Requests/Wishlist

[A_SN]

Post your requests/wishlist for the future versions of Photosounder here. I'll address all of them and summarize here what to expect and when to expect it.

Straight line tool
It's in the plans and for soon.

A VSTi version of Photosounder
It's in the plans, probably not for too soon though. First I need to be specified what exactly it would be used for, so give me your ideas. And secondly I'll need a VST developer.

Direct number input for knobs
In the plans, for fairly soon.

Localised time-stretching
Will do it eventually, however that's a relatively low priority.

Alternative method of turning knobs
I can add it pretty soon.

Cropping
It can be done quickly. But should it be a free rectangle selection or a full height rectangle? Or even just a selection tool + a cropping command?

Layers
Definitely in the plans, but it will be something big, not for very soon, and when it happens it will change a lot to how things work.

[Dunc]

Ok...

Good to see you have a forum here.

I have a request for a "straight line" paint tool with an option to set a gradient over the length of the line (e.g. set up 2 points for the line and have it go from 80% at start to 20% at finish of "Tool intensity"). Hope that makes sense.

It would be useful to perhaps allow the the Harmonics tool to do the same (or is it able to do so already ?).


Anyway great tool, keep up the good work.



Dunc

[DanielKonopka]

I have not tried the app yet, but:

- *Please*, make a VSTi if possible, because I can only see
the standalone version in the demo package and VSTi is crucial.

[Dunc]

Thought of something else:

Could you possibly allow direct input of knob values, i.e. double click a knob and the current value is displayed and can be adjusted and entered.

At the moment I find it extremely difficult to get a quick and accurate setting using the mouse left + right switches.


Cheers

Dunc

[A_SN]

Ok...

Good to see you have a forum here.

I have a request for a "straight line" paint tool with an option to set a gradient over the length of the line (e.g. set up 2 points for the line and have it go from 80% at start to 20% at finish of "Tool intensity"). Hope that makes sense.

It would be useful to perhaps allow the the Harmonics tool to do the same (or is it able to do so already ?).


Anyway great tool, keep up the good work.

Dunc

A straight line is definitely in the plans as I find myself needing one (with a shift key modifier to make it either horizontal or vertical. I'm also thinking of using a modifier to make the ends of the line snap to the closest semitone. That would be pretty cool for making tunes).

Not sure I understand the 80% -> 20% thing, I mean, how is it supposed to be defined? I think what I'll go with will be a spline-based gradient editor, so you can assign a gradient to lines (and rectangles too while we're at it), and also quite possibly assign a gradient to harmonics, this way you could draw a consistent instrument sound quickly. I'll need to make a curve editor though.

[A_SN]

I have not tried the app yet, but:

- *Please*, make a VSTi if possible, because I can only see
the standalone version in the demo package and VSTi is crucial.

A VSTi is definitely in my plans, well sort of. The problem is, I have no idea what people want a VSTi of it for. I suppose playing an instrument generated in Photosounder at different pitches based on the MIDI input? I don't know, I don't use VSTs or VSTis myself, so I need more precise directions from what you guys want.

I need to make a few precisions as to what I intend to do though. I'm no VST developer and I really don't feel like porting my code base that's based on a bunch of libraries to VST while having to maintain a standalone version. So my plan is to develop a protocol for communication with Photosounder (my plans are to keep it as human-readable as possible, yet easily parsable), which I'll develop no matter what, and have a VST developed to communicate with it.

It might sound like a half-arsed solution, but actually it has several advantages. First of all, there's only one Photosounder, not a Photosounder standalone + a Photosounder VST with one getting more love than the other. Then you'd get to do your sound design in Photosounder's big window, and back in your DAW thing, you'd only see the controls (in the plugin that communicates with Photosounder) that are directly relevant to your live stuff, so no need to hog up the screen real estate more than necessary. Another thing, I'd most likely make it work through a TCP/IP connection, so while you could use it locally perfectly well it'd also mean you can offload Photosounder's big number crunching (this thing hogs CPU) to another local machine. Oh and another thing, because this plugin that would essentially just connect with Photosounder would be free, it would also get to be open-source, and since the specs of the protocol would also be open that would leave much room for improving things much more than me and my ignorance of how VSTs are even used for could (seriously, I don't use any VST, I have no idea how it works, all I use is Photosounder and sometimes Adobe Audition for some minor editing).

