T5 bugs + FRs

[crisis-at-music]

I normally use T5's pitch shifter to shift the MIDI of a track up and down.

Surely you mean shifte the AUDIO of a track?
/Joachim

No, I am using it before a synth plugin to shift the incoming MIDI up and down. It also works this way.

@dRowAudio: Thanks for your reply. The reason I found the delay was that suddently the bassline of a song was way off the beat. That caused me to investigate the delay and led me to the pitch shifter. I will try your test scenario in the evening and post the results here.

Best, Kristian

[crisis-at-music]

Ok, I have done the test scenario for the pitch shifter latency:

1. Same audio file on two tracks. Second file start set to +139. The audio is delayed as axpected, an echo-like sound can be heard when playing both files.

2. Same audio files, both start at the same time now. Inserted pitch shifter (set to original pitch) on the track with second file. In CPU usage window the latency shows again 139.32 ms. But the playback is not THAT bad as when changing the start to 139ms as in the first test. BUT a shorter delay seems to appear now. The playback sounds like being "phased" or something like that.

3. Rendered both items from test 2 (one original, one with the pitch shifter active) to new audio files. Played back both without any plugins. Same sound as in test 2. It sounds as if one file is a bit early or late comparing to the other. Having a closer look on the waveform of the rendered files and using the millisecond display in the timeline I can see that the waveform in the item where the pitch shifter was used, is about 6 ms BEFORE the original waveform. ....a negative latency?!

A side note on the pitch shifter algorithms: if I select the SoundTouch (normal) the audio mutes instantly (no sound anymore) and when selecting SoundTouch (better) the audio stutters and gets distorted. I don't know why this happens as both Elastique types work as expected.

Now having done the test with the audio files I came back to my MIDI problem. I took an existing song and put a pitch shifter (set to original pitch) BEFORE the synth plugin of a bass track. The bass immediately plays off-beat and all sounds terribly wrong. Here the playback is definitely much more shifted than the 6 ms in test 4. (Maybe 139.32ms?!) Disabling the pitch shifter results in normal playback.

Weird thing is that the pitch shifter have worked in the past...well at least with Tracktion 3 some years ago. Hope you can find what goes wrong here. If you need any more information or if I can help you with more test, please let me know.
Best, Kristian

[crisis-at-music]

Any news on the pitch shifter thing?!

[dRowAudio]

Hi crisis, I've looked into this and have decided it is best to pitch shift the MIDI separately. To do this I have created a new "MIDI Modifier" plugin which will work the same way as the existing "Pitch Shifter" but apply no latency. You should use this in future and we have plans to expand on the functionality. This will be available in the next Tracktion release.

In the mean time you might want to check out Niall Moody's MIDI plugins, one of which is a MIDI pitch shifter http://www.niallmoody.com/ndcplugs/ndcmidi.htm.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Dave.

[crisis-at-music]

Thanks for the info! Really looking forward to the new MIDI modifier.

[mgoussu]

FRENCH DISAPOINTED USER

I can't use any keyboards short cut.
My keyboard is an AZEERTY French one. It worked in T2. Doesn't in T5.
I didn't check this before to pay the T5 licence, as i wanted to support it anyway.
With the mackie/mda plugin unusable and the azerty keyboard not recognized, my T5 is for the moment useless.

Is there a patch ?

By the way, the french traduction is a bit cheap, i can fix it if you send me the files.

Thanks in advance.

[dRowAudio]

Hi mgoussu, French keyboards should work if they send the same key codes as QWERTY ones. If not you can check by opening the "Keyboard Shortcuts" Settings page and trying to re-assign a non-functioning shortcut with the same key. See what combination Tracktion recognises the key press as. For example, find the "Turn Looping on/off" command, press the existing "L" button and then "Change this mapping". When the assignment windows appears, press the "L" key on your keyboard and see what key appears. Let us know what differences there are from the default and we'll see what we can do.

The Mackie/MDA plugins should be compatible with T5, are you using the 32-bit version as they will only work with this, not the 64-bit version.

