An old yet new blog!

December 17, 2011 ShelLuser Miscellaneous, SynthFan.info

Welcome!

Welcome to the new blog section on SynthFan.info; a site / blog which is now fully powered by the very extensive WordPress blogging software.

Sorry that the blog has been a little quiet as of late; that has everything to do with my work. I’m currently close to finishing up a very heavy project which can very well make or break my company. Its also the main reason why I’ve decided to move the website onto another server and environment.

Without going into too much details lets just say that its not a very pleasant experience to rent a ‘virtual dedicated server‘ with GoDaddy for a few years, only to see it totally collapse right at the moment where you’re starting to use it for customer websites and services.

GoDaddy has turned into quite the disappointment for me.

Just take this blog.. I exported all my posts and imported them into WordPress; only to discover that there were dozens of spam messages around (143 to be precise). Even though my GoDaddy admin panel mentioned that they were all gone!

Alas; a new blog and a new website and right now my plan is to have everything moved to WordPress by the end of this year.

I’ll keep you guys posted as soon as there’s more to tell!

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Cool VST: Kairatune!

September 27, 2011 ShelLuser Miscellaneous, Reviews, Synthesis, Synthesizers

If you came here expecting an interview with Cycling ‘74 then please follow this link. I noticed that some websites pointed to my main blog page instead of the article itself.

Kairatune Synthesizer (VST)

Kairatune_small

I discovered this critter on the Synthtopia website in one of their articles but unfortunately it seems their website is more down than up as of late. Meaning that you can view the website contents but you can’t comment.

I’ve tested this critter myself this evening and really felt like commenting, but I also don’t look forward to having to wait even more hours before I can do so. SO I decided to fall back to my blog; need to drop more into this one anyway.

I really like this critter and I just can’t keep quiet about it.

What is it ?

It’s the first release of a free synthesizer VST which is developed by Matti Jokipii. What I really like so much about it is its somewhat specific interface and workflow. Or, as Matti himself puts it: “Kairatune is not your all-in-one synthesizer. It’s designed and engineered to be as powerful and versatile as possible in it’s target role as your source for tight bass, unique lead and shiny SFX sounds.”.

Another interesting twist (IMO) is that the interface is more focused on musicians than engineers. I consider myself to be more of a sound designer (/studier) than a musician, so is this something I’d want to use ?  The interface looks interesting, I like the dark yet still easily readable interface, but its not about the looks but about the sound after all.

Well, I decided to give it a test run anyway and here are my experiences…

Distribution & context

For those of you who are too impatient: you can grab this critter from the Futucraft website here. Its free (fully, no registration required) and distributed as a zipfile which contains the instrument itself and a readme file. So simply extract the dll file to your main VST folder and you’re done.
Now that’s the way I like it; no dumb registrations, no unnecessary installers, no difficult mumbo jumbo. Just extract and go.

Now, for context: the environment I’m using is Ableton Live (‘Suite’) 8 version 8.2.5. When playing with this critter all I used were my trusty APC40 and my Casio keyboard (just think of this as a midi keyboard).

First impressions

Looking good, but heavy on the resources. When you pull this thing in you’ll notice that the CPU load jumps up to approx. 20 – 25% which is quite heavy. I don’t keep that much VST’s around myself, but the only times I’ve experienced loads like these was when messing with some heavier Reaktor ensembles (using the Reaktor player) and some specific Max for Live stuff.

So truth be told my first impression was slightly negative. I mean; I don’t need “yet another resource hog” after all.

This (first!) impression got fed even more when going over the interface itself, for example the main oscillator section…

kai_osc

It looks pretty cool, being a die hard Live & APC40 user I immediately felt comfortable with the “ring led” display but when looking at the oscillator itself it looks kinda limited; only going from sawtooth to square wave?

And sure; its cool to be able and set a spread, detune and all that but is that all ?  When you go over the rest of the synth (see screenshot below to add to this) you’ll see many things which you recognize with other synths.

LPF / HPF filters (and envelopes), pitch section, delay section and even an equalizer section. All very good fun I’m sure but nothing too special, right?

WRONG!

 

kai_filter

Thinking as Musician v.s. that of an engineer

When you go over the Kairatune webpage you’ll notice that Matti himself considers the interface more aimed at musicians than engineers. If you’re like me you’ve worked with your share of synths, and as such grew accustomed to specific details; you tune the oscillator(s) to get a specific sound, you then apply some (envelope) filters on it, maybe even an LFO for specific effects and then you’re well on your way to process the sound further.

With this critter you should push yourself beyond that line of thinking. Its hard to explain, and I hope I’m making some sense here, but honest..  Instead of going “oscillator -> filter –> envelope –> effect” try to approach this as “start sound -> sound depth -> pitch -> pitch effect -> smoothing” (for example!).

This is really fully aimed at creating relatively easy sound effects and scores and being as versatile as possible about it too. I’ve started playing with this critter after I picked it up for a test run and 50minutes later I decided on writing up my experiences on Synthtopia.  THIS IS FUN!

Ok, a quick example..  Reset the patch to a default (option in the upper right corner; scores very high with me!). Now you have a dull sound. So its time to spice it up!  For example; shift the phase somewhat, turn the detune up and then play somewhat with Vibra & Trill. Maybe even bend the sound a little. Spice it up with the amplifier and as the engineer I am (sorry!) the LPF/HPF need to be included as well Cool

Its relatively easy to use (but you may need to change your approach a bit), hardly the resource hog as you may think it to be at first (when playing with easier patches I noticed the CPU load drop by an half (so varying at 8 – 10%)) and the sound is just awesome. Very clear, not too rough and it can be as easy or complex as you want it.

But still gives you a good interface experience though…

Control-click and the setting you’re using resets back to default, shift-drag and the setting you’re changing can be fine tuned, basically stuff which you might come to expect when starting with this.

kai_init
For a fresh start, simply click “reset”

The end verdict!

I like this critter, this is definitely staying in my VST collection for now. Yes, it maybe a little heavy on the resources but it also produces sound which are just as heavy as well (IMO of course).

Even if you are a “mere” sound engineer then I think this may still be much fun to use. Might even give you several new ideas to work on and in the end I think hearing is believing.

So rounding up…

You can download Kairatune here and you can read a little more about Matti here.

This is really worth trying out yourself I think.

2 comments

My interview with Cycling ’74

September 17, 2011 ShelLuser Cycling '74, Miscellaneous

A few weeks ago some of you guys noticed that I never had done any interviews and were wondering if I was planning on doing so. I wasn’t at the time but I liked the idea and so started asking around. Anyway, you can read all the details on my previous post about this.

It took a little plotting and planning and eventually we virtually met up on a Sunday afternoon (local US time) and the results can be read below. We were at it for two whole hours and I’m very excited about the results; I sure learned quite a few new things here!

Right, I won’t take more of your time (already working on my next blog post) and lets get one with it:

Interview with Darwin Grosse of Cycling ‘74

ShelLuser

 Ok… So, first who are you and what do you do at Cycling 74 ?

Darwin Grosse

I’m Darwin Grosse, and my title is “Chief Learning Officer”. That means that I’m responsible for things like online educational material, helping the support team with organization, and working on things like the help files and reference resources that ship with Max.

Before that, I was the Director of Engineering, where I did both programming and programming project coordination. I’ve also been involved with Max for Live since its inception, and was responsible for many of the devices that shipped with Max for Live.

ShelLuser

That is quite an impressive list indeed.  Some synthfan.info readers (and I) wondered; how big is the Cycling ‘74 company roughly?

Darwin Grosse

The core group of employees number is just under 20, but we have a number of consultants that provide both programming and business support. Thinking “25″ would get you in the right vicinity (although it is constantly changing as we are exploring new areas).

ShelLuser

Right, then I know many people who made totally wrong assumptions there   You mentioned Max for Live, glad you did, because I’ve often wondered how did Ableton and Cycling ’74 eventually get together?

I know that you already added material to Live (the loop collection) but how did that start (considering that Ableton is basically a German company) ?