But most importantly for now I need to be told what you guys want to do with a Photosounder VSTi.

[A_SN]

Thought of something else:

Could you possibly allow direct input of knob values, i.e. double click a knob and the current value is displayed and can be adjusted and entered.

At the moment I find it extremely difficult to get a quick and accurate setting using the mouse left + right switches.


Cheers

Dunc

Yep it's in the plans (been asked a lot as you can imagine). I'll add it as soon as I add dialogs (I develop the GUI myself, it's all framebuffered, so when I want to add a type of GUI element that doesn't exist yet I need to create it myself). That's pretty high on my priority list as when I get dialogs working I can implement a shitload of effects that need parameters to be provided. I'd use standard system dialogs for that, but I want something that works more like a calculator, because in any program I always have to whip out calc.exe before I can punch in new parameters, so I'd much rather have number input that can directly take care of that!

[Psy-T]

The major feature I'd like most from the few minutes i've spent with the demo:
The ability to sequence the pixel/time ratio.

Elaborating - Say I've recorded a word with three syllables, spoken normally, and I want to manipulate it in Photosounder, I'd love to be able to set a different pixel/time resolution for the first syllable then a different one for the second, and a different one for the third - Just for a rough example.

A minor feature I'd want is for the knobs to respond in a similar way to Reason's - Click+drag up to move the knob clockwise, click+drag down for counter-clockwise.
And one more thing that is possibly implemented as is (forgot to check) - Shift+click+drag for fine-tuning.

[A_SN]

The major feature I'd like most from the few minutes i've spent with the demo:
The ability to sequence the pixel/time ratio.

Elaborating - Say I've recorded a word with three syllables, spoken normally, and I want to manipulate it in Photosounder, I'd love to be able to set a different pixel/time resolution for the first syllable then a different one for the second, and a different one for the third - Just for a rough example.

Oh, you mean a localised time-stretching? That's a good idea, I'll have to figure an elegant way to do it. Not sure when I'd do that though.

A minor feature I'd want is for the knobs to respond in a similar way to Reason's - Click+drag up to move the knob clockwise, click+drag down for counter-clockwise.
And one more thing that is possibly implemented as is (forgot to check) - Shift+click+drag for fine-tuning.

So an optional alternate way to turn knobs? Sounds good to me, I guess I can do that pretty quickly.

[DanielKonopka]

A VSTi is definitely in my plans, well sort of. The problem is, I have no idea what people want a VSTi of it for. I suppose playing an instrument generated in Photosounder at different pitches based on the MIDI input? I don't know, I don't use VSTs or VSTis myself, so I need more precise directions from what you guys want.

Yes, the ability to make (and store in a buffer / cache / freeze?)
waveforms based on MIDI input. I presume it is not doable
in real-time, hence the buffer / freeze proposal.

I need to make a few precisions as to what I intend to do though. I'm no VST developer and I really don't feel like porting my code base that's based on a bunch of libraries to VST while having to maintain a standalone version. So my plan is to develop a protocol for communication with Photosounder (my plans are to keep it as human-readable as possible, yet easily parsable), which I'll develop no matter what, and have a VST developed to communicate with it.

I am not a VST developer either, but I think something like a
shared memory model plugin could do it. You would simply load the
plugin in a host and it would communicate with Photosounder
standalone instance via shared memory. What do you think?

[A_SN]

A VSTi is definitely in my plans, well sort of. The problem is, I have no idea what people want a VSTi of it for. I suppose playing an instrument generated in Photosounder at different pitches based on the MIDI input? I don't know, I don't use VSTs or VSTis myself, so I need more precise directions from what you guys want.

