Metasynth 5 Users?

[secretkillerofnames]

Is there any way to record straight to audio while I'm drawing a patch and it is running? I'm finding it's a lot of fun to keep letting an image cycle and gradually add in more complexity as it's playing in realtime but I'd love to be able to capture that.

Not within Meta Synth, you would need to use an external app for that or record the Outputs of your Audio Interface in a DAW.

I've successfully used Soundflower to send to Reaper before. No reason why other DAWs wouldn't work.

[Sampleconstruct]

Is there any way to record straight to audio while I'm drawing a patch and it is running? I'm finding it's a lot of fun to keep letting an image cycle and gradually add in more complexity as it's playing in realtime but I'd love to be able to capture that.

Not within Meta Synth, you would need to use an external app for that or record the Outputs of your Audio Interface in a DAW.

I've successfully used Soundflower to send to Reaper before. No reason why other DAWs wouldn't work.

The RME Interface software let's you bounce back the Outs directly to any inputs so one can record them in a DAW, I find that the most practical way.

[aMUSEd]

Thanks - that could work. So far I've been saving each iteration as a preset then building them up in Montage but it rather breaks my flow - I like the spontaneity (and discipline) of recording as I create.

[espiegel123]

Is there any way to record straight to audio while I'm drawing a patch and it is running? I'm finding it's a lot of fun to keep letting an image cycle and gradually add in more complexity as it's playing in realtime but I'd love to be able to capture that.

Not within Meta Synth, you would need to use an external app for that or record the Outputs of your Audio Interface in a DAW.

I've successfully used Soundflower to send to Reaper before. No reason why other DAWs wouldn't work.

In most of MetaSynth's rooms (the FX Room, Image Synth and Image Filter), you can choose Preview to Disk and any work you do while the preview is playing is captured to an audio file on disk. The recording ends when playback stops. So, as long as you let the preview run without stopping, you can record your session.

Quite a few people use this trick to jam along to something that they have playing back from another app.

Best,

Edward

[espiegel123]

I've been playing with it all day, definitely complex and it will take some time to get into it but it is far more than just a synth, more a complete and very deep sound design and composition environment.

I've been checking out some of the compositions made with this, in particular Edward Spiegel creates some breathtaking music:

http://uisoftware.com/EAS/grains/

Thanks. I am glad you enjoy those comps.

[espiegel123]

Are there any finished compositions available apart from the demo one that can be downloaded to study and take apart to see better how it all fits together? All I could find was this but it doesn't really show the whole project, just the samples and presets used:

http://homelessballoon.com/metasynth.php?page=tips

Also the site has a lot of tutorial video except, ironically, very little on the image synth page. I've been trying to find more all day but not had much luck.

I'll take the request into consideration. Besides the video stuff, there are the pdf tutorials for the Image Synth -- they will take you pretty far. The videos take a long time to put together especially to do anything comprehensive.

There are some Flash presentations about the Image Synth on our videos page that introduce the basic concepts.

I plan on getting more videos done about the Image Synth and also how it all fits together.

One things that a lot of people don't realize is that there are a lot of useful things you can do in the Montage Room even if you are doing your final compositing in another DAW.

You might ask on our Facebook page if anyone has some MetaSynth projects that they are willing to share. I will see if any of mine are organized enough that they would be useful

Take a look/listen to Pulse on our videos page and let me know if that comp would be of any use:

http://uisoftware.com/ChillTV/#pulse

[Sampleconstruct]

Let's revive this thread a bit, here are 2 textures I made today using Metasynth as the main tool, some FX processing and editing was later done in my DAW:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... sychedelic

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... ing-caviar

[espiegel123]

Let's revive this thread a bit, here are 2 textures I made today using Metasynth as the main tool, some FX processing and editing was later done in my DAW:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... sychedelic

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... ing-caviar

Very nice! I love hearing what you do with MetaSynth!

[Sampleconstruct]

Let's revive this thread a bit, here are 2 textures I made today using Metasynth as the main tool, some FX processing and editing was later done in my DAW:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... sychedelic

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... ing-caviar

Very nice! I love hearing what you do with MetaSynth!

Thank's Edward!

Here is another one:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/eternal-drone

[espiegel123]

Let's revive this thread a bit, here are 2 textures I made today using Metasynth as the main tool, some FX processing and editing was later done in my DAW:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... sychedelic

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... ing-caviar

Very nice! I love hearing what you do with MetaSynth!

Thank's Edward!

Here is another one:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/eternal-drone

Really nice. Which room or rooms got used?