Darwin Grosse

The easiest way to describe how we got together is to realize that we were “friend” companies from the start. Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke were Max users, and many of us at Cycling ’74 were Ableton users from their first version. We each genuinely liked each other’s products, and also really liked the people behind the company.

So there was a friendship long before there was a marriage(!).

But the real close relationship came when we were looking to move into a development cooperation where we could tightly integrate with a host program. The interest shown by Ableton was great, as was our interest in working with them. The people, technology and future direction all lined up well, so it was a natural that we would work together.

The fact is that the Ableton environment is a perfect context for Max programming; rather than just working as a “plug-in” system, we are able to interact much more completely with the entire environment, and the result is a much more interesting set of devices and tools that could happen in o
ther systems.

But in order to do this, there has to be a corporate desire to share technologies and an “artistic” desire for each product to make the other better. This is where our long-standing respect for each others’ work was important to the process.

ShelLuser

That sounds very exciting indeed.  Now, slightly technical but it’s something I’ve discussed a few times on the Ableton forum as well as seen mentioned on my blog; the development cycle.

Are both products (Live & M4L) “tied” into each other in such ways that one product (Max or Live) cannot be “individually extended” without help or notifying the other party (company) or can M4L basically be seen as a form of “API”?  So; as long as Max 6 honors certain standards it will always remain “live compatible” (and the other way around with Live 9) ?

Darwin Grosse

I won’t get too technical with this, but the high level view is that we share certain “gateway” technologies that allow us to work independently. But these gateways are always subject to change as our processes (or, more often, the functionality of the operating systems like Mac OS and Window) change.

Ableton is very aggressive about providing a great user experience and solid operations, and we are aggressive about opening new avenues for media programming. So inevitably some coordination is required for things to work smoothly. But in general, if we each respect the gateway technologies, the rest of the development process can proceed without undue difficulties.

It’s actually quite smooth, if you want to know the truth!

ShelLuser

Somehow I assumed as much, and I when reading back I take it that the relaxed and friendly interaction between you two is also a big factor into all this.. Speaking of which… Do I assume right that C74 has a “relaxed” company culture?

Hard to describe but… it’s Sunday; I assume you don’t work in the weekend yet here you are basically talking about work   I know many companies where such a thing would be impossible.

Darwin Grosse

Yeah, it’s relaxed from a personality standpoint, but it is pretty serious in terms of what we want to accomplish. It’s important to realize that very few of us work out of an office; the majority of us work at home. Thus, we tend to work as much as is necessary, and are often active outside of the typical working environment.

I tend to work 7 days a week, and am working (in some way) almost all the time. This probably wouldn’t make much sense to a corporate accountant, but when your “work” and your “play” are almost the same thing, it is hard not to do it all the time!

But the company is fairly relaxed in that there are few trappings of “corporate culture” to bog us down, and hyper-creative work is encouraged. Sometimes we have to be buckled down to creating work that is necessary for making a good release, but even that work is pretty creative and exciting. From my perspective, it’s the best gig (meaning, both the best job and best company) I’ve ever worked for.

ShelLuser

Now that is an interesting twist..  I know a lot of people assumed that most work was done “at the office”. Small side-step out of curiosity, you say the majority works from home…  How do you keep track of the overa
ll picture?  I mean; when people work on a piece of software then eventually their work has to “come together” somehow ?

Darwin Grosse

The modular nature of the software helps a lot; you can work on an object and know that it should work within the framework of the system. But we have been doing a lot of work with the core Max engine, and that just means that the various developers and support staff is in constant communication via email, Skype, IM and phone.

A big part of maintaining the overall picture, though, comes from the fact that David (Zicarelli) holds a strong vision for the product – and is very active about communicating that to everyone on the team. Combining this vision with feedback and suggestions from us all (and from the user community), we are able to come up with a direction that everyone can support.

ShelLuser

That makes sense, and immediately opens up a question from one of my blog readers: “one thing I’m curious about is what drives them to continue to develop Max/MSP in general seeing that the community is more or less providing them with new externals and stuff on a regular basis. I understand that they want to push out updates and stuff but, for example, the new UI overhaul, was that based on user feedback or just a decision they made?”

(I promised that I’d also relay some questions which people could ask on my blog, not too many; don’t worry )

Darwin Grosse

The new UI overhaul is, actually, a great thing to examine. One of the things that drives us to continue developing Max is that we really want more people to use it. We recognize that not everyone is interested in being a programmer, but many people are interested in creating “custom” media tools that will differentiate them from everyone else.

So we started looking at the things that people found frustrating about getting started with Max: the difficulties of being presented with an intimidating blanks screen, the difficulty in finding something that you are looking for, and the difficulty in following someone’s work when a patch gets complex. We combined this with a significant number of “usability test” (where we had people struggle with our software for a while, then tried to find ways to lessen the trouble) in order to come up with a set of improvements that we felt could help. This became the basis for the changes to the editing environment that will be part of Max 6.

In other cases, we’ve identified areas of great interest but little user-driven development. These areas are part of the functional improvements to come.

Finally, there are just some things that require effort – effort that has to be done to stay current. Everyone making media arts has been affected by the MacOS Tiger update; these are things that we are constantly confronted with, and are a required part of the development process as well.

So, why are we driven to make Max better? Perhaps the most important thing to consider is that we are all Max users, active media artists and evangelists for the software. Thus, the better it gets, the happier we are!

ShelLuser

Now; you say you are all Max users. My “roots” lie with Ableton Live and thus one of the things which drew my attention was that Mr. Henke was a bit reluctant to continue with Ableton due to concerns that he wouldn’t be able to use Live anymore, in other words; work on what drove him in the first place (at least that’s how I picked that up).

You mentioned that all of you are Max users; does that imply that all of you also have some musical backgrou
nd or is it safe to say that all of you are all interested / fascinated with sound or video on a “deeper” scale than others? (hope this makes sense, hard to describe this one).

Darwin Grosse

I’m not sure you can say it is a “deeper” level, because in my experience with Max users, I’ve found people far more obsessed than me!

But what I can say is that we’ve all been affected by the power of media art (not only music, but sound design, video performance, OpenGL construction and modeling and interactive art), and have found Max a powerful way to explore it further. Given that the history of the software is heavily music-based, a large number of us have significant musical backgrounds. But there are some scary visual masters in our group as well, and most of us can be found (at various time) exhibiting work in various venues.

It’s also important to realize the interaction that we have with people in some of the heavy-duty research facilities throughout the world. Organizations like IRCAM, STEIM and others are both incredible influences and important collaborators in pushing media arts forward.

The important thing to realize is that we have to maintain connections with *all* of these worlds, so sometimes our “depth” of knowledge can be limited by the amount of “breadth” of knowledge that we need to have.

(I hope that makes sense!)

ShelLuser

Absolutely..  Well, maybe “deeper” wasn’t the right word there, but I think we both picked that up as intended. Now, time flies and I certainly don’t want to take too much of yours so I’d like to close up with some Max 6 related questions if that’s ok (knowing you may not be able to answer all of them)..

Darwin Grosse

Sure.

ShelLuser

First a “blog poster” question..  “My question for the interview would be “Is Max 6 going to be 64 bit? I know it does 64 calculations, but will there be a 64 bit version too?”

Darwin Grosse

Eventually. It’s clear that 64-bit is the future of computing systems, and we will have to go there. However, making it a 64-bit application (with all of the memory and other issues that will require) is something that we plan to do after the initial Max 6 release.

ShelLuser

Gotcha. You mentioned earlier that one of the goals was to make Max 6 to be easier on newcomers. Having been through the “original” learning curve myself I can confirm it to be a little steep. But this also raises the question with some people how much Max 6 is going to be “backwards compatible” ?

Not in a technical sense (using patches developed with Max5 on Max6) but in user experience. Would people who liked the Max 5 environment still be able to continue on that with Max 6 ?

Darwin Grosse

I can only sp
eak for myself, but I think that the Max 6 environment is a vast improvement over Max 5.

