randy's Recent Posts
In my head, right now, they are different.
Thanks for this. Let me throw the idea into the hopper and see what comes out.
Thanks for all this feedback! I am considering all of these ideas, even I don't reply point by point. Some of these things are for sure doable and will show up at some point in the future. Please keep in touch.
Definitely.
I keep filing away these OSC ideas in order to figure out what to add, something soon!
The Soundplane comes with a nice soft case. Good for carry-on and carrying around. If I was going to check my Soundplane as baggage I would definitely get a Pelican case or something similar.
To make these objects on Windows, you will need to install the Max/MSP/Jitter SDK for Windows. So the first step is to download that and then make one of the example objects for Windows, like plus~ or whatever is in the SDK, and make sure you can run that in Max on Windows.
I have never actually compiled a Max object on Windows, so you will find better help from the C74 forums on this point.
If the Aalto plugin is simply not showing up in the menu, you need to rescan the plugins in Logic. It is supposed to do this every time new plugins are added, but sometimes it does not.
In Logic, go to "Preferences..." -> "Audio Units Manager". A list of plugins should appear with Aalto in it. If it does not, and you have installed Aalto, then Logic is confused.
Here is one guide to solving this problem:
http://www.xlnaudio.com/support-knowledge_base-rescan_au_plugins_in_logic
Not so much. Some of Don Buchla’s gear was a great inspiration for Aalto but in general I don’t want to be the "Buchla inspired" company.
I'm working on something to do with physical modeling next.
Hi Holger,
The Aalto Solo is definitely crashing on some systems. Please try the demo of Aalto 1.3.1, which should fix the problem. Soon after the holidays I'll get a fixed version of Aalto Solo to the Beat folks to distribute.
Sorry for the trouble.
Some great textures! Thank you for sharing!
I captured sounds... but just in my head. ;-)
I think the sign is meant to provoke bewilderment. "If you are worried about this sign, better not go this way." Or, yeah, potholes.
A few weeks ago I went with my good friend Alex Bell to see the biggest living tree in Canada.
Our trip started with an early morning drive out from Vancouver, a ferry to Nanaimo, a couple more hours’ drive to Youbou, in the vicinity of a sign meant to provoke uncertainty:
and the start of the shitty roads. Three hours later, after traveling over gravel and potholes meant for logging trucks, we turned off onto an even shittier road, not unlike a couple of deer trails side by side, that led to our first night’s campsite on a beautiful, waterfall-fed lake. The next morning we drove on just a few more km, and unloaded the Subaru.
Alex had along a case with a Nikon DSLR and a robot panning head, for the purpose of taking the biggest photograph of the biggest tree in Canada. I think the photo will be over a billion pixels, which he plans to print out in the neighborhood of life-size at some point. Can't wait to see it. I spent a lot of time lying nearby and listening to the babbling of the nearby creek, with the little whirr of the robot superimposed every minute or so. Here’s me next to the tree itself:
Alex making some much-needed coffee in the old-growth.
You can find the coordinates for the tree pretty easily if you look around. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and when it's cold and wet there is pretty much nobody else around for miles and miles, except bears. Recommended.
For testing a single junction of your design, I would just make a Max patch that puts out a single sine wave for the carrier and then looks at the amplitude of a single sine wave coming in.
It's been a long time since I've looked at that centroids code. I don' t know what you have, exactly. I would make sure you can compile the max and Jitter example objects from the SDK first. If you just have that one .cp file I can probably dig up something better, with a help file even.
A great idea but I am struggling to find time for making videos myself. Gotta get back to production...
Anything conductive is fine.
Actually in the current Soundplane the ground plane strips between the pickups in the same plane evolved out of existence. All that is needed is a little space between the separate pickups. A grounded plane behind the whole thing ( on the opposite side from the carriers ) is needed for shielding. You definitely want the pickups in the middle for noise reasons.
I really want to see your hide-covered Soundplane so keep in touch!
Keep the drunken features coming! I appreciate this kind of input.
In general, more esoteric routings like you describe are planned to be do-able in a future, fully modular product that's a little ways off.
I'm curious about whether there is any potential down the road for the soundplane itself to record a performance? Memory?
