What the Hell with Midi Program Change ?

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well, i hate to mess with a good thing, but some way of dealing with patch changes (other than the clumbsy but quite powerful Live Rack/Chain Zones) would be wonderful. probably be a big selling point these days too. if we could keep the folder organization, but also be able to load them into an optional bank/preset area when needed, golly gee whiz that would be nice!
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amoeba wrote:well, i hate to mess with a good thing, but some way of dealing with patch changes (other than the clumbsy but quite powerful Live Rack/Chain Zones) would be wonderful. probably be a big selling point these days too. if we could keep the folder organization, but also be able to load them into an optional bank/preset area when needed, golly gee whiz that would be nice!
Yep!

Of course, the folder structure would survive. Just the 128 programs go into a special folder...

;) Urs
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Urs wrote:Just the 128 programs go into a special folder...
If you go through all the trouble of implementing this, please do not limit it to just 128 programs. That is why there is bank change LSB and MSB controllers.
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SaganTech wrote:
Urs wrote:Just the 128 programs go into a special folder...
If you go through all the trouble of implementing this, please do not limit it to just 128 programs. That is why there is bank change LSB and MSB controllers.
Yes, sure... but... the folder hierarchy is a tree structure while the bank stuff is 2-dimensional.

Another issue is, dragging a file into the folder will mangle the program numbers... maybe I should not use a folder but some sort of database instead... a bit more complicated, but allows for 2-dimensional layouts...

Sigh...
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Wouldn't it be easier to just keep things simple, unix-style, and have a two-level directory structure, with the first level being banks - organized alphabetically?

Code: Select all

 Programs
    Bank 1
      Preset 1
      Preset 2
      Preset 3
      ...
      Preset 127
    Bank 2
    Bank 3
    ...
    Bank 127
No need for a database to complicate things.

And FWIW, I wouldn't depend on program changes in a live situation for softsynths. There are better ways, as been noted previously in this thread, that allow entire signal chains to be altered in one swell swoop - and without interruption.
Image
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amoeba wrote:well, i hate to mess with a good thing, but some way of dealing with patch changes (other than the clumbsy but quite powerful Live Rack/Chain Zones) would be wonderful. probably be a big selling point these days too. if we could keep the folder organization, but also be able to load them into an optional bank/preset area when needed, golly gee whiz that would be nice!
clumsy only to set up... not clumsy to use... and you have the added bonus of being able to change whole effects chains, and without the sound interruption of changing presets...

not that I am against program changes, but for live use, that would not be my choice...
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dln wrote:Wouldn't it be easier to just keep things simple, unix-style, and have a two-level directory structure, with the first level being banks - organized alphabetically?
<pedant>
Errrm. While I know what you are trying to achieve, surely if you organised it alphabetically, your example would be:

Code: Select all

 Programs
    Bank 1
      Preset 1
      Preset 10
      Preset 100
      ...
      Preset 109
      Preset 11
      Preset 110
      ...
      Preset 127
      Preset 2
      Preset 20
      ...
      Preset 3
      ...
    Bank 10
    ...
    Bank 127
    Bank 2
    Bank 3
    ...
You get the drift...
</pedant>
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pdxindy wrote:
clumsy only to set up... not clumsy to use... and you have the added bonus of being able to change whole effects chains, and without the sound interruption of changing presets...

not that I am against program changes, but for live use, that would not be my choice...
As far as I know every instrument sitting in the chain eats CPU whether it plays or not. Even if you disable a track it continues "playing". That's why there is no sound interruption. But it can be a problem with a big amount of presets (chains) used. Besides not all people use Live...
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Numerology has a pretty cool way of dealing with patch information: http://www.five12.com/
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michkhol wrote:
pdxindy wrote:
clumsy only to set up... not clumsy to use... and you have the added bonus of being able to change whole effects chains, and without the sound interruption of changing presets...

not that I am against program changes, but for live use, that would not be my choice...
As far as I know every instrument sitting in the chain eats CPU whether it plays or not. Even if you disable a track it continues "playing". That's why there is no sound interruption. But it can be a problem with a big amount of presets (chains) used. Besides not all people use Live...
obviously, this only works in Live...

but you can turn each rack chain on and off and this liberates the cpu resources.
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pdxindy wrote:
obviously, this only works in Live...

but you can turn each rack chain on and off and this liberates the cpu resources.
The point is, if you need smooth sound transitions you have to keep all chains on. And I doubt Live _really_ turns anything off. I just put 15 instances of Zebra2 into a chain, disabled all but one, but still CPU usage was the same as if all instances were on (about 40% BTW). You have to disable the _plugin_ itself in each chain to conserve CPU.
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michkhol wrote:
pdxindy wrote:
obviously, this only works in Live...

but you can turn each rack chain on and off and this liberates the cpu resources.
The point is, if you need smooth sound transitions you have to keep all chains on. And I doubt Live _really_ turns anything off. I just put 15 instances of Zebra2 into a chain, disabled all but one, but still CPU usage was the same as if all instances were on (about 40% BTW). You have to disable the _plugin_ itself in each chain to conserve CPU.
If you turn a chain off, it does not free the cpu...

but! if each chain is a rack, you can turn the rack off and cpu is freed.

what do you mean by smooth sound transitions? you mean fade between? then yeah, both have to be on. If you mean switch, like between presets, then this works... and switches faster than if you could switch presets.
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Urs wrote: Of course, the folder structure would survive. Just the 128 programs go into a special folder...
NI handles this in their latest batch of plugs by providing sets of 128 programs that can be saved and loaded as one bank. This works pretty well.

The lack of midi program change support is the main thing keeping my copy of Z2 on the shelf right now because I'm working on continuously sequenced music and without program change support it's just too painful to hack it up with racks.

On the other hand, if there's no way to implement them without noticeable delays and dropouts because of zebra's modularity then maybe it's not worth doing it.
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"can you change Reaktor ensembles via Midi?"

I can do it with Tassman and Brainspawn Forte. It is surprisingly fast and painless, but only after AAS did some improvemements.

I don't use the Tassman Program Change implementation though, as this cannot be changed without reloading the whole instrument. I just let Forte handle this.

Smooth preset changes are a must for live use of an instrument! VSTs many times are implemented in a way that gives live players a hard time.

Fab
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MIDI Program Changes... in Zebra... beta implementation for the brave:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=207873

Give it a try! It should work reliable unless you flood Zebra with loads of Program Changes at once while maxing out the cpu.

Cheers,

;) Urs
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