Let me give you an example: When I moved from working with Max 4 to Max 5, it took me about an hour to realize that I could never comfortable work with the Max 4 environment again. Working with Max 6 seems like a similar transition – there are things I quickly latched onto that are very difficult to work without.

My sense of this (and I teach Max a lot, so I’m extending this to what I see with my students) is that the change in Max 6 will enhance the knowledge you already have from Max 5, and that you will find some of the feature exist to help you do your work more efficiently.

One of the things to understand is that not all of our user testing was just focused on beginners. We also queried (and even directly tested) some of the best Max programmers we could find, and used their activity as tools to help us improve the “experienced” user’s experience as well. So I don’t think you’ll find much of a problem with getting comfortable with the Max 6 environment.

ShelLuser

That makes sense… Still; I am going to push a little here..   I’ve seen your YouTube video in which you gave a Max6 sneak peak. For example; the message box auto completion. The demo was aimed at using a message for a nearby object (VST~) to which the system responded.

Some of the synthfan.info blog readers wondered if auto completion could be turned off as well. And I wondered if this setup wouldn’t influence larger patches (for example using a message box in the vicinity of several other objects) ?

Darwin Grosse

The Max Preferences include a lot more options for tuning your patching environment. So you should be able to tweak most of the in-patcher activity to meet your personal style. But one of the things I would suggest is that you let Max 6 “speak to you” a little while before you dismiss any of the functions.

The example you give is much more powerful than may at first appear. In addition to helping you select a message, it also gives hints about the additional information that you need, and also provides options for similar message. I’ve done a huge number of patches (dozens? hundreds?) in Max 6 now, and I’m a pretty picker UI user. But even in my pickiest moment I don’t find much to turn off with these new features.

So the answer to your question could be boiled down to: “Sure, but you really might not want to.”. Or maybe: “At least give it a chance!”

ShelLuser

He he, yeah, I can fully relate to that (but in a different context). But; fully noted!  Now, I only have 2 questions left..  A loaded one but…

When it comes to software many companies try to protect their investment though copyright protection. Some companies (Ableton) allow us to activate a product 2 times, others (Propellerheads (Reason)) turn to dongles, Native Instruments relies on “hiding” their installers..

Do we get to see a change in protection with Max6 or will you continue to rely on the setup you already have?  Now, I don’t want to risk helping “kiddies” so while keeping this question in mind let’s focus on: “Would C74 also consider using some kind of Dongle protection eventually or do you try to avoid it?”.

Darwin Grosse

nt lang="EN-US">We currently support the iLok protection device for people that prefer a hardware (i.e., non-computer specific) authorization. In general, though, we will continue to use a system similar to the one we currently use.


ShelLuser

As such noted (and explicitly thanks for your share on the matter; I fully realize the depth of what I asked).  Ok last one, though not too serious: your website once explicitly stated “We don’t make bicycles” ?  I assume you also have no intentions towards that market?

Darwin Grosse

Ha! We need to do that, because cycling is a very popular recreation, and having the name “Cycling”-anything means that a fair number of people stumble on our site thinking we might make bicycles, or conduct bicycle tours – or something. So it helps to see if we can help bicycle riders make a little art!

We do have a nice bicycle-related gift for people that come to Expo ’74 in New York, though. I’ll just throw that out there…

ShelLuser

Ok, one last question popped up..  If you don’t mind: Where did the name of your company come from?  I was a bit jesting there but still…

Darwin Grosse

Well, the word “Cycle” is important to the beginnings of Cycling ’74, because the cycle~ object was one of the first objects (from MSP, the company’s first product) that was used for testing audio capabilities of a computer.

It just so happened that there was a Schwinn 1974 catalog on the table when a company name had to be decided upon; since the idea of 74 cycle~ objects was sort of a great dream, and the (somewhat goofy) pictures of the Schwinn catalog were so cool, it just naturally developed from there.

Of course, now doing 74 cycle~ objects is a no-brainer for any computer, and we no longer are using “appropriated” Schwinn catalog images for our website, but it was a cool (and very typically Cycling ’74) way of kicking things off.

ShelLuser

Gotcha!  Ok. So now I’m showing not to be a professional interviewer; but if you don’t mind one really last one.. (just checked my list and noticed; and yes; this mistake is going online too.)

Java support has always been a bit special. You supported it yet not officially (as in no active development on the matter). Max6 has an exciting feature with regards to opening up the code (so to speak). Will this change anything on your stance towards Java ?  (this question is also triggered due to the somewhat “oppressive” stance from Oracle towards certain companies).

Once again: Last one, only if you don’t mind (already took up 2 hours of your time which was WAY more than I hoped for).

Darwin Grosse

I don’t really understand the question, actually. We’ve officially supported Java, and have some developers that use it extensively. This isn’t going to change, and we are making sure that Java works well with Max 6. I’m not really sure what more we could
do, so getting some feedback on that would be useful.

I’m also not sure what you mean by “opening up the code”, so if you could expand on that, it would be helpful.

ShelLuser

Ok, first Java.  I once noticed that there were a few issues with Max and Java whenever the JRE (Java Runtime) wasn’t installed in its default location. I mentioned that to either the forums or support team (sorry, it’s getting late here) and they told me that I shouldn’t be expecting specific changes because Java was basically supported “as is”.

Darwin Grosse

Ah, I see. Getting Java to work within Max is a non-trivial thing, and having a rather reliable environment helps us a lot. Since we don’t want to spend our entire development effort on fringe cases, we sometimes ask people to make some adjustments as well. This sounds like one of those cases. I’m not sure if this went through normal support channels, but if not, it would be helpful to do that. The support team is one of the primary ways that fixes like this get into the software.

In this case, a Java developer may not be using the default location, but almost all casual users are. So in this case, we’d ask a technically savvy user to make an adjustment.

ShelLuser

Gotcha! And makes perfect sense too. Second aspect; “opening up the source”. I was under the impression that Max 6 now also generated source code which was more easily to “patch into”. As in manually writing code extensions yourself ?

Now, I cannot fully comment on this since I’ve never bothered with that; I always relied on the patchers.

Darwin Grosse

Ah, this is sort of based on a misconception. We are working on an extension to Max that actually generates code within a specific patcher context. The code generated is currently used internally to let this code work at maximum efficiency (for example, to create audio code that runs really fast, or graphics code that will run on the GPU). At some point, this same technique may allow the code to be used externally, but this is not part of our initial efforts.

General Max coding is still going to rely on the patcher, and the code-generation system is really going to be for specific cases where that is most appropriate for the user. (This is a difficult area to discuss until people actually see what we are doing…!).

ShelLuser

Got it! Can’t rule out that I missed something there myself but alas. I think that about rounds it up. Truth be told I’m very excited since this turned out into something which ended up into much more than I hoped for!  Which leaves me with: Is there anything you might want to add ? I could imagine that you might like for some topics to get mentioned as well…

Darwin Grosse

Not really; I’d love to talk about some of the things we are doing outside the application (website, videos and the like) to help people learn (or learn more) about Max, but we can save that for the future. Frankly, the future of Max is really exciting, and I can’t wait for people to get their hands on Max 6! 


Tha ="#5a5a5a">nks for the chance to talk about Max and Cycling – my favorite subjects!


5 comments

Exciting news: SynthFan.info goes ‘Cycling’!

August 26, 2011 ShelLuser Cycling '74, Max for Live, MaxMSP, Miscellaneous, SynthFan.info

…74

Ok, I was planning on combining posts but there is a lot going on right now so decided against it and now I’m only sharing the big news.


Interview with Cycling ’74 !

Some of you wondered why synthfan.info has never done any interviews. That got me thinking, real hard even. And given the exciting times we’re in now (rumors are spreading about Live 9, Cycling ’74 has already announced Max 6, Native Instruments are full speed ahead into the next Komplete and Propellerhead is preparing to combine the forces of Reason and Record) I decided to start asking around….

