KVR Audio

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Mon May 04, 2015 5:57 pm

Hello!

Although I've made a normal KVR news item as well, I post an entry here in the forum too. Hope it's okay.

Radium is perhaps the most special tracker out there. Radium 3 has just been released for Linux, Mac OS X (beta) and Windows. The development of Radium 3 was started in early 2014 (the development of Radium itself started in 1999), and the release candidate process took approximately 5 month. Hopefully it's quite stable now. At least all known bugs are fixed.

Please let me know which features (or other things) you think Radium 3 lacks the most...

http://users.notam02.no/~kjetism/radium/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMPSd1W1AbE

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Mon May 04, 2015 5:58 pm

(double post)

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Mon May 04, 2015 6:07 pm

Forgot the URL:
http://users.notam02.no/~kjetism/radium/index.php

maruks · Post by **maruks** » Mon May 04, 2015 6:56 pm

the strict layout (notes vertical, wave vertical) is cool, as is telling me i did 88 changes and really preventing me from exiting it accidently

some minor issues:

- i got a "Error: createVelocity: placement before note start for note #1", i guess i can click on "ignore .. for the rest.."
- i wouldn't mind some "space = play" shortcut setting
- it seems to make a dead key out of the windows key (that between ctrl and alt) (i'm on windows 7)
- setting preferences via text inputs ("Select operation: " ... ) is a bit slow
- it seems to me for parameters there's no (double-)click-to-change-value, or focusing and typing the value, or anything that allows to set a parameter to the value of my textual input (like in renoise when you double click a value)

bigger issue: i (would) need to learn radium first. not that it would have a steep learning curve, i'm just trying it just for the second time only.

(ps: i was really good at setting up jack this time..)

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Tue May 05, 2015 7:02 am

maruks wrote:the strict layout (notes vertical, wave vertical) is cool, as is telling me i did 88 changes and really preventing me from exiting it accidently

some minor issues:

- i got a "Error: createVelocity: placement before note start for note #1", i guess i can click on "ignore .. for the rest.."

Thank you. Will fix that. Just click the "ignore" button for now.

- i wouldn't mind some "space = play" shortcut setting

The problem with that is that space is the only key that sends a message
to the instruments to be quiet. Since the scheduler is running all the time,
new notes can be played after you have pressed space, so you might have
to press space again. In addition, external plugins or pd patches
can also send out new notes. It's not a very common situation though, so
maybe this functionality should be moved to a "panic" menu, but on
the other hand, when you get used to it, pressing altgr or shift to play,
and space to stop, works fine. Especially if you have a lot of reverb,
it can be hard to hear if you pressed the space key to stop, or you pressed
it to play. So even if we look away from the scheduler thing, I think two
different keys for play and stop is better, but I might be wrong.

(However, you can configure the key bindings yourself though, if you want to jump
into that... Edit the bin/keybindings.conf file if you want space to both
stop and play. You need to use the function "isPlaying" I think, to decide
wheter to play or stop. It's python programming.)

- it seems to make a dead key out of the windows key (that between ctrl and alt) (i'm on windows 7)

Are you saying that the left windows key doesn't work?
(sorry, but I don't understand the sentence you wrote)

The left windows key is used for handling range.
If you press left win + b, the cell under the cursor should change
color a little bit. Doesn't that happen?

- setting preferences via text inputs ("Select operation: " ... ) is a bit slow
- it seems to me for parameters there's no (double-)click-to-change-value, or focusing and typing the value, or anything that allows to set a parameter to the value of my textual input (like in renoise when you double click a value)

You mean, for instance, writing "1.2" on the keyboard, instead of dragging the volume
slider so that it has the value 1.2? I think that should be quick to implement.

bigger issue: i (would) need to learn radium first. not that it would have a steep learning curve, i'm just trying it just for the second time only.

Good luck. Please let me know of any trouble, or if you have suggestions for improvement.

(ps: i was really good at setting up jack this time..)

Good.

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Tue May 05, 2015 7:07 am

kmatheussen wrote:
- it seems to make a dead key out of the windows key (that between ctrl and alt) (i'm on windows 7)
Are you saying that the left windows key doesn't work?

