2CAudio Kaleidoscope | It's A Trip | Latest Update 1.1

[Gosh]

was a bit afraid after reading the messages about cpu performance but for me it seems to run quite fine. i have around 10-20% cpu consumption on my 2-3 years old i7 with 8 gb ram, using live 9.1.7 64 bit and buffer sizes of 512 for both live and kaleidoscope. to avoid the glitches be sure to switch on host transport, otherwise it's also glitchy here (but i think andrew has mentioned that host transport has to be on). definitely usable here on my machine. will also test cubase pro 8 but expect even less cpu consumption in cubase.
cheers

[Andrew Souter]

200 USD for KS, and 250 USD with the Architecture Vol 1 expansion included.

Yes, AND, optionally for people who don't have one of our reverbs (well even if you do, and would like another) we are going to offer 50% off any of reverbs to add to KS if you purchaser during the intro period.

This is not set up yet. It will just be a coupon code that only works if you have a KS order. So if you already ordered KS, don't worry, this means you are already set up if you want to do it too...

No pressure to do that of course, but the secret to epically awesome ambient material is KS + B2 or KS + Aether. Read why here under "Plays Well With Others":

http://www.2caudio.com/products/kaleidoscope#_Manifesto

and while you're at it check out the manifesto. Hopefully it does not sound too "preachy", but it is sort of the big picture "more than software" idea/goal with KS...

So, actually if you do that math you can get KS + AV1 + B2 or KS + AV1 + Aether for $375 during the promo...

not set up yet, will set up today...

(shit, I think I just made myself obsolete... there goes my scoring and sound-design contract work... )

[2ca]

Hi everybody,

for people who try Kaleidoscope on MacBook Pros with Retina display.

there is some strange problem that we discovered while developing Kaleidoscope.
for some unknown reasons Kaleidoscope GUI consumes much more cpu on Retina display on MBPs.
the current workaround is to use external monitor.

Denis,
2CAudio

[Andrew Souter]

Everyone say hi to Denis!

He worked his ass off on making my impossible requests/demands a reality! Denis rocks!

We will both continue to do so to make KS run as smoothly as possible on any and all hosts. Thanks for all the feedback. It is helpful and we are listening.

[Klangtueftler]

Hi Denis,

fantastic work, thanks!

[RichN]

Only if buffers of host daw and kaleidoscope are equal in size it produces clear pristine sound. (tested in Logic Pro X , Bitwig, Live 9 with buffer sizes of 256/512/1024 and where possible 2048)

Wow, that helped tremendously. No crackling now, even with the bloody surface scan still running in the background. Funny thing is that now I can change the buffer size in KS (after first setting it identical to my Bitwig buffer size) and, while now being different from my Bitwig buffer size, it still doesn't crackle.

I'm going to give KS a good try tomorrow (which in my case unfortunately means trying presets and twisting knobs while being clueless). But I can not see myself not buying this.

[Andrew Souter]

was a bit afraid after reading the messages about cpu performance but for me it seems to run quite fine.

People who report very large CPU usage: does this happen if you use KS on an audio track? Or only on an instrument track? (I just inserted it directly on an instrument track that has Diva on it, and notice some potential anomalies. Will explore...)

Try using directly on audio tracks. Better?

A good first step anyway to understand the idea is to set white to 200% and lock this so you can hear the effect of the KS by itself without influence of an input signal). I would suggest spending time this way BEFORE trying to apply it to normal audio signals, as it will help you understand what is happening more easily. Using it on full complex audio signals adds a whole other level of variables. Easiest to master use as a pure content generator first perhaps. But, do as you see fit of course...

[Andrew Souter]

double

[Andrew Souter]

Only if buffers of host daw and kaleidoscope are equal in size it produces clear pristine sound.

Wow, that helped tremendously. No crackling now,

It is important to note that changing the Buffer size in KS does NOT happen instantly. You must close and reload the-plugin.

Ideally we want to allow this to change instantly AND we would like to be able to use different sizes for real-time and offline/bounces/exports. But this is VERY tricky stuff to handle with all the various hosts, so we are still trying to get more info on these topics for future updates.

Buffer related topics varies a lot depending on OS, Host, audio hardware etc. i.e. it;s a complete zoo trying to handle everything.

If you experience any challenges, yes, try the above:

Set hardware/host buffer and KS buffer to the same amount (as large as you can tolerate) and be sure to reload KS.