I contacted my favorite companies and asked them if anyone would be willing to participate in an interview with “SynthFan.info”. My main stance here was that their new product(s) doesn’t necessarily have to be included in the interview. Call me crazy if you will but lets be honest…

New developments are always quite exciting. But the main issue here is that everyone wants to know as much as they can about them. Rightfully so for sure, but even despite these exciting times I wanted to focus first on the company and the stuff they do. Some specific questions about some of their products and the things around them, maybe even the way they feel their work has influenced the market. And then – only if I’m allowed (and time permits) – also a few questions on the new developments.

You may have guessed by now…  I got a positive reply from Cycling ’74 that they want to go ahead with it. Not just that..  Cycling ’74 is really excited about the upcoming Max 6, so they don’t see a problem with sharing some details about it either!

Needless to say but I’m quite excited.

NOW….

I can’t make any promises here since we still need to work out the details on the interview, but in all honesty you guys started it. So its only fair that you also get some influence in all this.

SO… if there’s anything you want to ask the Cycling ’74 company now is the time to do so. If you have any questions then please ask them in the comment section below (do make it clear its one for the interview please!) and then I’ll see how I can add them to the interview.

Disclaimer: I cannot make any promises here. Especially since we haven’t worked out the details yet. But I do promise that I will keep everything in the comment section in mind. That is; if you guys actually have anything to share.

Small private comment but I can already see some of you out there going “No way! “.

3 comments

Making a Siren

August 23, 2011 ShelLuser Ableton Live, Absynth, Max for Live, Reason, Tutorials

Some time ago I fell into an interesting topic on the Ableton forum; someone was wondering how to make a Siren in Ableton Live.  Unfortunately not too many people picked up on the subject, but I have a very weak spot for stuff like that.

Especially because you may actually learn something from trying to solve such an “easy” problem. Making a siren, how hard can it be?  Well, as always, that which may seem easy enough can very well pack quite a punch.

Ableton Live

ab_siren

First I started with Live itself. Because I have the Suite version it basically allows me to do whatever I want. I decided to put the setup into an Instrument rack so that regular Live users can enjoy it too.

I decided to start off with the Analog instrument because in my opinion it would be much better suited for a siren. I was looking for a full “phat” sound, fully focusing on a sawtooth.

Yet the first problem I faced: a siren, especially air raid sirens, tend to build up to full sound and when you want to stop they slowly decay. But the pitch build and release is something very specific for that sound.

ab_ramp

This was yet another reason to resort to Analog because it allows you to setup a pitch build up on the fly, as you can see in this screenshot. All I did was setup the first oscillator and then defined the ramp it should use. Ignore the green dots for now; those only indicate that some options are being controlled by one of the rack macro dials.

Next I also wanted to try and give a little more body to the sound. I managed to achieve that by increasing the number of voices and also setting up the detune so that one oscillator can produce a slightly “out of sync” signal, which is also very specific for an air raid siren.

ab_analog

While the result isn’t too bad at all, in my opinion anyway, it does have one limitation… The sound is only building up, but when you release your key then the sound will stop instantaneously. A real siren however should also be able to more slowly “lower” the sound again.

Reason

Now, the real fun with challenges like these lies in trying to get the same (kind of) result with several environments. Several DAWs have several workflows, which can make it pretty interesting to compare. However, it turned out that Reason wasn’t really up to the challenge. That is; it is perfectly possible to create some kind of siren sound with Reason, that’s not the problem. But my aim was to create one specific device which you could then implement in whatever project you were working on…

Reason_3

Knowing where to start was easy; the Thor polyphonic synthesizer. It has many different oscillators and an extensive filter section which makes it the ideal basis for our siren sound. The only obstacle here is that we want the pitch of the sound to build up. The first attempt to solve this can be seen here; Thor’s own step sequencer. I think the problem should be obvious at once: with only 16 steps and no real way to define a range of some sort it won’t be enough for what we want.

Luckily for us Reason has many more tricks up its sleeve.. As such I ended up trying to hookup the Matrix device to Thor:

Reason_1

As you can see here a Matrix is a sort of step sequencer, but one which provides a little more specific control than a regular one. I’ve setup a ramp going from low to high and created the necessary connections on the back to make the Matrix device control Thor’s pitch wheel. Now while this works decently well there is one more problem here… As soon as the Matrix device reaches the last step (number 32) it will jump back to 1 and start all over again. That is not what we want since that would turn our siren into a looping sound; one which constantly builds up from 0.

Automation

Reason_2

I ended up concluding that there is no good way in Reason to create a siren like effect while using a single device. The main problem I came across was timing. While Reason has plenty of devices which provide “ramps” (like LFO’s, or the Matrix I mentioned earlier) they cannot be easily controlled themselves.

For example; I can’t control the Matrix using another device or tell it to only do a single run. As such my solution in Reason ended up with manual automation, as can be seen above.

I basically pulled up the sequencer and simply started setting up a pitch ramp myself, as you can see in the screenshot. This makes it perfectly doable to generate a siren sound in Reason, but it just doesn’t give you the same kind of control I have in Ableton Live. However this does solve the problem I have with Live’s Analog; now I can make sure that my siren will build up and more slowly fade off as well.

Absynth 5

ab5_osc<br />

Absynth is one of the big favorites in my synth collection. While it does come with a rather heavy pricetag (even when I got it during N.I.’s last discount period) every time I work with it you immediately notice the high quality you’re working with.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I simply used a single sawtooth oscillator which I then tweaked a little by setting up a unison sound (the 3rd tab in the oscillator section). 3 voices, a little differentiating and… Here is one of those many “high quality” examples: A random factor. In other words; the amount in which the three voices are detuned isn’t a static setting in my patch, instead it slightly varies every time you play it.

As you can see I also setup a cloud filter to give my siren a little more body; making it fuller than the default sound generated by the oscillator.

And now to tackle the real problem: how to make the sound slowly build up ?  Better yet, if possible how to make sure that it also will slowly decay again ?

Envelopes

ab5_envelope

One of Absynth 5’s key features is its envelope section, which can be seen above. By default you have 3 envelopes; one for each of the oscillator’s amplifiers. And with using the regular “ADSR structure” you can basically control whatever you want by merely adding extra envelopes as required, resulting in sound control by using your keyboard. In other words; when I push a key Absynth will start with the Attack section (the first round up curve which ends with the letter ‘A’). Then it follows the ‘Decay’ section (the straight line in the middle) and then remain there for as long as you keep the key pressed, obviously, considering that I’ve also not done anything special with the Sustain section.

Finally, when I release the key again it will then start following the Release section. Which is the last curve downwards. So in other words; it will then lower the pitch of the siren again until we’re back to 0.

Of course I had to alter the default “Oscil A Amp” envelope a bit to make its release cycle a little less steeper so that you could clearly hear the slowly lowering pitch.

Max for Live

M4L_1

Last but not least; what if we were to simply program a siren ourselves? M4L excels at that task obviously and although it will take you a little more effort to build such a device, the obvious advantage here is that it will also give you a lot more control than any of the above synths can give you.

Now, I’m still learning to find my way around M4L’s “MSP section” (this is the section which can be used to generate and process sound signals) so I kept the patch very simple. A mere 2 sawtooth oscillator without trying to apply detuning or filtering the end signal in any way. Maybe that’s an interesting task for later:

M4L_2

I parse the (raw) incoming midi data using “midiparse” and end up grabbing the pitch and velocity values. I then separate the list and concentrate on the velocity value, which tells me if there’s a key pressed or not.

As soon as a key is pressed I tell the line~ object to generate a ‘ramp’ from 0 to 184 within 10 seconds. This signal is then send to both sawtooth oscillators (the saw~ objects), resulting in a slow pitch build up. After 10 seconds the full pitch is reached and the siren sounds as intended. When a key is released again a second ramp is build; this time its from the current playing value back to 0 in 7.5 seconds.

As you can see for yourself it’s a very simple and sub-standard patch, but it should give you a rough idea as to how you could build something like a Siren using M4L.