The translation files are automatically generated by Google Translate but we have them on a Wiki so users an edit them to improve them. The French one can be found here http://wiki.tracktion.com/index.php?title=French. When changes are made, Tracktion will automatically download the updated language file (if you have the "Check for language updates" setting enabled under the "General Settings" page). If you are interested in contributing to the translation files please email support@tracktionsoftware.com and we will set you up with a login for the Wiki.

Thanks! Dave.

[danboid]

Using 'Delete all controllers from the clip' removes most of the controller data (from only one clip at a time) but doesn't seem to reset a clips pitch bend back to 0. Instead, Tracktion seems to use the last played value of the pitch bend as the new pitch bend value and there is no way to display the current pitch bend value after deleting the controller data, that I can see.

This is a great example of where I'd like to have a MIDI event viewer pane in the T5 browser, so I could see any controller data on the current clip.

5.3.9 under Ubuntu 12.04

Thanks!

[aMUSEd]

Midi mapping range please - at the moment it's unusable for things like MW and aftertouch mappings because if I set any controller it just jumps between 0 and max and resets to 0 if I stop moving the controller.

[danboid]

I did my first serious bit of mixing with T5 yesterday. I was wondering how this would pan out (cheesy pun alert) seeing as T5 lacks a regular mixer. As it stands I think it could do with some improvement but I think my issue should be easily fixed.

The problem is that it is often hard to tell which vol/pan plugins belong to each track so its currently easy to find yourself adjusting the sliders for the wrong track. This could be fixed if the tooltips for every vol/pan plugin also displayed the name of the track it belongs to. It should also show the name of the track in the Volume & Pan plugin tab at the top of its properties window for those who prefer to make their adjustments there instead.

As it stands, during mixing I have to highlight each track by clicking on its name in the tracks header before I know I'm safe to make any adjustments. This creates a lot of extra mouse work during mixing that could be avoided.

Thanks TSC!

[danbroad]

FR 1: organise our own plugins by type, or any metadata we choose? I've asked before..

BR or FR? ....Also, I can't delete some of the rack presets I don't need. Some delete just fine, others I can only edit, import or export. I have no need for a Kontakt 2 Player rack, or a Buzz bass rack etc etc - I just want to create rack presets that I use regularly. It's a great way of directly accessing fave reactor ensembles, for example.

FR: Can there please be a sticky for some simple rack based stuff? Sidechaining, aux sends etc. I'm not new to T and it's tricky. A newbie might give up on T before they finally learnt how to side chain using the dry/wet signals etc. A proper, idiot's guide walkthrough please, and sticky it!

[danboid]

danbroad:

What a great name you have!

Somebody say danbo!?

[danbroad]

Cheers! I've had the name for around four decades now so I've grown rather attached to it...

[dRowAudio]

FR 1: organise our own plugins by type, or any metadata we choose? I've asked before..

BR or FR? ....Also, I can't delete some of the rack presets I don't need. Some delete just fine, others I can only edit, import or export. I have no need for a Kontakt 2 Player rack, or a Buzz bass rack etc etc - I just want to create rack presets that I use regularly. It's a great way of directly accessing fave reactor ensembles, for example.

FR: Can there please be a sticky for some simple rack based stuff? Sidechaining, aux sends etc. I'm not new to T and it's tricky. A newbie might give up on T before they finally learnt how to side chain using the dry/wet signals etc. A proper, idiot's guide walkthrough please, and sticky it!

We have some cool new features in the works that will cover all of these and more!

[danboid]

Closely related to my previous FR (Vol/pan plugins should display the track name in their tooltips) the same goes for inserting plugins.

When you are dragging plugins onto a track, its often difficult to discern the correct track on which to drop the plugin when you have more than a few tracks in a project. This would be solved by displaying the track name as a tooltip above the red indicator that shows you where the plugin will be placed.

I'd be tempted to suggest that the track name be displayed permanently in each tracks plugin section as well in its header (ie on both sides of the track) but I realise UI space is at a premium so thats why I suggest the extra tooltips.