randy's Recent Posts
Hmm. I tried your patch, which seems to be nice and have no surprises. What host are you using? I think this may have more to do with the host.
Oh, thanks for reminding me!
I'm just going to attach this sketch. If you know your way around a modular synthesizer, you can probably guess some of the cool things you can do with Virta. The main purpose is to make new voice-controlled instruments. But you could also make, for example, a de-esser! Or a four-voice pitch shifter.
Price will be $89 unless the price of beer in Seattle changes significantly in the next month.
Hi Andrew,
The issue with the top and bottom edges is one I have experienced too. I tend to compensate by attacking the notes harder at top and bottom and saving those slow onsets for the middle rows. A higher threshold will help, but of course that's not always what we want.
To a large extent it's really down to the way the instrument is put together. The way the frame is tensioned causes the actual force of the touch to be spread out more near the top and bottom.
There is also an effect where a very nearby hand or finger causes what, for brevity, i'll call a negative pressure. You can see this by looking at the calibrated data without any touches active. XY mode may be the best way. If you press with a pencil or something, you can experiment with what happens when you keep your hand away. By approaching more perpendicular to the surface and not keeping your hand resting near the edge, the effect can be mostly avoided.
This is definitely on my list of things I'm trying to improve in the new software.
I will try to reproduce this with your patch.
What host are you using?
Hmm, I haven't heard of this before. I'll check before releasing the update to make sure this is fixed.
Thanks for the feedback. This should be fixed in the Kaivo update I'm finishing up right now.
I posted an article about Kaivo and CPU. It has some tips that may help you:
The sequencer / host ratio is implemented with a thing called a PLL, or phase locked loop. What this does is pull the sequencer back into sync with the host when they are close to matching. So at any low-number ratio like 2/3 they will stay in sync. At 5/6, I guess they will stay in sync just fine—please give it a try!
The ratios marked on the dial are at higher precision than other values, yes.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm more focused on supporting editing using an interface like a tablet, phone or laptop.
Hi Yorke,
I'm sorry to say MPE doesn't work well with Ableton Live. There's nothing I can do about this—it's because Live strips off the channel information before sending it to the plugin. There's some more information about this at http://madronalabs.com/topics/4718-key-outputs-by-protocol where I document all the protocols by what comes out the KEY module in each one.
There is some weird workaround for Live that may work. You can see it in this screenshot:
I haven't tried it myself but this may be a solution for you. Or another host may be.
Yes, with MPE working properly you can record and edit a Soundplane performance.
Thanks for the feedback @atoav. I understand. This one has been on my to-do list for a while.
On every version of Windows I put the presets in the recommended place for application data: C:/AppData/Roaming.
It looks like these folders are now hidden by default in Windows 10. To see them, try this tip: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2690709/whats-in-the-hidden-windows-appdata-folder-and-how-to-find-it-if-you-need-it.html
It doesn't look like implementing it can possibly do any harm, so I've added it to the build for Aalto as well as the Kaivo update which will be coming out very soon.
Aalto 1.7 does not implement this. I'll put it on the list for the next update. Thanks for the feedback.
Really hard to say, without knowing more about where you are coming from and what tools you want to use and what you want to do.
The Soundplane app is available on github/madronalabs/soundplane. It's reasonably complex. If you can understand and compile it, you can make it do anything you want. For most people who want to do a little more without delving into the C++ code, Max / MSP is a very useful tool.
There was some bug related to multithreading that created the CPU hit you are describing, specifically on Xeon processors. I never did come to a complete understanding of it, not having a Xeon here for testing but I think I fixed it when I cleaned up some related Aalto code.