Summing up

SO, does this mean that one product is better than the other? Of course not; it simply goes to show you that separate products have their own advantages and disadvantages. This is also the main reason why I started to collect a few more synths besides Ableton Live, even though I have quite a few instruments available with Suite and am pretty happy with Live the way it is now.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the ultimate solution for every sound-related problem out there. A little diversity can go a long way.

If you want to download the presets and play with ‘m yourself then you can grab an archive with all presets here.

(thanks to Sondance for warning me about the broken link!).

2 comments

Regexps part 4; finishing the tutorial.

August 13, 2011 ShelLuser Max for Live, MaxMSP, Tutorials

Right, I hope you guys didn’t think I was only going to do a small tribute entry today now, did you ?

SO, it has been a while since I posted parts one, two and three, so you may want to check those out prior to reading this part.  As promised in the previous part I’ll explain some of the “special matching characters”, go a little deeper into using substitutions and we’ll go over the regexp example patches which can be found on the regexp reference page as well as the ones in the regexp “help patch” (alt-click on the regexp object to see this one).

But first…

Recap

“Regexps are basically search templates which contain several characters which together can represent certain text. We divide these characters into “matching characters” and “control characters” (not official naming)” :

  • Matching characters I explained / mentioned so far:
    • The caret sign ‘^’ represents the start of a line of text.
    • The dollar sign ‘$’ represents the end of a line of text.
    • The dot ‘.’ matches any kind of single character.
  • Control characters I explained so far:
    • The asterisk ‘*’ indicates that the preceding characters might appear several (0 or more) times.
    • The question mark ‘?’ indicates that the preceding character is optional (appears 0 or 1 time).
    • A “pipe” character ‘|’ indicates a “double”. The regexp should apply to everything before it OR everything behind it.
    • The round brackets ‘()’ indicate that we’re grouping or nesting. We’re actually making a regexp inside the main regexp.
    • The square brackets ‘[]‘ indicate that we’re using a collection of characters; either by defining a range or by using a group. All collection members are matched individually.
    • The broken brackets ‘{}’ specify “count rate”. The amount of which the previous character needs to occur.
    • The backslash ‘\’ makes the parser (“parse master” treat the following character literally, in other words the character ‘escapes’ parsing and as such is picked up ‘as is’.

Advanced matching

So far I’ve shown you guys how you can match text by setting up a regexp (‘template’) which either searches for specific matches or those defined by certain properties such as an x amount of characters at a certain location, or a word at a specific place which needs to have a certain letter or number in it.

But what if all we knew about a certain text snippet is that it will consist of 3 letters and 2 numbers, in that order, but we don’t know what it’ll be all about?  Yet we’d still want to get all occurrences which meet this description (so 3 letters followed by 2 numbers).  From what I told you so far this seems to be impossible, but fortunately for us its not.  I mentioned it before; regexps are very extensive and versatile, which is also the reason I use them very often.

Apart from all the “control characters” I explained so far there are a number of special occasions. So far a “control character” was basically an ordinary character like a question mark or asterisk or such. Things you might also find used in common sentences. Yet as is common with certain environments we also know a couple of ‘special additions’ to the set. Keep in mind though that although everything I explained so far can easily be used on environments other than Max or Max for Live, these special additions may very well be completely (or even expanded) different elsewhere.

Differentiate between numbers and letters

regexps-apc

  • \\d – Matches a decimal character.
  • \\D – Matches a non-decimal character.
  • \\w – Matches an alphanumeric character.
  • \\W – Matches a non-alphanumeric character.
  • \\s – Matches a white space.
  • \\S – Matches a non-white space.

And there you have it. Basically the lowercase variable matches a certain group whereas the UPPER case variable sort of negates that match.

So where \\d will match a decimal character, \\D will match everything but a decimal character. So basically it is a way to rule out the occurrence of any decimal characters.

The reason why there control characters are preceded with two backslashes should be obvious by now; Max will erase a single backslash by default. So you need two where the first basically ‘escapes’ the second backslash (as explained in part 3).

Beware of oddities!

When using regexps you should always be weary for unexpected behavior. For example; in the screenshot above you see 3 words which match the regexp yet only 2 are shown in the message box. What happened to the first one ?

I assure you that it was found. But due to the comma (“,”) in that sentence Max somehow cut the line in two parts and treated the comma as if it was the end of the first line. So now we end up with getting 2 lists out of the middle outlet. First one is “APC40” which is then followed by “APC20 APC60”. You can see as much when using the ‘print’ object to see all the generated output.

Advanced substitutions

Last time I showed you how to use the @substitute attribute to replace the word matched by the regexp for something else. So when looking at the example above; would I want to replace any occurrence of ‘APC60’ with APC40 I could easily use: “regexp APC60 @substitute APC60” which will then replace “APC60” with APC40.

But what if I only want to replace parts of a word instead of replacing the whole word ?

This is where grouping comes in handy. I showed you that by using brackets ‘()’ you could group or nest a regexp so that you could basically perform 2 matches within one regexp. When you’re using substitutions however you can also refer to these groups which allows you to perform very specific replacements or even text movements if you’d want to.

regexps-userfan

Here you can see the grouping in action. My regexp consists of 2 groups; one matching Synth and one matching Fan. You can immediately see the difference in behavior when looking at outlets 2 (back references) and 3 (substrings). Outlet 2 got a list which consists of 2 words whereas outlet 3 found one single word.

As you can see we are looking for “SynthFan” but in 2 parts. When you define your substitution string you can actually use “%x” variables which will
match the group number in the regexp. So as shown above I’m looking for “Synth” and “Fan” occurring right after each other. I then want to replace the found string by the first group, followed by a space which is then followed by the word “user”. The space is also the reason why I needed to use quotes in my substitution string.

So…  The regexp found “SynthFan” and due to the @substitute attribute it gets ready to replace the word. The first character I used is %1 which refers to the first group. This is the word “Synth”. As such the first part of the replacement is “Synth”. Then there’s a space and the word ‘user’. These get appended to the replacement string and thus we end up with replacing “SynthFan” with “Synth user”.

Oh dear..

I just thought of something. I have the sentence all wrong! This was supposed to go to Synthtopia to explain that my alias there (“SynthFan”) is actually ShelLuser which is the alias I use here and on the Ableton forums. But not the other way around since they don’t know ShelLuser.

Easily solved with a quick regexp:

regexps-swap

Yes; the ‘a’ is a bit awkward in this sentence but I only noticed that after I setup, copied and pasted the above picture in this post. So please ignore the somewhat strange sentence and focus on the example of swapping 2 words in the same sentence.

What is happening here?  Well, I setup my regexp to match the literal word “ShelLuser”. Which is then optionally followed by an x amount of characters. After those characters I match the literal word “SynthFan”. As you can see the big issue here is that I’ve grouped all three different parts.

So now all I basically have to do is turn them around. Always keep in mind that you’re not really replacing parts of a match; you’re always replacing the entire match found by the regexp. But using group referrals allows you to “put back” certain matches into the substitution. And that leaves us with the result above. The sentence is complete turned around; first the 3rd group is placed which matches “SynthFan”. Then the second group is placed which matched everything between the words “ShelLuser” and “SynthFan”. So; matched the rest of the sentence. And finally “ShelLuser” is added, thus forming the sentence you can see coming out of the first outlet.

And there you have it!

This concludes my 4 part tutorial on regular expressions. I think I have covered everything which I mentioned but left untouched in the previous parts. All but one that is; I also  promised to go over the examples from the regexp refpage. If you do spot something I missed please let me know in the comment section.

Examples explained

regexps-example1

This one is actually quite simple, and I hope that by following my tutorial you too come to this same conclusion now. Oh; perhaps needless to say but I added the message object so that the output is visible.

First we have a collection which consists of the characters ‘f’ and ‘p’. Remember; all members of a collection are matched individually. So we’re looking for a word which begins with the letter f or p. Then we need to match the literal word “la”. Then another collection is defined which contains the special control character \\w which matches any alpha-numerical character. The * behind that specifies that the previous collection might occur 0 or several times. As someone mentioned in e-mail; the last collection wasn’t indeed necessary; they could also have used “[fp]la\\w*” instead. But, you have to admit that by using a new collection it makes reading this regexp a whole lot easier.

