(the product formerly known as) Epoch

[colin@loomer]

Well, that extra hour this weekend has helped, but not quite enough to get Dave's birthday present wrapped in time!

[ThomasHelzle]

I'm sure he will take it without the wrapper

Cheers,

Tom

[pinki]

It's literally just polishing.

So 'literally polishing'..... definitely means 2015 Colin?

As I said, I was really hoping to make it to our 4 year thread anniversary on February 13th. I had a party planned and everything....please don't release it before then, that would be so disappointing. You're going to be robbing me of a special day.

[dave dove]

Well, that extra hour this weekend has helped, but not quite enough to get Dave's birthday present wrapped in time!

dave

[woggle]

the new UVI falcon has Lua scripting for sequencing and is on sale until Nov 9 (i think). Gotta say it is quite tempting as it has sound generation and can output midi as well. "Epoch" should be more powerful, but ... it isn't actually available.

[koalaboy]

Whilst Falcon isn't anywhere nearly the same (from what I can tell), it certainly looks interesting. I would have guessed it was from Native Instruments if I hadn't known better.

I would much prefer the node-based approach that !Epoch is bringing, but now I am also wanting Falcon in addition... Gah !!

[woggle]

Whilst Falcon isn't anywhere nearly the same (from what I can tell), it certainly looks interesting. I would have guessed it was from Native Instruments if I hadn't known better.

I would much prefer the node-based approach that !Epoch is bringing, but now I am also wanting Falcon in addition... Gah !!

for sure on both is best but I am not sure I can afford that - Falcon will force me to relearn coding, but I was a reasonable coder when I had to be so compared to Epoch - that has dragged on for so long and may drag on for years to come - Falcon is looking pretty good

[koalaboy]

for sure on both is best but I am not sure I can afford that - Falcon will force me to relearn coding, but I was a reasonable coder when I had to be so compared to Epoch - that has dragged on for so long and may drag on for years to come - Falcon is looking pretty good

But this is the beauty of !Epoch as I see it... it's mainly a node-based system, with all of the ease of creation that brings. The LUA aspect is a nice expansion in that you can also add scripted nodes.

With Falcon, the coding would be more limited as you'd be coding inside a system, as opposed to a single node.

I could be wrong, but I see !Epoch as a modular, with Falcon more of a semi-modular, if I can use that analog analogy

I agree on not having enough money for all the things, especially with black Friday around the corner (and I've just finally picked up the upgrade to Sonar platinum, as it was only $80 for me), but I'm still holding !Epoch as my main composition/experiment tool.

I would like Falcon, but if push comes to shove, I don't need another synth, no matter how powerful - I'd be better of upgrading Reaktor to 6, with all of the blocks and a lower entry price.

[woggle]

for sure on both is best but I am not sure I can afford that - Falcon will force me to relearn coding, but I was a reasonable coder when I had to be so compared to Epoch - that has dragged on for so long and may drag on for years to come - Falcon is looking pretty good

But this is the beauty of !Epoch as I see it... it's mainly a node-based system, with all of the ease of creation that brings. The LUA aspect is a nice expansion in that you can also add scripted nodes.

With Falcon, the coding would be more limited as you'd be coding inside a system, as opposed to a single node.

I could be wrong, but I see !Epoch as a modular, with Falcon more of a semi-modular, if I can use that analog analogy

I agree on not having enough money for all the things, especially with black Friday around the corner (and I've just finally picked up the upgrade to Sonar platinum, as it was only $80 for me), but I'm still holding !Epoch as my main composition/experiment tool.

I would like Falcon, but if push comes to shove, I don't need another synth, no matter how powerful - I'd be better of upgrading Reaktor to 6, with all of the blocks and a lower entry price.

I agree on all of that- just feeling a bit "if not now. when?"

[ThomasHelzle]

Are you sure you can output Midi from Falcon?
In the docs, I mainly read about "output to the midi event queue" which sounds more like the internal event list of Falcon to me: http://www.uvi.net/uviscript/
The included step sequencer does not output externally in my test, only the original notes go through (but it may not be written for this purpose, since you can have unlimited numbers of sequencers in Falcon, so the output may become a mess ).
I have not started looking deeper into scripting though, so I may be wrong.

But for me they are very different beasts:
Falcon is a very deep instrument with added scripting and some midi modules "inside", it can not load VSTs and it's main target is creating sounds and deep instruments.
!Epoch "should" become a midi playground of more or less unlimited capabilities, can load VSTs and almost sounds like a Midi-centered DAW, something like Numerology in a way.

I personally would not have thought to buy Falcon to replace !Epoch

Since Colin is not really clear on a timeframe and we have been "close to release" for years, I personally have removed !Epoch from my "waiting for list" and taken my steps accordingly.
If it will come out and will do what I hope it will do, so much the better, if not, it can't be helped either.
The very first screenshots I liked a lot, some of the later ones left me undecided, so it's also possible that I will simply not enjoy the final outcome. No way to know for sure at the current state of affairs without more information.
On one hand I understand and like the idea of releasing a very polished software, on the other hand something can die on the endless road to perfection.
I personally would prefer a release in this life over something kingdom-come...

Falcon is real and exists, has a brilliant interface IMO and does agree with me a lot.
The scripting looks to be nicely integrated, you can select your external editor, automatically watch for script changes etc. ATM I still learn the overall structure and logic but scripting is on the list for sure.

So Colin, what do you say?
[DonkeyVoiceOn]Are we there yet?[DonkeyVoiceOff]


Cheers,

Tom

[woggle]

thanks Thomas - re outputting midi, I asked on the Falcon thread and EvilDragon responded, here is the conversation:


woggle wrote:
the scripting interests me - would it be possible to write generative midi algorithms and output individual channels to other instruments eg Kontakt. In other words just using Falcon as a scripting environment for generative (midi) music.

EvilDragon wrote:
Yeah, you can do that much the same as in Kontakt - just the language is different."

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, I read that too. I just haven't seen any of the scripts doing external midi output, so I'm not 100% convinced.
I can see nothing in the docs that shows clearly that notes etc. can be sent to external ports.

So maybe send EvilDragon a PM and ask him explicitly if he ever tried to do this.
If that's your main interest in Falcon, it would be a bummer if it wouldn't work because he just skimmed your message...

Cheers,

Tom

Edit: I just checked, the standalone Falcon does not even have Midi outputs.
There also is no FX version of Falcon and it has no Audio input.
My impression is, that it's supposed to be used for it's internal merits (which it has plenty of).

[woggle]

Yeah, I read that too. I just haven't seen any of the scripts doing external midi output, so I'm not 100% convinced.
I can see nothing in the docs that shows clearly that notes etc. can be sent to external ports.

So maybe send EvilDragon a PM and ask him explicitly if he ever tried to do this.
If that's your main interest in Falcon, it would be a bummer if it wouldn't work because he just skimmed your message...

Cheers,

Tom

Edit: I just checked, the standalone Falcon does not even have Midi outputs.
There also is no FX version of Falcon and it has no Audio input.
My impression is, that it's supposed to be used for it's internal merits (which it has plenty of).

thanks I will PM him as your investigation is not so 'uplifting'. Even without, Falcon might make a nice scratchpad for developing pieces - I can always rewrite the code into Matlab to output midi if needed.

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, I think you can almost do full productions inside of one instance of Falcon, so it's a quite nice and deep "scratchpad"
Let us know what you find!

Cheers,

Tom

[woggle]

PM'd and looks like you are right (unfortunately). Still very tempting and there are a few days left on the special.