If Aalto works well on your machine, the Kaivo update coming up soon should work well, too. Please keep in touch with your experience.
the Soundplane app loads up zone files as JSON. You can edit the JSON file to make your own maps. Here's the file for the common "rows in fourths" setup:
{
"zone": {
"name": "B2",
"type": "note_row",
"rect": [0, 0, 30, 1],
"note": 47
},
"zone": {
"name": "E2",
"type": "note_row",
"rect": [0, 1, 30, 1],
"note": 52
},
"zone": {
"name": "A2",
"type": "note_row",
"rect": [0, 2, 30, 1],
"note": 57
},
"zone": {
"name": "D3",
"type": "note_row",
"rect": [0, 3, 30, 1],
"note": 62
},
"zone": {
"name": "G3",
"type": "note_row",
"rect": [0, 4, 30, 1],
"note": 67
}
}
You can also add various kinds of control areas that send out MIDI and/or OSC data. Examples of these are installed with the Soundplane app into the ZonePresets directory. There's one with 30 sliders for example, and one with one of every kind of control including xy areas, toggles, pressure-only control areas and so on.
For sure.
OK! I think we have sorted out the issues with distributing the older plugins. I added an Aalto 1.6.1 license for everyone above. Thanks for your patience.
Thanks for sharing! Kaivo will be coming soon.
Yes correct, unfortunately no OSC params just yet. I really need to get Virta out ASAP, then I can revisit that.
Today I put an installer for Soundplane version 1.4 on the web site. This version fixes a problem with sliding between rows when using MIDI, and has improved filtering so that touches are less noisy.
The most exciting part remains under the hood, for now. Version 1.4 comes with the ability to build an experimental version for Linux. Thanks go to Per Eckerdal for leading the charge and bringing his Linux expertise. If you have the time and the ability to build Linux software, feel free to check out the soundplane repository on github and experiment with it.
Please note! This is not currently "support for Linux." It is an experimental build aimed toward future support. So please don't email me at support about Linux things, but please do share your experiences or questions on the hardware forum, and I'll be very interested and offer help when I can. So far I hear that it works—with some issues—on one Debian system, but is not playing well with Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi.
The cross-platform build is also a move toward supporting Windows. I'm currently focused on getting the next plugin out and there is not a firm schedule for this work, but it's a thing I want to see happen.
Good to hear, thanks for the info. If you come up with anything else of course I'm interested. I have a BeagleBone Black arriving here soon to try out.
Just an oversight, not intended to be private.
I merged Per's versions with the master branch today and tested everything on Mac OS. With success! I have no way to try the Linux version but I should have a Linux computer here soon. I'm sure you will beat me to it! If Axoloti is running something Debian-like, this should be straightforward.
Note that this moves us to a cmake-based build—please see the build instructions.
These are at:
git@bitbucket.org:per_eckerdal/soundplane.git
git@bitbucket.org:per_eckerdal/madronalib.git
a few small madronalib changes were needed for Per's Linux port. I have yet to merge them into the master. When I do, the changes will show up in master on the madronalabs repo.
Thanks for your support!
Of course, I’ll look back here to see who wants them and add licenses as soon as I'm able.
Hi, sorry for the slow resolution on this. I took one stab at fixing the download problem and failed. Now I am on a retreat through this weekend working on the new plugin. I'll have to get back to the download issue next week. Thanks for your patience.
[UPDATE] another try and fail. I'm going to meet up with my web guy this week to work on it.
I plan to keep the touch tracker code open source. It should be easy to port. I'm certainly up for helping, as much as my time permits. There's also a Linux port in the works using libusb. I have no idea if an STM32F4 will be capable of running the touch detector, but let me finish it on Intel and then I can help try to make that happen.
Hiya, I don't have much time right now so this is short. But I think you are on the right path. If you got that the carriers need to be synched to the ADC clock to avoid drift, you understand this pretty well.
a 1kHz sampling rate as used in the Soundplane may be overkill. The material damps the overall response rate, and fingers don't move super fast, so half that would be enough for a good controller in my experience.
We do the FFT on the Soundplane to reduce the bandwidth needed. We are currently maxing out the bandwidth of one USB hi-speed channel.
As always, my advice is: try 1 taxel first!