[Hez]

Noticed a weird issue on a few patches where setting the duplicate count to 1 massively spiked CPU (Bitwig Studio, Windows 8.1, i7 4770k, 16gb RAM). Upping it to anything above this made the CPU behave again. Can't remember which ones exactly, will try to reproduce.

If you don't mind me asking Andrew, what's the plan/timeline for the automation of parameters as discussed earlier in the thread? Is it ever expected that everything will be smoothly automatable/tweakable, or will certain controls always be destined to cause crackling/volume dropouts each time they are modified? Is it even possible for any of the controls to be smoothly adjusted, or is it too complex behind the scenes for that to work at all?

More generally, what's your 'vision' for how one would go about developing a long, evolving sequence with KS? I can see the huge potential of polyrhythmic phrases/image map lengths to create a sort of micro level constant evolution, but I'm thinking more at the macro level here. E.g. raising the hi pass or reducing the soft level over the course of a minute or two to build tension and create a narrative at a level that the average listener would recognise. Likewise, distinct melodic evolution, e.g. changing one 'chord' or cluster of notes within a sequence after 64 bars, or altering the order of the 'chords' within a sequence. Right now it seems very daunting trying to get an image map to naturally trigger the right group of notes within a scale - it happens a lot organically while experimenting but it's hard to then say "okay I now want THIS 'chord' to happen every 3 bars instead of the previous one". I'm using the word chord loosely here as I realise there's a lot more potential here than just throwing 4 triads in a row...

Obviously a lot of the power of KS will be in short, extremely organic 'one shots', but the first thing I was struck by is the beauty of leaving a sequence running for a long time. It's so spectrally dynamic that you could create a beautiful track with just this, a drum machine and a couple of reverbs and delays, if you got a good grasp on how to force melodic evolution over time.

[lnikj]

Noticed a weird issue on a few patches where setting the duplicate count to 1 massively spiked CPU (Bitwig Studio, Windows 8.1, i7 4770k, 16gb RAM). Upping it to anything above this made the CPU behave again. Can't remember which ones exactly, will try to reproduce.

If you don't mind me asking Andrew, what's the plan/timeline for the automation of parameters as discussed earlier in the thread? Is it ever expected that everything will be smoothly automatable/tweakable, or will certain controls always be destined to cause crackling/volume dropouts each time they are modified? Is it even possible for any of the controls to be smoothly adjusted, or is it too complex behind the scenes for that to work at all?

More generally, what's your 'vision' for how one would go about developing a long, evolving sequence with KS? I can see the huge potential of polyrhythmic phrases/image map lengths to create a sort of micro level constant evolution, but I'm thinking more at the macro level here. E.g. raising the hi pass or reducing the soft level over the course of a minute or two to build tension and create a narrative at a level that the average listener would recognise. Likewise, distinct melodic evolution, e.g. changing one 'chord' or cluster of notes within a sequence after 64 bars, or altering the order of the 'chords' within a sequence. Right now it seems very daunting trying to get an image map to naturally trigger the right group of notes within a scale - it happens a lot organically while experimenting but it's hard to then say "okay I now want THIS 'chord' to happen every 3 bars instead of the previous one". I'm using the word chord loosely here as I realise there's a lot more potential here than just throwing 4 triads in a row...

Obviously a lot of the power of KS will be in short, extremely organic 'one shots', but the first thing I was struck by is the beauty of leaving a sequence running for a long time. It's so spectrally dynamic that you could create a beautiful track with just this, a drum machine and a couple of reverbs and delays, if you got a good grasp on how to force melodic evolution over time.

It's not quite what you're after but I have had some joy so far "playing" Kaleidoscope by sticking it after Microtonic or Tremor playing very simple patterns on two or three lanes and then both tweaking the drum synths and the patterns on the fly. Mainly slow ambient sort of stuff though (20-60 bpm).

I too am interested in the best ways to get long evolving sequences. At the moment, as you note, it is not to be found, on my setup anyway, in tweaking the knobs in Kaleidoscope.

[Andrew Souter]

Noticed a weird issue on a few patches where setting the duplicate count to 1 massively spiked CPU (Bitwig Studio, Windows 8.1, i7 4770k, 16gb RAM). Upping it to anything above this made the CPU behave again. Can't remember which ones exactly, will try to reproduce.

It stays high? or just a transient jump/spike when changing?

changing Dups from what to 1 one? LIke cycling through all dups settings, so this would mean going from 64 to 1?