Number 2:

regexps-splitting

This one should now be easily debugged as well. I think the unpack object might be more interesting than the regexp Glimlach  And yes, before I continue; this regexp could have been trimmed down as well. The use of collections in here wasn’t really necessary and quite frankly I think that in this case it makes the regexp harder to read.

But..  the regexp consists of 3 groups. The first matches any single alpha-numerical character and so does the second group. The third however matches the occurrence of 0 or more decimal characters. So basically the original string of “fb003” is split apart in ‘f’, ‘b’ and ‘003’, which can be seen in the message object I added. Because it’s a number the preceding zero’s were removed.

Number 3:

regexps-subex

Another easy one…  Some people got confused because of the order which was given but there is no need for that. Nothing changes in the regexp so for the outcome it doesn’t really matter which message box you click first.

Ok, so we have a regexp which consists of 2 groups. The first matches either the word “paint” or “frame”. This word is then followed by a second group which matches either the word “rect” or “oval”. As such the regexp can match words like paintoval, paintrect, frameoval and framerect. Then a substitution string is defined which consists of the word “paint” followed by the second group.

Now although it appears as if nothing happened with the first message box that is not the case. The first part of the word (“paint”) matches the first group of the regexp. The second part (“oval”) matches the second group. So, what is happening here is that “paintoval” gets replaced by the word “paint” which is then followed by the second group of the regexp; which matches “oval”. SO we’re replacing a word with the exact same word. But don’t be fooled; a replacement has been made here.

The second message should be easy as well now. “frame” matches the first group, ‘”rect” matches the second group and so the whole word is replaced by the literal word “paint”which is then followed by group 2. In this case matching “rect”, so we get “paintrect”.

I think this about covers it. Apart from one last example which can be found in a sub-help patch. I’m including this one because several
people asked me about it by e-mail:

regexps-oddity

The question people asked me: “What is that i: doing there?”.

Answer: causing trouble.  This appears to be an undocumented feature and I suspect that its not merely i: but “?i:” which we need to consider. One effect is that it keeps the output out of the second outlet (‘back references’). The other that the regexp matches both lower and UPPER cases; see the match with “toto.WAV”. This match doesn’t occur once you remove the “?i:”.

And this effect can be reproduced:

regexps-undocced

But quite frankly I’d recommend not using this particular setup due to its strange nature. That and because its an undocumented feature, which means there’s no telling if its still there when Max 6 comes out.

 

And there you have it. This concludes my tutorial on regular expressions in Max / Max for Live. I hope you had fun following it and found it useful.

If you have any more questions about this or previous parts please don’t hesitate to ask them using the comment sections.

One comment

Tribute to Fall Silently

August 12, 2011 ShelLuser Miscellaneous

artworks-000003084057-bz8kj2-original

Fall Silently is a dance track which was used on a demo video featuring the upcoming new features of FL Studio 9.7, see this link.  The cool thing is that FL Studio was also heavily (if not solely) used to create the track.  And if you really like working with a program; what can be cooler than having your music featured in one of their official videos ?

So; on the left you can see Christoph Maitland, Toby Emerson together with Veela.

I recently got their 2 track album thanks to a friendly guy at the Ableton forums who I helped out with a Max for Live problem (you know who you are!).

Todays DAW environments are awesome. They can provide everything you need to help you either create, compose, edit or process audio. Easily.

Yet this can also work against us I’m afraid. Because everything is so completely setup these days it also becomes very easy to take a track, slice it to smaller sound material and then use that to make a remix. So; basically using original material to turn it into something of your own.

Basically nothing wrong with that, esp. if the artists themselves don’t mind. Still, I got a little annoyed when I was searching for this track the other day and came across many remixes. Where some didn’t even mention that it was a remix. Could be perfectly ok with everyone, I don’t know. But I simply didn’t really like what I saw.

And so I felt a small tribute to the original cast was in order. For more information on the album please see this interview with Veela. And finally; if you’re interested in purchasing their album (I can really recommend it; its very nice music) you can do so at their beatport webpage. You can use the player I embedded below to listen to the track and also go to their SoundCloud webpage.


Christoph Maitland & Toby Emerson ft Veela – Fall Silently (Progressive Mix) by Toby Emerson

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New stuff on the horizon; but is it all good news ?

August 2, 2011 ShelLuser Cycling '74, DAWs, Native Instruments, Propellerhead

First of all my apologies for all of you who were hoping for more regular posts in the past months.

I’ve been out of it for a while. First due to work which was getting the better of me, and to top that I also had a family issue where a relative was struck by a terrible disease. Not the best combination there is, which automatically leaves very little time for anything else. But I’m slowly picking up the pieces again and I’m going to continue where I left off (of course ignoring the parts which have become kind of obsolete in the mean time).

Forget stress balls; get a synth instead!

One last off topic bit…  Very often I worked rather long times (8am – 2am has been no exception) and especially after a hectic day I can’t simply jump in bed and expect to get a good sleep. I need a moment to relax a bit; sit on the couch, drink something; maybe read a paper and after 30 min. or so I’m relaxed enough to get some sleep.

What also worked quite well for me was simply turning on my equipment (either just my keyboard or in combination with Ableton Live extra’s) only to start playing with it without having a plan or a goal or anything. Just play some stuff, create some sound effects, play a little more. Sometimes mixing things a bit but nothing too serious and too complex. All of it without actually thinking things over or trying to work stuff out (Max is a no no). That can sometimes truly be so tremendously relaxing. Esp. when you managed to create some fine soundscapes which you can then give some variation yourself. Priceless… Sometimes even emotionally devastating. Which is in my opinion one of the true powers of sound.

2011: The year of major releases

It’s hard to miss, even if you didn’t keep up with the recent developments. Major companies like Cycling ‘74, Native Instruments and Propellerhead (in alphabetic order) have all announced that new versions of their software can be expected in the near future. I’m talking of course about Max 6, Komplete 8 and Reason 6.

Good news you may think. But I truly wonder if the recent developments are all as good as they look. There are several good developments going on, no question about it, but I think some of the major new releases also show a nasty dark side. And I’m not too sure if that’s all for the best.

Let me elaborate…

reason

When looking at the 3 new releases I think Reason 6 shows the most surprising development. After Reason 4 (which has been maintained for years) the ‘Propellerheads’ tried to fill in a demand living with many Reason users; namely the option to actually record something.

The main problem was that Reason was never really a ‘DAW’. Sure; it had a sequencer, many instruments and such. But it wasn’t really capable of recording or processing (sort of) external audio. And so Record was born. Although it could be used separately it was basically an extension for Reason which brought recording capabilities to the Reason environment.

Obviously this lead to some confrontations. Like for instance when a freely available upgrade for Record was released which couldn’t be used without upgrading to Reason 5 (which wasn’t free of charge).

And so, with the introduction of a new version, Propellerhead software announced that it merged Reason and Record into one new product called Reason 6. But isn’t it a little too late to try and introduce a new DAW(-like?) environment which will also introduce some serious limitations ?

Reason 6; too little too late or… ?

Now, this may sound a little more negative than its meant but I seriously wonder if the new features will really weigh up.  Lets look at some of the new features of Reason 6…

New effects: Pulveriser, The Echo and Alligator. Because Record is now part of Reason 6 all of those effects are now also part of Reason. So stuff like the new mixer panel or the Neptune pitch adjuster for example. And another big issue is that Reason 6 is now also available as a native 64bit application.

I have serious mixed feelings with all this to be honest. First; I’m ignoring the 64bit issue here since I think its being way to much overhyped. 64bit has certain advantages, but by far as many as some claim.

Alas; there are several quirks. Even though Reason 6 now looks more like a DAW than ever before it does not support a ReWire master setup. Something I honestly cannot understand. Especially now that Reason 6 gets full sound recording capabilities. What better way to extend on your main environment by using other fine products ?

