MU.LAB beta A

[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.

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.

Let me put it this way for now:

A musynth patch starts with a voice in.
Then you can plug in all kinds of voiced plugs after that voice in. (below is the current list of voiced plugs)
The last voice plug(s) is/are connected to the voice out.
Then you can use everything you can use in a mux, to enrich "the sound of all voices together".

These plugins are voiced plugins and can only be used after the voice in, and before the voice out:

Stereo Splitter
Stereo Combinor
Wft Oscillator
Noise Generator
MM Filter
Ring Modulator
Amplifier
Audio Balancer
ADSR
LFO
Modulation Value Mapper
Wobble Generator

Does this clarifies it?

[Caleb]

Following on from the Voice In/Out dilemma with non-voiced plug-ins, could there be a more elegant way of stopping the problems that using these plug-ins causes?

For example - this is interesting behaviour.

If I dump in a Rack plug in MuSynth and put a synth plug in the rack, attaching the rack to the Audio out will result in me being able to plug the Rack plugin with my midi keyboard (even though there is no input connected to the Rack), but not hear the "voiced" section on MuSynth. In this situation, if I delete the rack plug-in altogether, I will still not be able to here the "voiced" section. In fact, I think I then have to delete the MuSynth instance entirely at that point.

However, in the same situation, rack/VSTi->Audio Out, when I play MuSynth from the midi editor keyboard or playback a midi part, it will trigger the "voiced" section of MuSynth while ignoring the Rack/VSTi plug entirely - even if I connect it to a Midi In plug.

I think this needs to be cleaned up a little.

Firstly, I think it's too easy to have a rack/VSTi attached to the audio out which not also connected to the Voice out to prevent some of the behaviour I've mentioned above causing confusion and inconsistent behaviour. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a reason why you could trigger notes in a VSTi within MuSynth without some sort of input connection to it anyway.

Third, I'm still not sure why you can't use a VSTi this way within MuSynth as long as you don't have it following a Voice In connection - I mean is it possible to work around this limitation in the architecture? Too much is beckoning and the limitation is probably not going to make much sense to users as there's nothing preventing them from doing it in the interface itself.

I can understand the concept that you can't have Voice In -> Non-voiced plug -> Voice Out, but you're presenting that as well as saying you can't have Midi In -> VSTi -> Audio Out which is considerably harder to understand.

Regards
Caleb

[Caleb]

Jo,

When I open some of the sample MuSynth patches that come with the installation, I get a stray plug-in in the top-left corner of the the MuSynth view. It doesn't seem to be connected to anything and you can't move it anywhere.

Once you auto-arrange, it pops into the schematic where it's supposed to be, but it's a bit confusing at first.

Are you seeing that as well?

Regards
Caleb

[Caleb]

OK - non-MuSynth for a change.
Am I right that there is no ability to create or load FXP/FXB files for VST plug-ins and it's also not possible to change VST presets?

I'm assuming if this isn't there yet it will be prior to 1.0? Is that the case though?

Regards
Caleb

[> DiGiT <]

Does this mean that the music was playing well while the vst folder browser window was open?

And so it slowed down as soon as you closed that window?

You can easily repeat the first startup sequence by

1) quit mulab and got mulab/settings folder
2) open mulab.txt and set ApplicationRunCount=0
3) save file and restart mulab

yes as soon as it opened, the track played freely. as soon as the asio panel opened, it nearly froze. is this a denormal problem?

i have a dell P4 2.4Ghz, 1.5GB ram, XP pro, Presonus Firebox firewire interface...

nice reproduction of the kraftwerk tune... did you do that jo?

[muzycian]

Following on from the Voice In/Out dilemma with non-voiced plug-ins, could there be a more elegant way of stopping the problems that using these plug-ins causes?

For example - this is interesting behaviour.

If I dump in a Rack plug in MuSynth and put a synth plug in the rack

Why do you want to do that?

attaching the rack to the Audio out will result in me being able to plug the Rack plugin with my midi keyboard (even though there is no input connected to the Rack), but not hear the "voiced" section on MuSynth. In this situation, if I delete the rack plug-in altogether, I will still not be able to here the "voiced" section. In fact, I think I then have to delete the MuSynth instance entirely at that point.

