Black Magic Drum Machine Beta testing finished

[Az're-ul]

Before I delve too deeply, what are your swing settings? Not something I've really used before

Just up to about the second notch is enough, the best is when at half clock tempo and set to the 4th notch. The first note of the bar should be on normal, then the second has swing and so on...

Don't worry about it too much though as from what else you said it seems I have to do some more testing... I'll do that tomorrow, I'm working on more samples tonight.

Thanks for the info.

Don't know if its of any worth but closing Black Magic's GUI reduces my playback latency by about half in EXT2.

[Astralp]

Beta 9 Released

* fixed KIT occasional corruption of Text
* 4 new Banks of Samples
* Patches Named
* Pitch was 1 Octave too low globally
* Bank Locks 'ALL OFF' Button added to Kit Page
* Copy/Paste Sequence added to Sequencer Page
* Default Sequence Now implemented for Global/Sequence Default button.
* Added a Default FXB for a blank starting point for your own banks.
* Added the current bank as an FXB - Send me more presets please

Also another bank of Percussion Samples plus a kit submitted by Pierre

Also 30 Kits submitted by elxicano

thankyou and keep them coming

------

Not sure why the GUI should affect latency, that is puzzling, I'll look into that this afternoon.

Andy

[Musical Gym]

* Copy/Paste Sequence added to Sequencer Page

This is probably a stupid question: Once you copy sequence, is there a possibility of pasting outside BM, such as host piano roll?
I know I should try it first but am away from tools.

[Astralp]

No sorry it is just local to the sequencer. That would probably be impossible as there is unlikely that all sequencers use the same method, I would think that it would be unique to each sequencer. The only way would be to write to a midi file I think, but that is too big a job for the moment.

[Astralp]

Az're-ul

I just uploaded beta 10, which has Swing and Humanize disabled, can you test this out to see if the latency issues are cleared up?

No-one else need bother unless you have the latency with midi triggering problem, in which case please test

[Astralp]

I've just uploaded beta 11, sorry for the short time in between I've made no progress for hours and just found the code which is probably the cause of the prob. Wood for Trees etc...

But, I think I might have fixed it with Swing & Humanize enabled, I hope anyhow. If you are using swing and triggering the sequences via midi the notes need to be on the odd beats otherwise the swing can go out of sync, but I don't think there is much I can do about that. I've just tried in XT2 demo and seems to work as it should now.

In cubase SX3, due to a bug that was never fixed, a pre-roll setting of 1 beat is needed for the first sequence to trigger if it is hard up against the left marker or start of track.

sorry again, but I hope now all is good??

[jdt]

Hey Astralp and everyone.
Beta 9 is working better than any previous version. (for me anyway).

How do I go about sending in Samples and mp3s to you? I don't see any way to attach in this forum. I have some Bongo samples I recorded a while ago that are working well in Black Magic, tho they don't seem to want to scoll/list in the Section Panel... They all show in the Kits Page.

Newest GUI is really nice. The blue LEDs are a nice touch.

[Astralp]

Hi JDT

Great )

You can email them to me, there's no size limit, just reply to one of the mail outs I've sent lately. Look forward to hearing them! If you can make a folder like the others for the samples, something like 21-JDT Samples and put them in there that would be great )

I think the graphics will be finished tomorrow, it's getting close to finished now. Hopefully I've got most of the bugs now, I could really do with hearing from the testers who had problems to see if they have gone with the latest version.

Not sure why there should be a scroll problem with the samples though, I'll have a look when you send them

Andy

[Astralp]

Just added 75 Kits, just replace the basic Kits folder

[Musical Gym]

Just added 75 Kits, just replace the basic Kits folder

I don't know the difference between the basic Kits folder and the Black Magic Kits folder. Is there a difference? When BM couldn't find the kits in the original Kits folder, I put them in Black Magic Kits folder where they belonged and BM found them there.
Do I need to recreate the Kits folder I deleted?

[Musical Gym]

Regarding mp3s:

How long do you want them to be?
Do you want other instruments included with BM?
Do you prefer we use HG demos if we don't own HG products?

When is cut-off date for mp3/kits/samples submissions?

[Chester Desmond]

Had a long trial with beta 008 last night and 009 tonight. Once I got my head around the functionality I am absolutely blown away by the possibilities this represents. So first off I'd like to give you huge credit for the vst itself..just pure fun in a box!!
The use of the plug-in is all fairly intuitive; any time I came up against a scenario where I expected that a feature should be available, it was fairly easily found.