Now, this is speculation on my part but if Reason and Record are really bundled into one product it might also make using Reason as a ReWire slave a lot harder. I can imagine Reason + Record taking up much more resources in comparison to using Reason in a stand alone fashion. I think this to be a big deal because using ReWire has always been a key feature in my opinion. Especially since Reason can do so much crazy stuff which you simply won’t easily reproduce in other environments.

As to the effects..  I dunno. While they maybe new in the Reason universe its not really something completely wild and new when looking at the whole market. Pulveriser sounds like an interesting effect, sure, but I seriously doubt if it will cope with already available specialized effects. For example; when I need a good distortion I usually resort to using Native Instrument’s Rammfire effect. Just listen to the sound demonstrations on both product pages and judge for yourself.

Alligator also looks quite interesting but can it really stand up against The Finger or The Mouth (or the combination of both) ?

Now; I’m not saying all this to be negative or uber-cynical. But I seriously wonder if all of this isn’t merely one big “catching up”. Is it enough to interest people who may already have turned to other sequencers because they couldn’t wait for Record (or who got pissed off during the last “free/not free” upgrade) ?

Komplete 8; less for more or… ?

ni_komplete_8

There used to be Komplete. And for those who considered it a little bit too overwhelming we also had Komplete Elements. And if you wanted neither but merely use one or more of the available instruments and effects that was possible too; you could simply grab the freely available Komplet
e Players and expand on that as you saw fit.

A move which was applauded by many people by the way, including yours truly.

Yet it seems that Native Instruments is heavily cutting on price v.s. product. For example; not too long ago they heavily cut Komplete Elements thus turning it into a small fraction of Komplete instead of the “Perfect introduction to the world of Komplete” which it honestly was.

Now I get the feeling that they’re somewhat doing the same with Komplete 8.

Komplete 8 consists of 27 included products (instrument and effects) which is 3 more than the previous version 7 (which had 24). 11.000 sounds; so 1000 more sounds. But lets be realistic; a ‘sound’ is basically nothing more than a preset.

What is also noteworthy is that Komplete 8 also comes with the most recent versions of some of their flag products: Kontakt 5 instead of 4, Reaktor 5.6 instead of 5.5 and Guitar Rig 5 Pro instead of 4.

And one has to admit; the pricing seems fair. Or is it ? Komplete 8 costs the same as 7; namely E 499,-. Upgrades are available for E 199,-. But how fair or realistic is this really ?

Some major components of Komplete 8 are Kontakt, Reaktor and Guitar Rig Pro. A separate Kontakt 5 upgrade will cost you E 99,-. An update for Reaktor appears to be free and upgrading Guitar Rig Pro will cost you another E 69.-. That’s E 168,-. Of course one should also keep the new extra products in mind: Studio Drummer, Transient Master, West Africa and Retro Machines MK2 (wait… That’s 4 new products is it not ? Why does the comparison chart speak of only 3 extra included products?). Which in total makes up for another E 416,- worth of extra’s.

So in comparison the price value seems high. But is this really a valuable upgrade when compared with Komplete 7; also when looking what you’re actually getting? I don’t know, but it feels somewhat underwhelming to be honest. Studio Drummer looks quite nice, sure, but there are Reaktor ensembles out there which can also provide some very serious percussion effects and loops.

The most important aspect to keep in mind here: is the sound in Komplete 8 really that much different as it is in Komplete 7 ?  I seriously doubt it.

More and even more?

If this isn’t good enough for you you can even upgrade to a higher version: Komplete 8 Ultimate. 50 included products instead of 27 in “normal 8” or the 24 in Komplete 7. A sample library which will gobble up 240Gb of your precious disk space compared to the “meager” 110Gb which Komplete 8 will take.

Truth be told you get a lot of extra stuff. But shouldn’t The Mouth have been part of Komplete 8 already given that ‘The Finger’ is somewhat dated by now ?  And how realistic is it to continue with only including Abbey Road 60s drums while ignoring the 80s or even modern drums ?

And what about Komplete Elements?  3Gb of material vs. 110Gb (Komplete) to 240Gb (Komplete Ultimate) ?  Are those still realistic differences or has Elements been reduced to a “Komplete teaser” for which people still have to pay money ?

My advice?  Don’t bother just now and don’t even think of pre-ordering. Wait for upcoming December to see what N.I. will do next. I’m pretty positive that they’ll come up with another form or reduction. And should sales be disappointing its probably going to be big again. Just wait for it.

Patience is a virtue…

max6

And finally; Cycling ‘74 has announced the upcoming 6th version of their Max visual programming environment.

Now; comparing a programming environment with a DAW(-like) environment or a huge library of sounds and effects maybe a bit of awkward, but I still think that in this context its also an important comparison.

Maintaining a programming environment is a costly endeavor. It will take up time and thus money, yet it is something people who use the environment will still expect. And lets be fair; Max comes with heavy price tag. One which is worth it, but still heavy to get into.

So picture my surprise to learn that Accessibility is one of the key features of the upcoming Max 6. And this does not only refer to issues like education and support. No, C’74 is also planning to make Max more accessible by lowering the retail price to $399, effective immediately.

I’m an “earlier adopter” so to speak; I stepped in a year ago. Yet I still think this is good news for all of us; more accessibility will mean more people using it resulting in a likely, yet potentially, increase of available Max devices. At the very least an increased availability of experience gained through the several forums and communities.

Everyone profits there.

Next C’74 also talks about enhanced performance (code generation, new objects like gen~ and so on) and enhanced quality. Granted; ‘quality’ leans close to more marketing talk but enhanced filters, oscillators and 64bit precision are really cold hard enhancements when talking about a programming environment.

Having the right idea?

I know I’m biased but I cannot help wonder if Cycling ‘74 and Ableton had the right idea all along. The most important one being to join forces which result is shown in the likes of Max for Live. Ableton users get into contact with Max (and may choose to expand on it as well) whereas Max users get into contact with a “Maxed sequencer” which may very well benefit their devices and/or purposes too.

In both situations Ableton and Cycling ‘74 profit from the customers of the other partner.

In comparison it seems that Propellerhead software is sort of turning to the same marketing tactics which other companies used before them. For example by offering several versions of the same product. We’ll get Reason 6 as well as Reason Essentials; see this comparison chart for more information. I’m not too sure if these are developments for the better, but time will tell.

Native Instruments?  Not sure what to make of all that. I doubt that upgrading from 7 to 8 is really worth it. I also think that it’s an utter shame that they decided to discontinue certain products so quickly. For example their North India Kontakt soundbank; an awesome instrument for those very typical Asian string sounds. Yet it is no more…

I can’t help wonder if such developments won’t drive certain people towards more “alternative channels”, although I sure hope not.

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Things are not going too well right now…

July 12, 2011 ShelLuser Miscellaneous

Just a quick heads up to assure people who are still looking into the blog and website from time to time that its not fully dead and that I’m still keeping an eye out (for example making sure some pesky spammers are being kept quiet).

At first I had very little free time to spare due to a major project which I’m working on for my own company (non-synth related).

Right now another issue surfaced; a family member has been hospitalized which makes everything a whole lot harder. Quite frankly I feel like sh*t, am a little stressed out and the fact that I’ve been away so long from my favorite hobby also is not really helping.

Anyway, going to try and slowly pick up again soon.

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Offtopic: Some Windows 7 tips and tricks.

May 10, 2011 ShelLuser Miscellaneous, Tutorials

Its been way too long since I wrote something up. The reason for that should be obvious: work and lack of inspiration.

My profession lies with IT which focuses itself mainly on Linux and Unix (-like) environments. Until not too long ago my main work environment was a Linux (“KDE”) desktop on which I did everything (mail, browsing, programming, network administration, etc.). Until that moment when I dove more into Ableton Live, Max for Live and later Max itself. Because Max can be extended with Java externals (where my expertise lies) it didn’t take too long before I moved my programming environment to Windows as well.

Right to that moment last weekend when my girlfriend suddenly mentioned that all I basically did with my old Linux desktop computer was check my e-mail after which I switched right back to Windows. And so, for well founded reasons I recently moved all my desktop requirements over to Windows 7 (I’ve been using Linux privately for nearly 15 years now; 10 year professionally.  I’m way beyond your average bias.).

