MU.LAB beta A

[Newbie Brad]

I tested the MU.LAB beta A yesterday afternoon using my fretless electric guitar. I experienced one each fatal crash when exploring and setting up circuitas inside MUX and MuSynth, but on repeated attempts to use each there were no further crashes. Audio flowed through the Racks like I think it's supposed to. I would request fewer commands in the command string to get to the VST/VSTi presets a plugin has and to activate them. There should be easy easy functionality on that and it should be easy to midi learn for a controller to change presets on an individual VST/VSTi without changing other plugins in the Rack. Fewer commands in every command string is better for me. I will test further.

[muzycian]

Hmmm - what does the harmonise function do on the WTF Oscillator? It seems to just give me sine waves of various amplitudes regardless of what wave is in there before I select the function.

Indeed it just generates a waveform from the amplitudes you input.

A drawbar interface would be much more user friendly. It's on the whishlist.

Also you can't see the input control fully when you select this function. You don't know what you're even typing in there.

Yes, i also noticed it. Will be resolved.

Suggestion: Leave the function for later.

Do you know you can also directly draw into the waveform display

Do you think the AIPS modulation control should alter the appearence of the wave file? Give you visual feedback on what you're doing?

No, what you hear is what you get.

[muzycian]

Another one on the WFT Oscillator (so close to WTF).
What does this oscillator do exactly when you load in a wave file? It is synthesising the wave file into a small looped sample for playback? I'm interested in what it's doing there.

A WFT OScillator is an anti-aliased oscillator using a 4096 point waveform table.

If you load in a wave, only the first 4096 samples will be used.

Is there plans on including more flexible wave file import into MuZynth? Like in Muzys3?

Absolutely!

But that will be another plugin.

[muzycian]

wow im very impressed with what you have done so far

heres a couple of bugs ive found:
1: osx sound doesnt play on the first opening..... or the second or third.... 4th time worked like a charm
2: adding a MuVerb to my MuSynth somehow blocks the sound from the output
3: after having trouble with #2, i tryed adding the Muverb to the rack that the Musynth was on, and the same thing happened. Although, reseting the track target to the musynth somehow fixed this problem, but not #2s problem. I also tryed adding a VST effect instead of the muverb to the rack, and it had the same problem, so it might not be a problem with Muverb itself.

now a couple hours later, i tried using the stereo splitter and combiner, same problem, cuts off the audio output.

I cant wait for a stable release!! Im finally starting to see why i would use this host over other hosts

ok, i might have just fixed my problem... I was adding the muverb before the Voice Out..... now i added it after and it works fine... still doesnt explain the rack effects problem

Please try to repeat it in the rack situation, then email me the musession file.

Maybe the rack problem was related with the reverb-within-voice problem?

I havn't been able to recreate the rack problem yet.. and i didnt save the first session that had the "bugs" (shame on me), but i'l look into it more tomorrow... If this was a mistake on my end (which most of it obviously is ), then maybe mulab should not allow users to add effects before the voice out.. Before i ran into this problem, i read the documentation, looked over the demo and everything.. but sometimes we need pop-up reminders/blockers within the program that prevent us from making stupid mistakes

Absolutely right.

This is something which must be finetuned asap, because it obviously is causing quite some confusion.

Which i fully understand. My apologizes for that.

Tomorrow Il play around with rack effects and the musynth some more, and see what happens

Ok, looking forward to your further feedback. Thanks in advance.

also, i was aware that the OSX version had a first time sound bug, i just thought id let you know that it happened "3" times before it worked, whether that makes a difference or not

Thanks for letting me know.

Did not yet find the time to research it, but will do asap.

One more thing.. I wasnt able to change patches in one of my VST effect plugins since the VST effect didnt supply this feature in it's UI, and neither does Mulab

Right-click the vst effect plugin (in the mulab gui) and choose "Choose Program".

That should do the trick. Right?

[Caleb]

It's as superficial or as deep as you want.

Actually - that's one of my first criticisms of MuSynth (notice the 'S' ).
The old blighter was semi-modular which allowed for many possibilities, but was still very simple in getting (for example) a small sample player as a target.

