MrRay73 mk2: public beta test

[Lagrange]

So my dad comes over to my place and hears me testing out the latest version and starts playing along with me HAHAHAA. Anyhow I recorded him laying down something of this own HAHAHAA

Some old guy Jazz


If anyone knows how the real Mark 2 sound its him . Zio looks like you've made a FanOldMan outta him.. Had to explain to him several times that the hiss was part of the software demo version (dont think I got it ).

This should be a good seller for all the jazz players/composers once its done.. Oh so can I register to get the full version now or do I wait till its out of Beta?

BTW you may want to change the readme to:

....
Limitations of Demo version:
- shows a nag screen on startup and is muted for about 5 seconds

***CHANGE***
- black keys sound 'dead' for the upper 3 octaves
***TO***
- Noise sounds every X amount of seconds

Thank you.
Guido....

EDITED for the sake of space..

L

[steviemac2000]

This sounds fantastic - I just got a M-Audio Prokeys 88 to be able to play piano/EP/organ VSTs properly. It has a Rhodes emulation on it but this sounds a lot better Any idea how much it is going to be?

[Lagrange]

stevie.. I'm also wondering about the price..

L

[steviemac2000]

can't understand why no-one has asked over 11 pages...

[ZioKiller]

I was deciding between 199 euros and 49 euros...

I'll flip a coin at the last minute, head 199, tail 49.

[Lagrange]

Guess we were all gaagaa over the plugin

L

[ZioKiller]

Here's the new beta with the latest additions:

Code: Select all

8. b11010801 - Jan 11, 2008

- Added: Option menu with global options (saved along with the MIDI map):
>- Tuning: equal temperament or stretch tuning, from 438 Hz to 442 Hz
>- Dynamic Curves
>- Min. and Max. mallet force
>- Timbre & Character
>- Tube Amp type
- Changed: other minor bug fixes and improvements
- Added: magnetic pickup resistance (is more evident on low notes <longer tines>)

[Lagrange]

Code: Select all

- Added: magnetic pickup resistance (is more evident on low notes <longer tines>)

That sounds great!

L

[kevink]

OK, this is getting really nice. I can get closer to my old Mark I's sound now. The only thing that prevents me from being able to duplicate it more precisely is that settings like the dynamic response are applied globally up and down the keyboard. I'm not saying that you should actually do this right away, Guido, but the next step towards making it a truly universal model would be to have keyboard scaling "envelopes" that allow different parameter values to be applied depending on what note is being played. Then I could have the dynamic response be a little hotter in the upper register than the lower register, for example. Just a thought.

This thing is now good enough for me to buy. Then again, I'm a firm believer in buying everything you make, because what I *really* want you to do is to finish Sax'o'phunk!

[Lagrange]

Keyboard scaling envelopes per key would be good. Please Zio if you add this add some presets with it also..

L

[ZioKiller]

Hmmm, please explain this stuff about the "envelopes"... MrRay doesn't use envelopes... you mean a "balance" parameter between the lower and upper registers? If so, there's something for that already, but with fixed values for each single key.

As you know, on a real Rhodes (and on a grand piano too) lower keys are heavier and higher ones are lighter. But, again, this depends on the keyboard controller you're using.

What I could do is add a further parameter for scaling the dynamics, making the scale linear, heavy to light, or light to heavy... would this be ok?

[kevink]

Hmmm, please explain this stuff about the "envelopes"... MrRay doesn't use envelopes... you mean a "balance" parameter between the lower and upper registers? If so, there's something for that already, but with fixed values for each single key.

Envelope was a metaphor, but I was thinking that one could control it like one controls multi-point envelopes in a lot of soft synths. Each key would correspond to a position on the curve, low-to-high, and that point on the curve would be the paramter value used. That's overkill, but it would allow a pretty arbitrarily tweaked Rhodes to be emulated.

What I could do is add a further parameter for scaling the dynamics, making the scale linear, heavy to light, or light to heavy... would this be ok?

If what you mean is light-to-heavy as in lighter at the bottom of the keyboard and heavier at the top, that would probably do the trick and would be a heck of a lot easier to implement than the sort of function I was describing.

[Lagrange]

Hey ZioKiller ever consider creating a (wood) Xylophone?

Please let me know.

L

[kevink]

OK, I'm afraid I've got one remaining nastiness for Sonar, or at least Sonar 7.0.2 (the latest) running on Win2KSP4 (which is *not* an officially supported platform for Sonar 7, any more than it was for Sonar 6 or Sonar 5, but they've all worked fine otherwise). If I've got Mr. Ray V2 beta - 11010801 being the currently installed one, though this problem goes back to earlier betas - even if I don't use the plugin at all, I have a reproducable and annoying Sonar failure. I open Sonar, create a new project, save it to disk, and quit Sonar. No recording. No insertion of plugins. Just create and save. When I exit Sonar I get:

The instruction at 0x77fcd79a referenced memory at 0xa2808ea2. The memory could not be written.

The reason I say that this is an issue with Mr. Ray V2 is that when I remove that subfolder from my VST program directory and reboot the machine - and just removing it and restarting Sonar isn't sufficient! - the problem goes away. I re-install MRV2 beta, and the problem comes back.

[kevink]

OK, I'm afraid I've got one remaining nastiness for Sonar, or at least Sonar 7.0.2...

I no longer consider MRV2 to be the prime suspect here. It's true that, when I removed it and a couple of other beta VSTs from my VST program folder, rebooted the machine, and ran Sonar, the problem cleared up, and when I re-installed MRV2, the problem came back. But I re-removed MRV2 and rebooted, and the problem persists. It's really annoying, and the trouble started around the time that I first started trying out MRV2 betas, but for the moment, MRV2 looks to be innocent.