I actually enjoy working with Windows 7 (I use the Dutch Professional version). So although I have very little inspiration on Synth subjects right now (could hardly spend some quality time unfortunately) I figured that I could just as well write up some of my Windows 7 findings & experiences which hopefully might help you to get some more out of your Windows environment as well.

Although I’m focusing on Windows 7 some of the things I mention here also work with Windows Vista and XP (tried XP myself, didn’t try Vista since I don’t have that available anymore).

Why Windows 7 ?

If you’re into software synthesizers (DAW’s) and use a non-Mac platform then I think your most reliable options are either to use Windows XP (though support for that is coming to an end; I think support stops around 2014) or Windows 7. Whatever you do; I strongly advice you to steer clear from Windows Vista because it has several (quite severe) limitations, as you can read in a previous blog post.

I have no hands on experience with XP when it comes to DAW’s so I can’t comment on that. But when comparing Windows 7 with my previous Windows Vista environment it truly is a day and night experience. And then I’m only commenting on what I can and cannot do within Live itself…

A new taskbar

taskbar

One of the things which many people will immediately notice when they get confronted with Windows 7 is the new taskbar. Every program which you start is now represented as a large icon and to make matters worse they even removed the quick launchbar. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then don’t worry about it since you probably won’t miss it.

Still, the taskbar also brings many enhancements which can make your life a lot easier when working with several programs at the same time.

First…  When you start a program in Windows 7 you will see a “squared” icon appear on the taskbar. You can notice this behavior in this screenshot; after the first 5 icons you can see three “squares” with icons inside it. There represent programs which I have started during the writing of this blog (the lighter square is actually Windows Live Writer which I’ve been using more often lately to write up blog posts).

If you right click on a ‘squared icon’ you will have an option “attach to taskbar” (or very similar; I don’t have an English version available here so I need to translate from mind). This will make the icon appear permanently on your taskbar as you can see here. The first 4 icons (excluding the start menu icon) are Ableton Live, Reason, Max and NetBeans (a programming environment which I use for Java development).

Now; not only does this make it easier to start these programs by clicking on them. You can also use a keyboard shortcut to either start these or switch back and forth.

taskbar_moved

If you press the Windows button and then press 1 it will automatically fire up the first program in this list. In my case Ableton Live. If you then press Win-2 (Windows button and then pressing 2 while keeping the Windows button pressed) it will start the second program. In the original screenshot this is the Reason icon.

Starting, selecting and moving around

If you press Win-1 in my environment when Live hasn’t been started yet then it starts up. However; if you press the same combination again while Live has already been started this behavior changes; then it will either minimize Live (when it was the currently active and focused program) or activate it (so move it to the foreground and give it the current focus).

This allows you to quickly move between programs. I use this extensively myself whenever I’m patching in Reason (my workflow is entirely focused on Live; so I only run Reason rewired into Live these days) so that I can easily move back and forth without having to drag the mouse everywhere.

But there’s more…

As you can see in the screenshot directly above its also very easy to move icons around. In this case I merely dragged my blogging application right after that of the Live icon. When you do this Windows 7 will actually shift the shortcuts around. So pressing Win-1 will affect Live but pressing Win-2 no longer affects Reason but my blogging application. Now I switch back and forth from Live and my blog post.

And as soon as I either close the blogging application or drag it back to the rear again the original selection will become active once more; so pressing Win-2 will then fire up Reason again.

Note that these shortcuts also work with the quick launchbar in Vista, not with XP to my knowledge.

Start menu shortcuts

startmenu

As you can see here the start menu has also changed quite a bit. In Windows XP and Vista the first 2 items on the upper left side of the menu were automatically assigned to your default Internet browser and e-mail program.

However in Windows 7 this is no longer the case. No matter what you select as default they will no longer automatically appear on your menu. I noticed that many people were quite puzzled or annoyed with this; but don’t despair! As you can see here its perfectly possible to get the same behavior back again. The only difference is that in Windows 7 you need to add these yourself.

You basically need to do the same thing which you did in the task bar above.

Just open your start menu, then right click on the program which you want to pin down. If it doesn’t appear in the section to the lower left (these show the programs you started most often) then simply use the bottom option “All programs” and find wh
at you want to attach there.

Then, like before, right click on the program and in the (probably larger) list you will also come across an option “Attach to start menu”. And that’s all you need to do here.

As soon as you selected that option the program will appear in your start menu. As you can see here I use FireFox, ThunderBird and IrfanView often enough that I chose to pin them down to the start menu.

Thunderbird 3 & Firefox 4 are very poor IMO

Although, as a short and highly offtopic comment it remains to be seen how long I’ll be using those first 2 programs. Still using Thunderbird version 2 because I despise the horrific idea of introducing tabs to an e-mail client without giving the user any regular option to turn that stuff off. Firefox is unfortunately more of the same story; still using version 3 because I heavily dislike seeing my plugin icons (NoScript and AdBlock plus; highly recommendable) suddenly move to completely new (and illogical) locations while I’m very used to the current situation. Once again: no easy way to simply move back to the previous look and feel (apart from not upgrading, which I did).

I don’t want a browser which tries to mimic “popular software looks”. I want a browser for what it is!

Jumplists

taskbar_jumplist

As you can see in the several screenshots above a lot of start menu entries have a black arrow behind them. These arrows point you to specific files (or entries) which you have used very often with the program.

As you can see here I’m showing you the entries which are available to my “Windows Verkenner” which is Dutch and stands for the Windows Explorer.

And once again, just like with the taskbar and the start menu Windows 7 allows you to pin down entries which you use most often and want to be available every time.

In my situation this boils down to my personal folder (the top entry; but I blurred it as you can see), a folder for temporary stuff, an ISO folder which I’m using for my TechNet studies and finally a transfer directory on a server in my network.

In the section below that you can see the entries I’ve been visiting more often as of late. As you can see mostly work and study related; though I do like to play the old DOS Yu-Gi-Oh card game every now and then.

Libraries

Last item for this post (its getting late). Maybe I’ll expand on this, we’ll see. So far I still have some other series I need to finish up on (regexps as well).

New in Windows 7 are libraries. In fact; the moment when you fire up your Windows explorer from the start menu you’ll be put right into the library section.

libraries

These got me puzzled to at first but they are actually a very easy way to help you combine several folders which maybe related to the same thing.

For example (see the screenshot). I have a library called “DAW Libraries”. In here I keep all locations which I use to work with my DAW environment. So; my main Ableton data directory (D:\Ableton, it is here where I also keep the Live library itself) as well as my project folder (C:\Users\Peter\My Documents\Ableton) (I know its different from the screenshot; I translated it).

This can actually help me to quickly move around my DAW data with a single click of a mouse. I start the Explorer (thus ending up in my library section), I then open the ‘DAW Libaries’ library and I end up with 1 location which contains all of my DAW data.

Windows 7 either shows all the entries in a sequential manner (so one folder after the other) but in other cases it can even combine them so that it looks and feels as if you’re working in one big folder.

Last but not least….

To finish up let me share some interesting keyboard combinations I’ve learned in the past recent weeks…

  • Win-R : Opens the “Run…” menu allowing you to quickly type in the name of the program you want to start.
  • Control-Shift-Escape : Opens the task manager where you can control the programs and services currently running on your computer.
  • Win-E : Opens up the Windows Explorer while pointing at “Your Computer” (so you’ll get an overview of your disks and partitions).
  • Win-D : Show the Windows desktop (hiding all other programs). Pressing it a second time returns you to the previous state.
  • Win-cursor up : Maximizes the currently active program.
  • Win-cursor down : As can be expected; minimizes the currently active program.
  • Win-spacebar : Shows you the desktop as long as you keep the Windows key pressed.
  • Win-Home : Minimize all but your currently active (selected) program.

And there you have it.

Nothing synth related this time but I still hope this can proof useful for someone.

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