[Sampleconstruct]

Let's revive this thread a bit, here are 2 textures I made today using Metasynth as the main tool, some FX processing and editing was later done in my DAW:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... sychedelic

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... ing-caviar

Very nice! I love hearing what you do with MetaSynth!

Thank's Edward!

Here is another one:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/eternal-drone

Really nice. Which room or rooms got used?

First drawing frequencies in the Image Synth using custom tuning - importing the result into Spectrum Synth stretching and tuning it to the drone frequency with some frequency adjustments - importing that into the Image Filter applying an imported photography which I then edited to taste. Bounced and added some Space Plugs in Logic (B2/ÜberMod/GRM Shuffler). I often use these 3 rooms consecutively...

[espiegel123]

Let's revive this thread a bit, here are 2 textures I made today using Metasynth as the main tool, some FX processing and editing was later done in my DAW:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... sychedelic

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/m ... ing-caviar

Very nice! I love hearing what you do with MetaSynth!

Thank's Edward!

Here is another one:
http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/eternal-drone

Really nice. Which room or rooms got used?

First drawing frequencies in the Image Synth using custom tuning - importing the result into Spectrum Synth stretching and tuning it to the drone frequency with some frequency adjustments - importing that into the Image Filter applying an imported photography which I then edited to taste. Bounced and added some Space Plugs in Logic (B2/ÜberMod/GRM Shuffler). I often use these 3 rooms consecutively...

Thanks! I love what you are doing with it.

[jc_vt]

One things that a lot of people don't realize is that there are a lot of useful things you can do in the Montage Room even if you are doing your final compositing in another DAW.

Edward:

As a Metasynth user who always skips Montage room to go to a DAW I'd be really interested in your thoughts about using this room to greater advantage.

[espiegel123]

One things that a lot of people don't realize is that there are a lot of useful things you can do in the Montage Room even if you are doing your final compositing in another DAW.

Edward:

As a Metasynth user who always skips Montage room to go to a DAW I'd be really interested in your thoughts about using this room to greater advantage.

I hope in the next few months to do a batch of new screencasts [if any of you MetaSynth users want to create some -- send me a PM], but in the meantime, let me share some thoughts and hope that they make sense without seeing them in action.

Eric does all his mixing in the montage room -- MS/XX make his only DAW.

While quite a few of my projects are MetaSynth/Xx only, I also do projects where I am using another DAW.

Even when using another DAW, the Montage Room is very helpful to me for quite a few tasks. The big thing that is very helpful no matter what you are doing is for creating composite sounds where you would prefer in your main DAW to be just dealing with an individual sound rather than all the layers.

The montage's room workflow makes layering sounds created in the different rooms a quick, painless task. It also makes a certain kind of slice and dice easy when you want to rearrange and process sounds in MetaSynth.

Here are a few types of composites:

1) Layered Image Synth Presets. I often create several image synth presets that are rendered with different instruments or different frequency mappings and combine them. After I create them, I can go to the Montage Room and layer them and edit them to create interweavings of the sounds easily. I can then mix them to disk or mix to memory and Save As to save them somewhere to import into my DAW.

2) Layered sounds from multiple rooms. Same idea as #1 but not restricted to the Image Synth. I often to resynthesis work where I resynth a sound in the Image Synth (or a few versions in the Image Synth) and also versions in the Spectrum Synth. I then layer in the Montage Room and export. FREQUENTLY, when resynthesizing, I will also have one layer that is the unprocessed sound which I might mix in at various points.

3) Slicing and dicing a source for use in the Spectrum Synth, Image Filter or Effects Room. Sometimes I like to rearrange sounds before "metasynthing" them. This is easy to do in the Montage Room. I import a sound into the montage room and snip it into pieces and rearrange them in the montage room. I then use the "Mix Measures to Memory" or "Mix Selection to Memory" to get the new sound into the Sample Editor (I usually the sound file also).

I use it for a lot of other things, too. I think that you will find it can be a handy room for compositing and assembling elements created in MetaSynth.

Don't forget about the "Move Sound to Montage" and "Save Sound to Montage" commands for getting sounds into the montage room. (Make sure to look at the docs -- they have a couple of quirks worth knowing about).

[jc_vt]

I hope in the next few months to do a batch of new screencasts [if any of you MetaSynth users want to create some -- send me a PM], but in the meantime, let me share some thoughts and hope that they make sense without seeing them in action.....

Thanks for these tips, Edward. Some of what you describe I do now in Session View of Live, which has some advantages for improvisation, but I'll try Montage Room too.

On a separate note, given the ease with which the Spectrum Room creates multisamples, any advice on converting these .caf files into SFZ or other forms which can easily be imported to other programs like Alchemy?