FSA Junction audio to MIDI plugin Released

[FrettedSynth]

Hello all

Put up an audio-MIDI plugin which will be used as part of my next audio triggered synth. Latency is about what you would expect from a audio triggered MIDI device but gets much better with the new synth I am working on now. But with all the interest in audio to MIDI I thought I would share anyhow

Hook up a hold pedal CC#64 and create some nice slow strummed chords or a modulation pedal to control modulation CC#01 real time big fun really

Download http://frettedsynth.com

Still a bit to fix but it should get you started?

Peace
Fretted Synth

[Juanjo]

Will give it a ride as soon as I can, but preemptive thanks man... I expect it to be really useful.

[RunBeerRun]

Cool! I'm going to try it out right now.

I'm gonna go donate again towards your website hosting bill. There's not much out there for us guitarists that's still free. I'm still hoping someone will ask me for a Synthedit prefab so they can start some new audio triggered projects.

[RunBeerRun]

Pretty interesting, definitely some latency going on, but glitches are pretty much not there.

[FrettedSynth]

Pretty interesting, definitely some latency going on, but glitches are pretty much not there.

Cool glad to hear it is running OK for you there

Glitches? I really tried to make it play what you are playing. Low notes unfortunatey poop out, the range is far too large six channel version would fix that though not out of the question could fix some of the latency of the high notes also, G, B and E string at least

And thanks for the donation I do apreciate it.

Peace
Fretted Synth

[RunBeerRun]

I've tried all the free ones out there, demoed WIDI, and currently use ReaTune and Usine.

As far as the free ones went, they all sucked! Like, you play a note, and it also triggers 3 glitchy extra notes. Yours has no glitches, that's a big bonus.

Besides Usine, the best free one I've tried was Nix's 2syn, the latency was like, nothing. I love it, but it glitches a lot, you have to keep playing and never stop to sound normal.

I don't know why anyone would buy WIDI. It's polyphonic, but they don't really let you fiddle with latency, I think it's totally fixed at a safe place.

[FrettedSynth]

As far as the free ones went, they all sucked! Like, you play a note, and it also triggers 3 glitchy extra notes. Yours has no glitches, that's a big bonus.
.

[FrettedSynth]

Not much of a response on this one, I have to ask is it working for anyone?

[dreaddd]

thx FSA

ill give it a run for sure ASAP!
Peace

[jonnyG]

Not much of a response on this one, I have to ask is it working for anyone?

Hi FrettedSynth and thanks for upping this plug.

First the bad... I'm getting tracking problems in the lower half of the bottom octave and in the top octave (lots of wrong notes). However, I'm getting no false triggers, even with the threshold set low. Latency is about 55ms down low and a few ms less at the dusty end (I guess that consistent latency is the key when recording, because it can be compensated for after the take and the guitar's direct output can be used for monitoring.) For "live" work... well, I've played in enough dives where the only monitoring was what was bouncing off the back wall so mebbe I've learned to play a little ahead of the beat. CPU usage of Junction is also minimal here on my ancient Athlon single core.

Is this plug FFT based? I'm asking because I was into audio to MIDI about 20 years ago and recently picked up the bug again - this time hacking some of my old ideas into Plogue's Bidule (no more soldering, lol). The fastest and most immune to timbre / noise solution I've found is autocorrelation using banks of delays (one for each semitone) and a bit of logic for working out the octave. This works well as guitar signals can be dominated by harmonics to the point where the fundamental just ain't there. Latency is 1 - 2 cycles. It's a CPU killer in it's present form though. Extraction of pitchbend will have to wait 'til I've got a quadcore.

I've long been a fan of your audio-driven synths and my own humble experiments have demonstrated that going audio -> synth is a lot easier if the whole MIDI bit is missed out and the frequency / amplitude data extracted from the audio is chucked straight at the oscillators. Latency can be pushed lower as any glitches in the frequency detection output during the first few ms of the note actually sounds pretty cool (ymmv of course!). Anyway, enough rambling, I really hope you persevere with this one. I'd gladly hit Paypal for a solid monophonic pitch to MIDI plug.

[FrettedSynth]

First the bad... I'm getting tracking problems in the lower half of the bottom octave and in the top octave (lots of wrong notes). However, I'm getting no false triggers, even with the threshold set low.

Are you using your bridge or neck pickup? the neck pickup will yield a much better response for pitch tracking. The E, A and D string do have problems on the lower frets here also still working on that. but all the way up from there it tracks well here.

Is this plug FFT based?

No it uses crossing zero to track the pitch.

I've long been a fan of your audio-driven synths and my own humble experiments have demonstrated that going audio -> synth is a lot easier if the whole MIDI bit is missed out and the frequency / amplitude data extracted from the audio is chucked straight at the oscillators. Latency can be pushed lower as any glitches in the frequency detection output during the first few ms of the note actually sounds pretty cool (ymmv of course!). Anyway, enough rambling, I really hope you persevere with this one.

Yes I agree, that is why I never messed with an audio to MIDI plug before. Latency of the synth I am working on now is about 3ms. The frequency glitches you mention in the first few ms from the guitar are really not glitches at all, The guitar tone\frequency actually goes all over in those first few ms from pick noise and the string going sharp because of the large vibration makes a guitar a guitar IMHO I hate to give that up even with a synth. The MIDI plug will be in added to the audio triggered synth when I can get it working well enough.

Thanks for the reply
Fretted Synth

[jonnyG]

Are you using your bridge or neck pickup? the neck pickup will yield a much better response for pitch tracking. The E, A and G string do have problems on the lower frets still working on that. but all the way up from there it tracks well here.

I'm on the neck pickup but it's a single coil. Mebbe a less spiky humbucker here would yield more goodness. I did try some EQ on the input but what I gained on the swings...

...it uses crossing zero to track the pitch.

Wow, I never got zero-crossing to work this well! I tried DC offset proportional to the input amplitude (to grab only significant peaks), coring, recursive filtering, allsorts... Mebbe I should take another look...

The frequency glitches you mention in the first few ms from the guitar are really not glitches at all, The guitar tone\frequency actually goes all over in those first few ms from pick noise and the string going sharp because of the large vibration makes a guitar a guitar IMHO I hate to give that up even with a synth.

Agreed! Depending on how the note is picked it can be an age before the output of the guitar becomes a tone. I loved having that whole mess of attack on the synth I made.

The MIDI plug will be in added to the audio triggered synth when I can get it working well enough.

That's good to hear! Good luck and thanks for the reply.

[AndrewSimon]

It tracks OK except on super low and super high notes.
But the latency makes it useless for any real playing.

[FrettedSynth]

It tracks OK except on super low and super high notes.
But the latency makes it useless for any real playing.

Yeh the latency is there now I understand better the reason for the big guys using a hex pickup, could bring the latency of the high strings down to about 14-18ms if I only was trying to track 2 octaves. Could also fix the high and low note tracking with a setup like that? damn I keep saying I am going to do it someday I will.

Fretted Synth

[audiovet]

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