I can work on adding these synths

[analoguebus]

Hi!

I am really excited about your project here I and a associate of mine were going to start something like this for a few synths but this is great!

I can add the following if need be (some may need extensions to the engine because of the inherit complexity):
-Arturia : Origin – (including if I soon figure out its patch sysex format we can have a modular patch designer for it) I know a bunch of people that would be ecstatic over this one.
-Anyware : Tinysizer
-Yamaha : TG33
-LL Electronics : Rozzbox – this one is quite complicated and quite rare but the few who have them got slammed with the extended controller/programmer not being released so this would help massively.
-Korg : M3
-Korg : Electribe EMX
-Korg : Electribe SX
-Korg : Radias
-Chimera : BC16 – do not think much can be done
-Clavia : Nord Modular Micro – this like the Origin would be amazing to have a page to build patches. There is already a freeware Java app that does patch programming for it, so I can use it for reference.

-Lots more

Also if help is needed on the general engine itself or bug fixes I would be glad to help. Nice break from my day job programming. I have been programming for over twenty years including writing device drivers and my own DSPs just to give a little background.

You really have done a fantastic job.

Also I saw mention about possibly wanting to write a iPad version possibly? Since JUCE is out for it? I do iPad development so I can help if needed. And with IOS4.2 supporting CoreMIDI it will be great.

Also what about for Jazzmutant Lemur owners (am lucky enough to have two), we could make it talk OSC to CTRLR and make some sketchy control surfaces, I know this defeats a bit of the purpose behind the Lemur since it has built in MIDI control, but it is awful to tell the truth, I would much rather send OSC commands to a application that works, or to a VST. Sort of in the style of monome talking serialized OSC to a small server that then proxys the control off to programs (typically in Max) which sometimes proxy off to other programs a la Live and Reaktor. Just an idea.

[rv0]

"analoguebus":16proubm wrote:

-Yamaha : TG33
[/quote:16proubm]

ooh i’d love to see that.

[atom]

I welcome any help, if you wish i can add a user for you to the repository in SVN so you can make changes adding new Ctrlrs is fairly easy so if you want to start working on them, just do that.

iPad maybe not iPod yes, i don’t have an iPad but i got and iPod touch so an iPhone/iPod port could be possible, though i wanted to create a more "touch friendly" UI for those devices, that would be used for all Ctrlrs.

adding OSC support, well sure, i just never thought anyone really uses that, i have to say i never found out what does OSC offer over MIDI except for problems. I don’t have a Lemur (though i wish i had one) but maybe you can tell me about some applications that use OSC that could somehow interact with Ctrlr, so i could do some tests.

[analoguebus]

atom,

Sorry for the delayed response. Got quite busy here at work getting a R&D whitepaper done, sorry about that. OSC is Open Sound Control, I basically see it (hopefully) slowly fading MIDI away (MIDI will always stay of course there is hardware that is old, etc. that was not designed, of course there will be retrofits for a small, small segment of items but probably isolated to a few elite items, when I say retrofit think of Eventide’s retrofits or HighlyLiquid). Dave Smith and company did a great job on the MIDI spec., but we got to admit it is quite antiquated. The limitations of MIDI are really starting to show. Specially now with the newer more complex synths, really for anything substational besides the REALLY basic stuff are having to resort to NRPN or SYSEX work arounds, then there is the bandwidth issue, and the low bit size. There is starting to be a very large acceptance in the community for OSC. The lemur like I and you mentioned really got it kicking, but I think the one project that blasted it out into the forefront was Brian Crabtree and the Monome. It uses a USB serial connection to a small server on the computer instead of the normal UDP or TCP network connection OSC uses. Now the software packages are picking it up or unbeknownst to most people they have had it for a long time. Max/MSP supports it, Reaktor, SuperCollider, CSound, Abelton Live, heck a great number of DAWs are putting in support, then there are starting to be physical instruments (mainly controllers) that are picking it up. The lemur and the monome were the big firsts on it, but now Livid bases their products on it, many many things are moving that way. Here is the big reason it’s stupidly simple, incredibly fast, and tons easier to process. It supports actual typed values: floats, ints, strings, binary blobs, etc. Instead of being a slow baud rate (now there are products these days that greatly abuse it, like my genoQs Octopus, it can basically outrun any MIDI device) and being subject to correct Endianess and having people who are non-programmers having to learn bit shifting, learning MSB, LSB basically trying to teach musicians bitwise math, its a simple as sending strings. For example say the DSI Mopho supported OSC a typical messages might look like (without the quotes) "/input/gain 100" for 100% or basically any message of the sort.
The latest spec 1.1 is here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http … Cfinal.pdf

You said that it offers problems, the only issue I have ever had with it is with Reaktor 5.0 rather poor way of handling network connections, but I think this is rectified in 5.5 (which was a massive rewrite), and then a module I am developing for Eurorack, and Buchla modulars (heh but thats my stupid self messing it up). Stuff like the Lemur works flawlessly with everything I have tried, same with the Monome.

