre-orders but I wouldn't rule it out. I assume most people just want to pay when it's done, and they can have their software. What about a pre-order is attractive to you?
Hey thanks for the nice feedback. I'm glad to hear my intentions as far as usability and sound are coming across. What you're describing is the way I think of them too.
I wanted the focus of Kaivo to be making timbres from a sound as more of a palette, not so much playing back samples. And didn't want to add the complexity of a scrolling interface. And also, until version 1.2 all samples were loaded into RAM immediately when the plugin was made. There are all reasons why I made the maximum length short.
When the "key/seq" toggle is set to seq, the envelope is triggered by the sequencer gates. The gates are turned on with the blue toggles under the sequencer. The left gate output controls seq 1 and the delayed gate output controls seq 2. That's all there is to it.
What @garf said.
@stefagleykin, do you mean Madrona Labs, or @kroaton?
All the source and instructions for my Soundplane 8x8 project are posted at http://madronalabs.com/DIY.
In MPE mode, x and y are always controller #s 73 and 74. You can see all the outputs for the different modes here: http://madronalabs.com/topics/4718-key-outputs-by-protocol
OK thanks for the report, I'll look into this.
Yes it would.
The bent pitch would always line up with the notes on the grid. There is no concept of "bending" separate from the grid of notes actually. There are only the notes on the grid and spaces in between them, which interpolate the grid points. So everything always aligns.