Improvements!

[billstei]

Bwahahaha [washes hands in mid-air], with everyone in a constant state of laughter (the best medicine), my plan for *improvement* of the health of the Coder can begin to work...

[Urs]

Just a little update on things:

From now on all plugins can have a "default.h2p" in the root presets folder. This one will be loaded whenever a new instance is created.

Two "hacks" were added. In the default.h2p you can use a text editor to add two lines:

Code: Select all

!EDITOR=YES
!BLOCK_LATENCY_OFF=YES

The first line opens the editor in, well, edit mode. This is my internal tool with which I create my user interfaces. As custom gui skinning becomes more popular, the ones doing it will certainly appreciate the ability to move controls around and change colours in realtime etc. This won't be documented much but I'll do a video or something with the basics.

The second line is useful only in conjunction with the right drivers and host. All u-he plugins process audio in blocks that are a multiple of 16 samples. This allows for great cpu optimisation. But as some environments produce quite odd buffer sizes (such as 37, 103 and what not), all u-he plugins need to buffer an extra 16 samples, resulting in 16 samples of latency. As this is not necessary in most environments with proper drivers and stuff, you can switch the buffering off and get operation free of plugin-latency with my stuff. However, if your environment doesn't play nice with this, you'll get clicks and pops.

Actually, in conjunction with the GUI editor I've cleaned up some stuff and the unlimited undo for layout-based operations (moving controls, creating, resizing, deleting them etc...) is back to work again (it fell apart during the years... I didn't use it much anyway...)

But as unlimited undo/redo came back to place, I've started experimenting with unlimited undo/redo for parameter changes. It didn't take long to get it going. I get some error messages on my debug console, but the basic functionality works, and no crashes yet. I think some controls are confused that parameters are changed by non-controls (key strokes...). Nevermind. The disadvantage of this stuff is based on the principle - the undo manager is part of the gui. So if you close the gui, the history will be gone. Same when you save or load a patch. It may still be handy though.

#---

Time for a little tease:

4 new modulation sources for complex effects (FS, Z'fy, MFM, U'X):

- transient
- pitchtrack
- pitchness
- ess

Their use depends vastly on the input material, but one can do really crazy things...

Hope to have new builds soon!

Cheers,

Urs

[MitchK1989]

pitchness?

[Polybius]

Wow nice list of changes, looking forward to it! Especially GUI editing mode

[Urs]

pitchness?

Yes. It determines whether the signal is harmonic and if there's a fundamental frequency. Noise has no pitch, but a single sawtooth is pitched, in teh same way "shshsh" is not pitched while "ooooooh" is. Pitchness basically reflects the confidence with which the pitch detection determines the fundamental frequency of the input material

[symplectiq]

J
- ess

electrosoul system?

[Urs]

J
- ess

electrosoul system?

Nah... just ess like in de-esser. This is an envelope that follows the noise content of the input material.

These new modulation sources open up great possibilities when mangling vocals and drum loops. But they're also good for solo instruments, for instance when adding a suboctave or soemthing

Urs

[puffer]

Any idea about which hosts/environments specifically allow for the latency buffer improvements?

[MitchK1989]

pitchness?

Yes. It determines whether the signal is harmonic and if there's a fundamental frequency. Noise has no pitch, but a single sawtooth is pitched, in teh same way "shshsh" is not pitched while "ooooooh" is. Pitchness basically reflects the confidence with which the pitch detection determines the fundamental frequency of the input material

Wow. So you could do something like diatonic pitch shifting where the harmony part has its volume reverse modulated by pitchness so that when it isn't really sure that it has the right note it fades it out instead of making mistakes?

Or drones that are tweaked between tone and noise, where a phaser's dry/wet is determined by how tonal the drone currently is? Or making it so that the less tonal the drone is, the more pitch-ness is supplanted onto it by filterscape using high resonance!?!?!?!?

[Urs]

Any idea about which hosts/environments specifically allow for the latency buffer improvements?

Well, I'm not an expert here. But I'm very certain that i.e. ProTools is always on the good side, as is Logic, Cubase amd most other CoreAudio/ASIO based hosts. You can also be quite sure with Fruity Loops when using their "fixed buffer size" setting. The main problem usually is the audio interface driver though. If it's half way decent you can set it to 64, 128, 256 or 512 samples. That will usually do.

However, it's just a single line in the default patch, you can just try it...

Cheers,

Urs

[lazerkind]

The good thing about teasing with new features is that you can recover from the initial brain explosion you get when realizing all weird stuff that can be done with this.
I think I will go and start in to some empty space for a while now...
//L

[unangular]

Urs?
What is the deal with parameter automation...?
Most parameters are [live 8] configurable, but some [imho] important ones are not. Master, Output, Return-Send 1-2, lfog amplitude-rate-steps, voicemix pan-volume-moddpts... Assigning it to xy is just fine; but it would be nice[er] to have them all configurable. Visually cleaner workflow ["eq automation [fc/gain/res]"]... Or some kind of user configurable options
["controller on-off"] like :


Just a thought [and small question].

[Urs]

Unangular,

If parameters are "out of reach" within the host's limitations (e.g. 128 parameter limit), the XY-Controls are your best bet. The second best thing would be the editable parameter list:

C:\program files\u-he\Support\com.u-he.Zebra2.publicparams.txt
MacHD/Library/App Support/u-he/com.u-he.Zebra2.publicparams.txt

It's a list of all 615 automatable parameters, with their index number. You can swap any parameter from the back with any of the first parameters. Be careful though as updates may overwrite this file... better keep a copy then.

Btw. "Output" is Parameter 0, called CcOp for "Control Circuit Ouput"

Urs

[Urs]

I forgot to say... parameter that are not on the list can't be automated... but I'm contemplating to add the option to make them automatable, too... at some point...

[unangular]

Yes; that will do the trick. Kind of. I guess. Will see. Thanks.
With Live now you can automate [configure] any "indexed" parameter.
Yes only 128 of them, but that is [imho] some serious step forward.

The thing is...

Lfogs are my fetish [besides msegs...].
On fly swapping between number of steps-lines, and changing step
values with midi would be [i hate mouse!] dream...; ...

I live for that "at some point" day.

Nevertheless, once again i want to thank you for prompt answer.
Now i'm going do dive [break my brain [CcOp]] in publicparams
to see what will, what would not do.

Cheers.