OSC is just one thing and not a super priority to me, but another nice tool to have in the toolbox. Now a big big thing to me and to people really yelling for it, is a nice tool like you have, but for a bit more advanced features (these will take a bit of prodding of some people to get the specs or more than likely reverse engineering it, and that is support for the patchable modular style synths, for example the Nord Modular micro, standard, rack, and 2 GX, then the Arturia Origin (someone has to really give this thing some loving soon or Arturia is going to have a angry mob, they have slipped many dates for firmware releases to add new modules and many have asked why do not they make a VST for controlling it, patching on the screen while quite elegant is also a pain). I just see this as making a new template for those two synths, just like that has been done with all the others. Now in your utility section that wonderfully automagically handles putting complex MIDI messages together, I could see some new utility functions going in to specifically handle this type of system. There is already an open source project that is a newer editor for Nords but it is Java based has issues on systems accessing MIDI and crashes quite a bit. Also it is not a VST or AU that can be automated. This project will make the Nord template pretty straightforward and hopefully gain some insight on how these patches are built up. You have probably seen or may own a Nord Modular (the ceasing of production on it was probably the stupidest thing they have ever done, people did not "get it" when they came out, now with modular synths back on the rapid rise suddenly it clicked and now they go for obscene prices) the patches can be quite brilliant and quite complex.

Sure that will be great if you can add a user for me (really for I and my parter in crime in our little analoguebus escapades). Like I mentioned in the first email we have been programmers forever who in the last 4 years or so have massively fell in love with synths. We have probably stupidly amassed quite a collection. It was a great learning experiance that is helping us now hopefully help pthers with both building community modular projects and helping other community projects like yours, and as soon as my kit arrives Mutable Labs Shruthi.

Ok I blabbered quite enough. I tend to be a bit long winded, I go a bit into stream of conscious typing probably misspelling the heck out of words.

Any help I can give I would love to give it, this project you have created is really well thought out.

Thanks!

[analoguebus]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention I can try to help solve some NRPN issues if there are still any. Yes whomever came up with it was on crack indeed, I HATE IT, RozzBoxx uses it nearly exclusively.

Also I saw the issues acquiring a RTAS SDK. I can probably get this, and my old laptop was acting silly so I just got a new i7 one (its pretty cool) so I do not have Protools installed right now, mine is a really light crappy version and a few versions out of date, but it should work for tests. Hehehe, lets support TDM2 and SonicCore also I have been dying to have an excuse to get one, once we have the cash (I know the last part was being very silly, but the Soniccore system is soooo cool, the Solaris synth is being built up on it).

Also for Mac builds analoguebus uses them nearly exclusively (we have several machines). I use Microsoft stuff all day programming so its a nice change going home and using Apple stuff. I am also a registered Apple developer so anything we need on that front I can get it, but it looks like you have it well in hand.

[atom]

Well i was looking at some OSC stuff, i was just wondering what do you think would be the OSC functionality that should be added (client/server), shoudl we export parameters or try to import parameters from devices ? Is the <synth> namespace defined already or not ?

RTAS SDK would be nice i imagine i can get a lightweight version of ProTools with some micro usb digidesign interface, and it would attract a bigger crowd, the more people the more tests.

[analoguebus]

Yeah I can probably convince Ian that we need to order one of those USB protools devices. Because I def. do not want another tiny usb/firewire mixure/dsp/etc doodad, got enough of those with MOTU. Then I can use my company Ian and I have to send request for SDK. Then I can help you jump on that task. It should not be bad at all (I hope unless they are weird).

On the OSC side typically the namespace part is just defined in documentation, or like in the case of all those apps for Monome its just documented on the app, and is typically a bang command that sends back data to a the little serial osc to network OSC app that sets the namespace. In our module we are making we are doing bi directional OSC, which is making things a bit tougher for a tiny microprocessor to handle, since all events flying in from the jacks on the module have to be sent out, but data can at same time be coming in to go to the jacks. All OSC apps I have ever seen use 2 TCP ports which is a bit obvious since you cant have your end (your server for OSC bind to the same port you are sending out on outgoing. Typically you make an outgoing connection to another OSC device on port <bleah> and then you are running a listener on port <blah>. So all that babbling aside I would see supporting both directions (in fact the way OSC works its sort of a must, in one direction its sending you stuff primarily for visual "cues" of course it could send normal commands back to change automation stuff etc. In the other direction you are sending it commands), in fact one thing that does frustrate me a little about ctrlr and I wanted to look at that part was having the UI reflect what the synth is broadcasting. i.e. on program change change the dials to proper spots, etc.

But, like I said OSC is a nice thing, its a hot topic at analoguebus since we are making a module for it, but, its not my big hot point for ctrlr. I still see having two templates for Nord Modular and Arturia Origin that allow the build up of the modular part of the patch. I found the documentation on how Nord does it (well I looked through the other open source app that can build a midi message for the patch). Next night or so going to setup a MIDI monitor to capture the data going to Origin when I send it a patch. I got a few new ones I wanted to try anyways.

[atom]

can you recommend some app (windows if possible) that would act as a osc client, i’d like to implement some basic osc stuff (i added the oscpak source to the project and it builds fine), expose ctrlr parameters via osc, but i’d need some testing. i can’t afford the pretty Lemur i’m afraid so i wanted the cheap version. i found something called Oscontrol but it does not work on win64, it can be linux too. Something that would act as a primitive Lemur.

[analoguebus]

Crap it lost my message trying to post keeps rerouting me to old site….

Basically I was going through a list of software I know but then when it killed my message I found this list but its slightly outdated it seems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Sound_Control

here is a fragment I still had (in copy paste buffer from old post that got eaten by a gruu)…

Heh, you got Ross’s oscpac? Use AudioMulch he wrote that also and its freaking amazing. In fact I like it better than most of the stuff I list below (well besides Renoise & Reaktor mainly these are my favorites because I own both and use them quite a bit, when I actually get time to mess with music stuff that is…. ” title=”Sad” /> ) . It is so much easier to use than other visual flow based DSP software. Wow now I wonder if you can map OSC messages to Metasurface…heh now you are going to get me messing with AudioMulch again ” title=”Smile” />

[Author]

Posts