I had no issues in Tracktion 3 (poofed to desktop due to incorrect file structure with the kits, but once I got that sorted, no further problems). So, not much to report in the way of functionality issues. It loaded and re-loaded as part of a project without any hiccups. Kept its preset and settings between loads of a project. I can't really notice anything at this point that stands out as not working except the knobs.
I am having the same issue of knob "throw" as was mentioned earlier. I have to click and drag the mouse from the knob to the top of the screen 8-10 times to go from min to max on a knob. It's not always as bad, but it never moved even close to smoothly and using circular or straight style motions didn't change anything. Using hardware knobs to turn the virtual ones was jerky and laggy, jumped in 10% intervals rather than smoothly.
I tried any settings in T3 I could think of to try and improve this and telling Tracktion to use one processor instead of 2 or putting it into 'realtime priority mode' improved the performance of the knobs by maybe 50%. I was also able to improve the perfrmance of by setting the latency lower on the sound card. I also loaded up a CPU intensive VST adn the performance deteriorated for the knobs in BM. Seems to definitely be resource related and Tracktion related. As an aside, other vsts dont exhibit this behaviour in Tracktion.

I loaded BM up in Tobybear's Minihost and the knobs function smoothly with both the mouse and the hardware knobs. They also function well in Reaper.

My only other comments are gui related and are said with the knowledge that it isn't final yet. They are all preferences and are mentioned with ease of use and workflow in mind. It's not entirely clear by the layout that certain parts of the gui are global and certain ones per-section; although familiarity makes this a moot point fairly fast, I feel strongly that a lot of people (especially newbies) give up if things are too confusing right off the bat. Having said that:
I think the gui could be a little more intuitive if the 4 buttons along the upper left (kit, main, sequencer, mixer) were connected to the main interface by tabs. ie when MAIN is pressed, the section controls are joined to the main button like the tab on a file folder, and so on for the other 3 sections and their individual windows. This would simply reinforce what each button does and that it is showing a different part of the same interface. The way it works now, the buttons seem "disconnected" and the displays they invoke seem more like pop-up windows which obscure the section controls rather than interface elements which are linked to the buttons.
Another thing that would be nice is if the upper right buttons were context sensitive. For example if you click the bottom button to select that section for editing, the left hand side would switch to the section control knobs. Right now those buttons appear to do nothing unless the section editing part is non-obscured ;the sequence toggle buttons would cause the sequencer window to open, the top button (play instrument\sample) would open the main window to the section screen maybe.
After reading the last part over and playing some more I can also see instances where you might not want this context behaviour, but I'll leave my comments anyway.

edit: also I apologize if my hardware isn;t detailed in this post..I'm hoping you have that from the beta sign-up phase.. if not let me know and I can specify wherever necessary.

[Az're-ul]

Playback latency seems a lot better in the latest beta, its now somewhere between a 64th and 128th note. Not really that noticeable at higher bpms. Strangely it no longer plays at below 15bpm

As a try out, here are 3 presets based around the percussion kit 04

Ebusuku 80
Open All Hours 80
Ubusuku Qathaka P80

The number in the name is the suggested BPM & a P in front means its poly rhythmic - after a fashion

I'll have to go through the sample folders and see whats really there.

Next job to check automation and external midi control of knobs...

I know I'm going to regret asking this (because its probably my eyes) but does it really say advanced rythem machne under the Black Magic logo?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit:

Sorry Andy

Okay I am a mucking fuppet (probably Beaker)

I downloaded beta 11 not 10 Just checked and 10 is no longer there.

Steve

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit: Edit: Ooh bongos

[Az're-ul]

Beta 11 in EXT 2.5

Testing Using Master Section Via External MIDI Controller And Automation

All controls worked exactly as expected using my Axiom 49 (sliders & knobs) using your supplied CC's. Everything responded fine for me, no lag or jumps that I could discern.

Automation also worked fine with 1 proviso which is probably an EXT bug as I didn't get the same problem when using my keyboard. I seemed to get crackles automating more than 4 controls at a time and if I automated the Master Volume & the Master Drive the volume didn't always respond when the value was increasing. i.e. it stayed off or very quiet.

Maybe an idea to change label for Master Filter to Master Cutoff

This afternoon I discovered by accident the Master Pitch Mode on the sequencer and have been having fun automating it.

[Astralp]

Ok Lots to reply to, I'll make a Start in backwards order!

Beta 11 in EXT 2.5

Automation also worked fine with 1 proviso which is probably an EXT bug as I didn't get the same problem when using my keyboard. I seemed to get crackles automating more than 4 controls at a time and if I automated the Master Volume & the Master Drive the volume didn't always respond when the value was increasing. i.e. it stayed off or very quiet.

The volume is that everything probably went to sleep as soon as the Volume hit zero, I've worked around this in the next version, if you can report on this again after the next release that would great.

Maybe an idea to change label for Master Filter to Master Cutoff

Done in next release, ta!

This afternoon I discovered by accident the Master Pitch Mode on the sequencer and have been having fun automating it.

Yes I moved them to the front from the Master Section as I thought it would probably get overlooked, Great for Sabres of Paradise Type Loops.