Experiment from the MUTOOLS Lab: LUNA Modular

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How do you want Your LUNA to be?

Like LUNA Now
13
33%
Like LUNA Modular
26
67%
 
Total votes: 39

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DaveL60, thanks for your posts full of useful FRs and BRs.

Most of the FRs are indeed very obvious and will be implemented asap (but also depending on which conceptual decissions are made of course).

Nice jam by the way :)

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grizzly wrote:Hi,

Great conceptual and technical effort! After playing around with this for only 45 minutes, I am, however, inclined to vote 'classic'. I do see (some) of the advantages with modular approach, but I think it makes things more complicated for people not used to modular thingies. And I'm not sure I see the theoretical advantages come to practical use, at least for me.

Somehow a mixing strip just looks and feels familiar and easy to get to grips with, although I see the point in making connections more flexible. But having to draw all things from the ground up in the modular approach takes a lot of time, compared to just inserting a synth in a rack.

But I need to play around some more, I'll try to get back later.

rgds,

grizzly
I think you perfectly express the feeling of the Luna Classic voters.
(if some such voter voted for another reason, please let us know)

And it's true: i'm also still looking for a solution that combines the advantages of Classic (it's kind of easier when playing with simple setups) with the advantages of Modular (it's easier to setup real studio connection setups, including side-chaining and all that).

I don't feel much to put both systems (classic and modular) separate in one app, i rather want to combine them into 1 hybrid solution. IF that is possible of course.

Breeding on...

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DaveL60, some detailed reply now:
DaveL60 wrote:2) If the lines in the plugin area are analogous to cables, then it would be nice to be able to re-route a signal by grabbing the destination end of a cable and dragging it to a different input. You could possibly use a left drag to move the cable and a right drag to create a new connection from the existing cable's source to the new plugin's input.
But what if that jack has multiple connections? Which one to "grab" then?
5) The ability to color the plug-in boxes like you can parts in the Composer, or
Just for my interest: what would you use the coloring for?

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I like LUNA because of its simplicity, which the rack system does really well. One of the things I particularly like is that I can hide the mixer and just call up each rack individually when I need it. This allows me to concentrate on the track view which is where my workflow is focussed. The modular view seems really messy to me, even for simple projects. On more complex arrangements I think it would become unmanageable with dozens (hundreds?) of wires criss-crossing all over the place, end points overlapping, etc. In the end I think I would spend more time rearranging the wires to get a view I was happy with than actually putting tracks together and this is a distraction I just don't want.

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My bet is that you could give a plug in box the same colour as a sequence - excellent idea!

Marco :)

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swatwork wrote:I like LUNA because of its simplicity, which the rack system does really well. One of the things I particularly like is that I can hide the mixer and just call up each rack individually when I need it. This allows me to concentrate on the track view which is where my workflow is focussed. The modular view seems really messy to me, even for simple projects. On more complex arrangements I think it would become unmanageable with dozens (hundreds?) of wires criss-crossing all over the place, end points overlapping, etc. In the end I think I would spend more time rearranging the wires to get a view I was happy with than actually putting tracks together and this is a distraction I just don't want.
Yep, that's definitely the danger of a modular system.

Looking for a neat solution that has the advantages of both ways.

Thanks for your straight and clear feedback!

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Bonteburg wrote:My bet is that you could give a plug in box the same colour as a sequence - excellent idea!
Note that the chance is very high that 1 plug is used by more than 1 sequence part...

My thought at this moment is: if you need the coloring to make things clear, then we don't have a clear system.

(this doesn't mean i'm contra coloring plug boxes, but i'm sure you get my point)

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I'm not against the modular approach, I just don't want to see it replace the racks. As others have commented, an ideal solution would be to have both. Maybe this could be achieved by implementing the modular routing within a rack so that the mixer would contain a combination of current racks (let's call then 'serial racks') and new-style modular racks. This way you could choose how to route the signal in each case - either the simple sequential flow we have at present or a more complex custom flow using the modular approach. If you like the modular approach you could have a single rack and do it all modular, if not just ignore it and stick to the serial racks.

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swatwork, could you make 5 minutes time and make a draft picture/screenshot of how you see this?

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Er, something like this...

Image

The modular designer is 'contained' within the rack. All tracks assigned to the rack appear as inputs (midi and audio) within the modular designer and can be routed within the rack as in the tryout. The output of the rack is included in the mix via the fader and pan controls in the same way as racks are now. The modular desinger is accessed as a pop-up window from the rack or the track assignment menu. Within the mixer you have the option to create either type of rack.

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I'm not sure if its clear from this but I was thinking that you can have multiple racks of either type within a project, each of which would have their own self-contained routing scheme.

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... in fact, if you can have multiple modular racks you could get rid of the old style racks altogether. If you just want a simple serial signal flow then just wire up a modular that way.

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Thanks!

Ok, i see what you mean, and indeed, this is one of the ideas floating around.

Please read this post about this concept:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 9&start=10

In short: the disadvantage of this approach is that you cannot automate the plugins which are embedded within a Rack.

And you cannot send audio/events from a classic rack to an embedded plugin of a modular rack and vice versa.

Also: At what point should the Volume/Pan/Mute be applied? At the very output of such modular rack? That's limited too, right?

At first sight it's a nice idea, but i see some essential bottlenecks/limits.
(i may be looking too far..?)

Don't get me wrong, i don't shoot the idea off; i did not yet find a good hybrid solution myself...

Although, i'm working on some thing ;)

edit:

again, swatwork, i appreciate your idea work.

because to come to a hybrid solution, we can work
-> from the classic way towards modular (cfr your idea)
-> from the modular way towards classic (what i'm working on now)

both thinking paths are very interesting!

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My thinking sort of evolved while I was making these posts and I think these objections are valid while you have classic and modular racks but if you just have multiple modular racks I think they go away...

If ALL information from the tracks (including automation) appears as inputs within the modular designer, the automation info be routed to the appropriate inputs of the embedded plugins.

Similarly, if you can assign outputs within the modular designer to be supplied by embedded plugins, these could assigned to other racks and appear as inputs within the modular designer as though they had come from tracks.

Also, there is no reason why there can't be internal level and pan controls within the modular designer as well as a master out pan/fader (isn't this how the tryout version works?).

I'm not sure what the user interface for all this would look like, my main experience with modular systems is SynthMaker so I guess I'm imagining a SynthMaker designer screen within each of the racks.

This makes logical sense to me but of course I know nothing of the internals of LUNA so maybe it's just not viable. I look forward to seeing your solution... :)

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When i read this, then these questions come in my head:

-> Is the above solution more easy to use than the current concept where there is just 1 common plugin area?

-> What's the advantage of having racks there?

Sorry for these hard questions, but trying to go deep into the essence.

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