Plugging in a Rack between Voice In and Out is not supported and not recommended.

As said in earlier messages: i'll try to finetune mulab so that IF you would do that, you get a friendly alert that this is not possible.

However, in the same situation, rack/VSTi->Audio Out, when I play MuSynth from the midi editor keyboard or playback a midi part, it will trigger the "voiced" section of MuSynth while ignoring the Rack/VSTi plug entirely - even if I connect it to a Midi In plug.

I think this needs to be cleaned up a little.

Maybe it's because i'm used to it, but it's really very simple: no racks between voice in and out.

Or better: no non-voiced plugins between voice in and out.

Only these plugs are allowed between voice in and out: (more to come later)

Stereo Splitter
Stereo Combinor
Wft Oscillator
Noise Generator
MM Filter
Ring Modulator
Amplifier
Audio Balancer
ADSR
LFO
Modulation Value Mapper
Wobble Generator

Firstly, I think it's too easy to have a rack/VSTi attached to the audio out which not also connected to the Voice out to prevent some of the behaviour I've mentioned above causing confusion and inconsistent behaviour.

As said earlier: i agree that these things must be finetuned. Hope to get it ready in beta B.

Additionally, there doesn't seem to be a reason why you could trigger notes in a VSTi within MuSynth without some sort of input connection to it anyway.

Third, I'm still not sure why you can't use a VSTi this way within MuSynth as long as you don't have it following a Voice In connection - I mean is it possible to work around this limitation in the architecture? Too much is beckoning and the limitation is probably not going to make much sense to users as there's nothing preventing them from doing it in the interface itself.

I can understand the concept that you can't have Voice In -> Non-voiced plug -> Voice Out, but you're presenting that as well as saying you can't have Midi In -> VSTi -> Audio Out which is considerably harder to understand.

I'll give a simple answer for now: because i don't want musynth patches to contain vstis, because that cause patch exchange problems.

As pljones noticed earlier, technically it is indeed possible to use a vst effect within a musynth patch, thus after the voice out.

But i'm taking this in evaluation, conceptually.

Thanks.

[muzycian]

Jo,

When I open some of the sample MuSynth patches that come with the installation, I get a stray plug-in in the top-left corner of the the MuSynth view. It doesn't seem to be connected to anything and you can't move it anywhere.

Once you auto-arrange, it pops into the schematic where it's supposed to be, but it's a bit confusing at first.

Are you seeing that as well?

Yes. It's a bug

Will resolve this asap.

Thanks!

[muzycian]

OK - non-MuSynth for a change.
Am I right that there is no ability to create or load FXP/FXB files for VST plug-ins and it's also not possible to change VST presets?

I'm assuming if this isn't there yet it will be prior to 1.0? Is that the case though?

You can do that:

Right-click on the plug (in the mulab gui, not in the custom vst editor), and there you got

-> Choose Program
-> Rename Program
-> Open Program/Bank
-> Save Program
-> Save Bank



Can you find this?

[muzycian]

Does this mean that the music was playing well while the vst folder browser window was open?

And so it slowed down as soon as you closed that window?

You can easily repeat the first startup sequence by

1) quit mulab and got mulab/settings folder
2) open mulab.txt and set ApplicationRunCount=0
3) save file and restart mulab

yes as soon as it opened, the track played freely. as soon as the asio panel opened, it nearly froze. is this a denormal problem?

i have a dell P4 2.4Ghz, 1.5GB ram, XP pro, Presonus Firebox firewire interface...

Your system should be fast enough, no doubt.

Strange issue, i'll look into this.

nice reproduction of the kraftwerk tune... did you do that jo?

euh, yes, but the original is a lot better!!

[Richard Lichten]

Hi Jo and all,

just a short test as being new in the team: nice looks, clean and tidy sequencer, great, great !
Fine routing, mod is fine, save that some options of Muzys synth lack (soundfont, crazy modulation options).
Managed to crash it while running the demo song and double clicking (left) on the
Mulab synth patch in the mixer channel - program vanished utterly and last note
repeated ad nauseam. Might be my soundcard, though - DSP Factory
which is a strange one but worked good with Muzys.

Cheers, Richard

[aMUSEd]

Will do - off to work now though

Ok, thanks in advance.