Yes, the ability to make (and store in a buffer / cache / freeze?)
waveforms based on MIDI input. I presume it is not doable
in real-time, hence the buffer / freeze proposal.

I need to make a few precisions as to what I intend to do though. I'm no VST developer and I really don't feel like porting my code base that's based on a bunch of libraries to VST while having to maintain a standalone version. So my plan is to develop a protocol for communication with Photosounder (my plans are to keep it as human-readable as possible, yet easily parsable), which I'll develop no matter what, and have a VST developed to communicate with it.

I am not a VST developer either, but I think something like a
shared memory model plugin could do it. You would simply load the
plugin in a host and it would communicate with Photosounder
standalone instance via shared memory. What do you think?

Mmmh, shared memory could do too I suppose, although I don't know how that works. I'll definitely have to look into that and decide which is the best approach, but regardless I'm pretty sure it'll be some form of inter-process communication. I quite like the TCP/IP with Photosounder on another local machine idea, so you can let Photosounder be a huge CPU hog. Plus it'd make it simpler to have many instances running, as each would have different port number (automatically allocated and discovered by the plug in).

Anyway, for a VSTi I think that I'd have to finally get around to doing that live synthesis mode I've been thinking about for so long. Basically, sound wouldn't be pre-rendered, instead, a 2D buffer of pixels (a chunk of image) of fixed size would be fed to the algorithm in real time, and once it'd be synthesised it'd output a chunk of sound. This way you could do live effects/synthesis in real time, and such things as pitch shifting would only be a matter of shifting the image a few pixels up or down when feeding it to the algorithm. So that would offer quite a few possibilities, pretty much endless possibilities actually, as far as real-time synthesis goes.

[ians]

Good to see the forum up and running.

Off the top of my head I would like the ability set start and end points and to loop a section of an image and export it as I use it often for creating rhythmic patterns. Also to be able to crop an image by selecting a section as it is often a small section I am interested in. Could this this be done with the rectangle tool?

All the best

Ian

[DanielKonopka]

Mmmh, shared memory could do too I suppose, although I don't know how that works. I'll definitely have to look into that and decide which is the best approach, but regardless I'm pretty sure it'll be some form of inter-process communication. I quite like the TCP/IP with Photosounder on another local machine idea, so you can let Photosounder be a huge CPU hog. Plus it'd make it simpler to have many instances running, as each would have different port number (automatically allocated and discovered by the plug in).

To be honest, I see Photosounder more as a limitless treasury of sound,
rather than a regular real-time synth. I mean I will be fully content
if it does allow me to sculpt my sounds at the levels not possible
before, even if not in real-time. At the same time, not meaning to
hijack the thread, I wonder if, with some hefty effort,
one could recreate the sweeping synth bass that can be heard best
at 1:36 of this, or that sweeping bass at the very beginning of this.
I know he was (he is now hugely softsynth based) a fan of the D50
and the JD800.

Ah and I think support for image layers would be fantastic.
That way you could focus on sculpting transients, etc.
without being afraid of destroying the rest of the sound
if something goes wrong. It does not have to be as sophisticated
as what GIMP or Photoshop offer, though. I think opacity setting
and 3, maybe 4 layering modes (multiply, overlay, subtract, difference)
will do.

I wonder if it would be possible to make Photosounder
focus on its generation algorithms, while allowing
3rd party image manipulation apps to interface with it,
via a plugin, etc.

This would free you up from reinventing the wheel
(image manipulation) and allow to focus on more important (sonic)
areas.

What do you think?

[Dunc]

I think what I'll go with will be a spline-based gradient editor, so you can assign a gradient to lines (and rectangles too while we're at it), and also quite possibly assign a gradient to harmonics, this way you could draw a consistent instrument sound quickly. I'll need to make a curve editor though.

That's pretty much what I was trying to explain in my half assed way.

I look forward to future changes to the program.

cheers

Dunc

[elxsound]

Great to see this forum!

In addition to what's been mentioned, I'd really love to have undo/redo buttons added! That's my biggest wish for photosounder.