MuSynth here is much more flexible - but loses the simplicity altogether. Ie - you have to have a basic understanding of things like routing voices in through ADSRs to control amplifiers through which the triggers signal is passing etc...

Would I trade the flexibility for the simplicity? Probably not - but it would be nice if there was some way of allowing a simplified access to sound generation in MuSynth.

Having said all that - I'm really impressed with what's going on here. The inclusion of things like the Rack and MUX in the MuSynth itself makes it mind-bogglingly powerful while adding the wonderful simplicity of 16 top-level parameters controllers, to tame your monster for sharing with others.

By the way - when you access the parameter mapping within MuSynth etc..., you seem to have access to 128 parameters rather than just the 16 visible ones. Is that just a way of linking incoming midi signals from outside MuSynth/MUX to targets inside? Looks like that's the case - very nice! What would be great is if you could somehow get these parameters to take the name of what they're controlling. The fact that you can do this manually for the first 16 is great - but it might be nice to have a default name assignment to speed things up a little and/or the ability to manually rename all 128 parameters if you wish.

Am I making sense here?

Regards
Caleb

[muzycian]

MPA is like XT2's 'comps'-area - Mux and Musynth are both more like Reaktor in that you use them to create new plugins - they both basically share the same functionality, but Mux is meant for effects and Musynth is meant for instruments.

Yep this in concept is easy enough, it's the ability to dump MuZynths

MuSynth, Caleb, MuSynth

in MUX and vice versa that's a little confusing to me given their supposed different purposes.
Actually MUX in MuZynth probably makes sense - it's just the other way around that's confusing.

But 100% interesting!!

Experiment with it further

[muzycian]

Grrr - stoopid me can't find the post about assigning labels to parameters in MUX etc...

You can assign via that middle window - but the label only appears when you are actually manipulating/clicking on the parameter control.

Indeed.

As there are 16 knobs, clicking on them to remember what they're for doesn't seem ideal.
Would it be possible in a future update to be able to label the knobs themselves for easy overview?

Yes, some improvement is necessary there.

I chose for a common label+value display as that keeps the UI simpler, lighter.

But i agree that there is a need to know which knob is which without tweaking it.

What about a tooltip?

So the UI keeps being light, but you can check the knob.

[muzycian]

Hmmm - what does the harmonise function do on the WTF Oscillator? It seems to just give me sine waves of various amplitudes regardless of what wave is in there before I select the function.

yes, this confused me as well - I guess it must be a bug?

Question answered in my other reply

[Caleb]

Another one on the WFT Oscillator (so close to WTF).
What does this oscillator do exactly when you load in a wave file? It is synthesising the wave file into a small looped sample for playback? I'm interested in what it's doing there.

A WFT OScillator is an anti-aliased oscillator using a 4096 point waveform table.

If you load in a wave, only the first 4096 samples will be used.

Is there plans on including more flexible wave file import into MuZynth? Like in Muzys3?

Absolutely!

But that will be another plugin.

Ah - OK - interested to see what that becomes then.
The plug-in will be able to be used in MuSynth I presume, in which case - cool!

I'm really loving where this is going.

You know our former friend from the land of M3 was awesome in its own right - but this really has taken it to the next level. Once the sample playing plugs are created and fine tuning is done, it's just a matter of people finding out what they can actually do with the framework you've provided before all sorts of superlatives make their way into peoples' posts - such as "this is the best...." etc..

Regards
Caleb

[Caleb]

As there are 16 knobs, clicking on them to remember what they're for doesn't seem ideal.
Would it be possible in a future update to be able to label the knobs themselves for easy overview?

Yes, some improvement is necessary there.

I chose for a common label+value display as that keeps the UI simpler, lighter.

But i agree that there is a need to know which knob is which without tweaking it.

What about a tooltip?

So the UI keeps being light, but you can check the knob.

I don't think a tooltip is significantly better than clicking on the knob to get the display in the center window. All you get rid of is a mouse-click which probably has a faster response than waiting for a tooltip to pop-up anyway.

No room for a small label above below the knobs?

I understand the desire for "lightness" though.