OK I've been going through adding VST's folder by folder and checking the log. I'm afraid it looks like at least one of the culprits is Zebra 2 - it made it crash and try to bring up Dr Watson (which is possibly also why it took so long to close properly as Zone Alarm had blocked it from doing that)

[Caleb]

Plugging in a Rack between Voice In and Out is not supported and not recommended.

As said in earlier messages: i'll try to finetune mulab so that IF you would do that, you get a friendly alert that this is not possible.

However, in the same situation, rack/VSTi->Audio Out, when I play MuSynth from the midi editor keyboard or playback a midi part, it will trigger the "voiced" section of MuSynth while ignoring the Rack/VSTi plug entirely - even if I connect it to a Midi In plug.

I think this needs to be cleaned up a little.

Maybe it's because i'm used to it, but it's really very simple: no racks between voice in and out.

Or better: no non-voiced plugins between voice in and out.

No - it's really not simple to me I'm afraid.

Again - my comment is if you don't have a Rack (for example) connected in any way to the Voice In plug-in then you are actually NOT putting it between a Voice In and Voice Out. It is not in the Voice In/Out structure.

I'm assuming what you're getting at is that you can only connect non-voiced plugs to the Voice Out plug. However, I'm having difficulty with this too.

In fact, so far I haven't successfully used the Rack plug-in with VST or MuVerb for example inside a MuSynth structure at all.

I can use MuVerb independently of the Rack, but not inside it.

....ARGH! Now I get it - same problem as before. It won't work if I'm playing my keyboard. It will only work if I'm playing from a midi part or onscreen keyboard.

Now it makes more sense.

So in summary - when using an external controller everything goes to hell once you add a Rack plug-in with anything in it in MuSynth regardless of where you connect it. This is now the real issue for me, not my other comments.

Regards
Caleb

[Fuzzbeard]

Hey Jo

Been playing for a short while, looks and sounds grand.

One thing that is niggling at me though, I cannot seem to edit a plugin/vsti from the rack.
The only way that I can edit parameters etc for a plugin/VSTi is from the track window and setting the target to the specific plugin rather than the rack.

So, if I have a rack set up the way I want, end exit the session. Next time I enter the session and decide I want to make a change to something in that rack (say a change to MuVerb or Mux, or even change the voices in sampler) I have to change the target in the track window to bring up the plugin, then change the target back to whichever rack I'm using.

Unless I'm missing something *really* obvious

So far, just been having fun exploring the new MuSynth

Cheers...

Daz :0)

[ApBTranCer]

for some reason I am not able to connect a rack module to the audio output in the MuSynth.. I had no problem doing this last night before i saved, but when i opened the project today, it wouldnt let me connect the rack module to anything.. infact it was already disconnected when the project was opened.

heres a pic of how things are set up, so let me know if i made another stupid mistake



Now before i had a chance to send this post, MuLab crashed a few times.. once when i tryed to delete the vst effect from the rack that wont connect, and twice when i tried to connect the rack again.

--------
Im not sure if this has been brought up already, (if it has, sorry in advance for reposting) but the musynth window seams like it needs to be resizable. things are getting cluttered if it already is resizable, im missing something

--------

one more thing, it would be nice if the patch selection is attached to the VST's GUI window, just for quick changes.. having to figure out where to right click can get frustrating.. Also, a nice little dry/wet knob would be awesome to have for vst's, like you had in muzys. I used that constantly

[muzycian]

Hi Jo and all,

just a short test as being new in the team: nice looks, clean and tidy sequencer, great, great !
Fine routing, mod is fine, save that some options of Muzys synth lack (soundfont, crazy modulation options).

Indeed no sample and thus no soundfont support yet.

The crazy modulation options are 200% there, you can even go much more crazy

A classic Mod Matrix can simply be emulated by connecting plugs.

Managed to crash it while running the demo song and double clicking (left) on the
Mulab synth patch in the mixer channel - program vanished utterly and last note
repeated ad nauseam. Might be my soundcard, though - DSP Factory
which is a strange one but worked good with Muzys.

Didn't you get a red mulab box then that said "A fatal error has occured, will now try to save the current session as Crashed.MuSession" ?

Is this crash repeatable?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.