Oh, sorry, I get it. The windows menu doesn't show up when you press the
windows key, even when radium is not focused. It's not supposed to be
that way. It should give up the windows key when radium is not focused.
I'll try to fix that.

maruks · Post by **maruks** » Tue May 05, 2015 7:19 am

kmatheussen wrote: Are you saying that the left windows key doesn't work?
(sorry, but I don't understand the sentence you wrote)

The left windows key is used for handling range.
If you press left win + b, the cell under the cursor should change
color a little bit. Doesn't that happen?

yes the left windows key
yes, i see the color changing on win+b

i often hit win+d to minimize all windows, which does no more work when radium is running (even when radium has no keyboard focus), but i guess just %1 of population does this, so no need to change anything

kmatheussen wrote:You mean, for instance, writing "1.2" on the keyboard, instead of dragging the volume
slider so that it has the value 1.2? I think that should be quick to implement.

yes, this is what i meant

kmatheussen wrote:Good luck. Please let me know of any trouble, or if you have suggestions for improvement.

thanks & okies

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Tue May 05, 2015 8:24 am

kmatheussen wrote: (However, you can configure the key bindings yourself though, if you want to jump
into that... Edit the bin/keybindings.conf file if you want space to both
stop and play. You need to use the function "isPlaying" I think, to decide
wheter to play or stop. It's python programming.)

Actually, the code is there already, you just have to enable it.
If you uncomment all lines between 304 and 309 in bin/keybindings.conf,
and delete everything after "SPACE" on line 310, space should
both play and stop. Like this:

Code: Select all

SPACE			: *
        if ra.isPlaying():
           ra.playStop()
        else:
           ra.playBlockFromStart()
*
SPACE
	EXTRA_R		: ra.playBlockFromStart
	ALT_R		: ra.playSongFromStart
	SHIFT_R		: ra.playBlockFromCurrent
	ALT_R SHIFT_R	: ra.playSongFromCurrent
	EXTRA_L		: ra.playRange

dexterbella · Post by **dexterbella** » Tue May 05, 2015 2:52 pm

Tried demoing this on Windows 7 but, unfortunately, Jack keeps crashing on start up on my system. Installed it and set it up as per the included instructions but no luck - because Jack won't run Radium won't even load.
Real shame as this looks like a great piece of software that I'd be VERY interested in.

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Tue May 05, 2015 3:27 pm

dexterbella wrote:Tried demoing this on Windows 7 but, unfortunately, Jack keeps crashing on start up on my system. Installed it and set it up as per the included instructions but no luck - because Jack won't run Radium won't even load.
Real shame as this looks like a great piece of software that I'd be VERY interested in.

Ouch.

First of all, jack very often refuse to run the first time you press "start", but it will start the second time. But this is written in the instructions, so I assume you have tried that.

Other things to try:

* Under Settings->Driver, select the "dummy" driver. You won't hear anything, but this should always work.
* Unless you already have an ASIO driver for your soundcard, try to install ASIO4All or similar asio driver (I have one called "ASIO::Generic Low Latency ASIO Drive" which I think was installed when I installed the cubase demo), and select that driver as "Interface" for the "pulseaudio" driver.
* Try to select a different sample rate or "frames/period" value.

dexterbella · Post by **dexterbella** » Tue May 05, 2015 4:43 pm

Thanks for the quick response.

I've finally managed to wrestle Jack into submission - increasing the Start Delay time seemed to do the trick. Anyway, just playing around with the demo now.

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Fri May 08, 2015 8:36 pm

maruks wrote:
kmatheussen wrote:
kmatheussen wrote:You mean, for instance, writing "1.2" on the keyboard, instead of dragging the volume
slider so that it has the value 1.2? I think that should be quick to implement.
yes, this is what i meant

The problem is, at least for VST plugins, that VST only handles values between 0 and 1, and you don't know what 0 represents, or what 1 represents. So it actually can't be done for VST. And furthermore, unfortunately, Radium is modeled internally the same way as VST, so it's quite a job to support this for non-VST effects too.

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Fri May 08, 2015 9:06 pm

> So it actually can't be done for VST.

Hmm. Could actually do a binary search (i.e. "zoom" in on the correct value by trying and failing). Well.

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:05 pm

Radium is currently at 3.1.4. Some of the improvements:

Fixed many stability issues
Fixed automation
Option to record MIDI line by line and monophonic in the MIDI menu. (as before)
Add options to multiply the number of lines to scroll by the "Edit lines" value
MIDI: Option to always record velocity
A new sound object called "Midi Messages" which can be used to send MIDI messages to other sound objects. Can for instance be used to send pitch bend changes to VST plugins.
Option to show line numbers instead of bars/beats
Sort notes by pitch for same-positioned notes.
VST: Update Radium sliders when changing controllers in native GUI.
Add a "replace" button to the instrument widget

And optional piano roll for the tracks:

(that screenshot doesn't show, but radium tracks can also be polyphonic, which works much better with a piano roll than the "tracker way")

kmatheussen · Post by **kmatheussen** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:08 pm

A youtube video of a song in progress, made by a user:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mbeKxcCedc

Radium 3 released