Regards
Caleb

[muzycian]

Jo - are you supposed to be able to dump a Rack plug-in into MuZynth, put a synth plug-in in one of the slots and use it as an additional oscillator?

When I do it I seem to stuff up by ASIO connection or something - ie no more sound - even when I delete the rack instance.

No, you cannot use a Rack within the Voice In-Out structure. A Rack is non-voiced.

But so you can use a Rack AFTER the Voice Out.

[muzycian]

I tested the MU.LAB beta A yesterday afternoon using my fretless electric guitar. I experienced one each fatal crash when exploring and setting up circuitas inside MUX and MuSynth, but on repeated attempts to use each there were no further crashes. Audio flowed through the Racks like I think it's supposed to. I would request fewer commands in the command string to get to the VST/VSTi presets a plugin has and to activate them. There should be easy easy functionality on that and it should be easy to midi learn for a controller to change presets on an individual VST/VSTi without changing other plugins in the Rack. Fewer commands in every command string is better for me.

What do you suggest?

Eventually with some screen mockups.

I will test further.

Thanks!

[Caleb]

Jo - are you supposed to be able to dump a Rack plug-in into MuZynth, put a synth plug-in in one of the slots and use it as an additional oscillator?

When I do it I seem to stuff up by ASIO connection or something - ie no more sound - even when I delete the rack instance.

No, you cannot use a Rack within the Voice In-Out structure. A Rack is non-voiced.

But so you can use a Rack AFTER the Voice Out.

Ah - that goes back to something you were saying earlier. The concept of "after" a voice out is a bit lost on me though.

In a Voice In-Out structure means to me that somehow the Voice in is connected either directly or indirectly to the device.

After a Voice Out structure seems to imply that the Voice Out is connected either directly or indirectly to the device.

Does that mean that I cannot have a Voice In-Out structure for those elements, but have an independent Midi-In/Audio Out structure for the rack?

Sorry if that seems stupid.

Regards
Caleb

[muzycian]

It's as superficial or as deep as you want.

Actually - that's one of my first criticisms of MuSynth (notice the 'S' ).
The old blighter was semi-modular which allowed for many possibilities, but was still very simple in getting (for example) a small sample player as a target.

I can already jump in here

It's the plan

We go step by step.

You'll get lovely simplicity too, lateron.

First we must get This version stable and tuned!

Having said all that - I'm really impressed with what's going on here. The inclusion of things like the Rack and MUX in the MuSynth itself makes it mind-bogglingly powerful while adding the wonderful simplicity of 16 top-level parameters controllers, to tame your monster for sharing with others.

By the way - when you access the parameter mapping within MuSynth etc..., you seem to have access to 128 parameters rather than just the 16 visible ones. Is that just a way of linking incoming midi signals from outside MuSynth/MUX to targets inside? Looks like that's the case - very nice! What would be great is if you could somehow get these parameters to take the name of what they're controlling.

But what if 1 parameter controls more than 1 target?

The fact that you can do this manually for the first 16 is great - but it might be nice to have a default name assignment to speed things up a little and/or the ability to manually rename all 128 parameters if you wish.
Am I making sense here?

Yes

Nice suggestion, will see what can be done!

[muzycian]

Another one on the WFT Oscillator (so close to WTF).
What does this oscillator do exactly when you load in a wave file? It is synthesising the wave file into a small looped sample for playback? I'm interested in what it's doing there.

A WFT OScillator is an anti-aliased oscillator using a 4096 point waveform table.

If you load in a wave, only the first 4096 samples will be used.

Is there plans on including more flexible wave file import into MuZynth? Like in Muzys3?

Absolutely!

But that will be another plugin.

Ah - OK - interested to see what that becomes then.
The plug-in will be able to be used in MuSynth I presume, in which case - cool!

Yep

I'm really loving where this is going.

You know our former friend from the land of M3 was awesome in its own right - but this really has taken it to the next level. Once the sample playing plugs are created and fine tuning is done, it's just a matter of people finding out what they can actually do with the framework you've provided before all sorts of superlatives make their way into peoples' posts - such as "this is the best...." etc..

Hope you can help with the fine tuning now; So we can move on to the next steps asap.