Definitely not going to happen. Computers (including tablets etc) have so many benefits for this kind of use that any work I put into the recording issue is going to be in that direction.
ok, so i got it to record. it picks up each message into it's own track, so... t3d/tch t3d/con t3d/alv t3d/frm this only works when soundplane's out is set to OSCseq, so no 'thru', so can't hear anything, no pass through to aalto. and playback, no way to tell aalto to listen to OSCseq, rather than the soundplane.
I hear these problems. I think the best solution I have to offer for the time being is, use MIDI. It's really not too bad, if you can find a way to use poly pressure to control a synth envelope. You can do this with Logic and Aalto for example, in the Aalto patcher. It doesn't work with Live, like a bunch of somewhat advanced uses of MIDI, because Ableton decided to simplify things for everyone at the expense of utility. Well, it would work find with one voice, actually.
A few people have written me to ask if it’s possible to give Aalto as a gift. Yes, it’s easy, and you can do it using the website.
If you want to give Aalto to a friend, just make an account and buy the software in the usual way, but enter your friend’s first and last name for the account instead of yours. You can also make a username (login) that your friend will want. However, use your own email so that the PayPal transaction will go through. Then when it's time, you can give your friend the account login and password, and he or she can change the password and email using the website. I hope it's pretty simple—let me know if you have any questions.
I'm off my normal support hours until Thursday the 27th. Meanwhile, I'm going to listen to a lot of eighties vinyl, eat a lot, and be thankful for the company of loved ones. Merry Christmas to all!
My advice to everyone is to experiment with one junction first, in the geometry you are thinking of making. I think smaller strips could be OK. It depends on a lot of things like what amps you are using and what the voltages are.
I think a 6x6 matrix would be useful-- even a 2x2 matrix could be a good single-touch xyz sensor with the right geometry of strips.
I thought of using some kind of oscillators in the Soundplane but the best solution was using the DSP to produce all the frequencies. In general I think using the DSP is more flexible --- with Arduino or something like that you could probably make at least a few oscillators in software.
OK, I added this feature but apparently completely failed to document it. Sorry for the confusion.
Here's how to set up Aalto to respond to MIDI program change messages.
- Make a "MIDI Programs" folder in your user presets directory: ~/Library/Audio/Presets/Madrona Labs/Aalto/MIDI Programs. Note the capitalization and the space.
- put any programs you want to trigger through MIDI in that folder.
- send Aalto a program change message to select a program from the folder.
The folder is scanned by Aalto on startup and the presets in the "MIDI Programs" folder are assigned numbers in alphabetical order. If you go to the folder from the preset menu, you will see each preset listed with its MIDI number afterwards.
To rearrange the programs, you can give them new names so they are in a different alphabetical order. I realize this is a little clunky, but this way it got done instead of not done. Someday I could come up with a GUI for making sets of MIDI-selectable presets.
I have just posted Aalto version 1.3.1 for Mac and Windows to the server, along with the 1.3.1 demos.
1.3.1 changes:
fixed automation sticking bugs
fixed host sync divisions in Logic
new software PLL for tighter host sync
fixed "rectified voice" bug in wave folder
fixed integer dials behavior
fixed possible OSC-related crash in Live
fixed patch display on close and reopen
brought back preset converter on Mac
fixed sequencer offset when stopped
fixed sequencer UI range issue
enjoy!
OK, I toned the wave down for you guys.
Hitting ? a few times after that last one I got some nice bass guitar like vamping.
Reasonable idea. I like to be able to see every parameter at once though. I think just adding more attenuverters is my preferred way forward.
Thanks much for sharing-- I haven't had time to mess with SC though.
Well there is MIDI, which is not too bad if you can use the polyphonic pressure data. I think most DAWs will not be able to deal very well with the density of Soundplane data at 250 Hz -- but that is why the rate knob is there, so you can turn it down to 20 Hz or something.
This oscseq looks great. Let me know if it works at all with the t3d messages.
Use the default value for the attenuator, which is the right tracking amount. Double-click to return to the default.
Soundplane scans at about 1kHz. if each of the 512 junctions were scanned in sequence, that would leave hardly any time per junction to get a good sample.
In general, sampling for a longer time is better, and the continuous wave approach has the advantage of gathering data at each junction truly without any gaps.
I think life is easier for everyone when there's just one place for things and no settings to mess with.
On mac all presets are in the Presets directory, so you can just archive that. I'm guessing you are on Windows where there is less agreement about where things go. It's possible I could have Aalto remember the last directory saved into, or something. Would that help?