If you don't mind me asking Andrew, what's the plan/timeline for the automation of parameters as discussed earlier in the thread? Is it ever expected that everything will be smoothly automatable/tweakable, or will certain controls always be destined to cause crackling/volume dropouts each time they are modified? Is it even possible for any of the controls to be smoothly adjusted, or is it too complex behind the scenes for that to work at all?

There is VERY hardcore math that goes on in the background when changing most everything. At the moment smooth automation of knobs, sliders, etc. is not supported for this reason. It is absolutely a goal, but not for 1.0.

But KS is itself all about dynamic modulation. The images themselves already offer over 2 million points of automation data.

but yes, smooth changes to things like Soft etc is desirable and we hope to solve it eventually.

More generally, what's your 'vision' for how one would go about developing a long, evolving sequence with KS? I can see the huge potential of polyrhythmic phrases/image map lengths to create a sort of micro level constant evolution, but I'm thinking more at the macro level here. E.g. raising the hi pass or reducing the soft level over the course of a minute or two to build tension and create a narrative at a level that the average listener would recognise.

For example:
Use input and output mod set to dyanmic.
Use input timing: 512/11 output time 512/17

The length of the resulting patter will be 512 measures long, and never exactly repeat within that range. But it will not be completely chaotic either becuase there are patterns happening, they just happen to be slightly more sophisticated than you/me/we can perceive. But the subconsious seems to feel they are somehow correct as this is the way a lot of nature works... at least that is my informal guess...

See the discussion in the manual about the sync panel. This is actually something I need to add the web page today.

If you needed additional things happening at a faster rate, feed that output from KS into another one, and use low feedback knob values (like 25% or less) to get morphing filter effects applied to the generative output of the first instance.

Likewise, distinct melodic evolution, e.g. changing one 'chord' or cluster of notes within a sequence after 64 bars, or altering the order of the 'chords' within a sequence. Right now it seems very daunting trying to get an image map to naturally trigger the right group of notes within a scale - it happens a lot organically while experimenting but it's hard to then say "okay I now want THIS 'chord' to happen every 3 bars instead of the previous one". I'm using the word chord loosely here as I realism there's a lot more potential here than just throwing 4 triads in a row...

Three are three different families of musically useful tunings: Harmonic, Chordal, Melodic.

From the manual:

The general idea of the folder list is to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
Excluding the four special effects groups described above, organization is based on a pairing of two classifications: one for organization in time, and one for organization in frequency.

Time classifications are as follows:

• Rhythmic: characterized by the strong presence of traditionally musically meaningful discrete pulses in time
• Nano Groove:characterized by highly complex rhythmic material with very fast textural phrases and polyrhythms
• Textural: characterized by the presence of well defined time structures that do not follow standard musical rules
• Ambient: slow and evolving soundscapes and drones, typically with high feedback and no obvious transients
• Static: characterized by the complete lack of changes over time

Frequency classifications are as follows:

• Melodic: tonality is based on musical scales or modes, including non-western varieties
• Chordal: tonality is based on musical chords as dictated by the western classical music and jazz traditions
• Harmonic: tonality is based on the harmonic series or some sub-set therefore and should be considered musically as a the spectrum of a single note
• Atonal:tonality is based on non-musical rules such as arbitrary mathematical functions, waveforms, spectrums, and anything else that is not easily recognized as traditionally musical frequency organization
• Filter: characterized by the complete lack of strong tonality and resonance due to very low feedback

For use in harmonic/melodic music there are two approaches:

1) Use Melodic Scale tunings, and use KS as sort of an algo-comp device that will effectively generate it's own melody/harmony/chord progression that is confined to the scale you select. This would then guide your composition and you could add the human performance elements by improving additional musical parts. This is the approach I used in the Wayfarer examples in the demos.

2) Compose your music first. Know what key you are in. Know what chords you are using. Use Chordal tunings in KS. Render different "lego blocks" for each chord you need. Assemble them in your host, using crossfades as needed etc. In this way KS is an orchestration tool to help color your fully composed work. If you have an 8 measure chord progression, render the full 8 measures in all the chords you need in KS. Then cut out each chord where needed to follow your music. Crossfade them. This is the what I did with the "AS1 - Hardwired" demo example. And this is the kind of thing I did often when working on Sasha Involver 2 (using MetaSynth at that point) or Sascha D on the Tron score for example when we are dealing with existing music structures like Remix work etc.

Obviously a lot of the power of KS will be in short, extremely organic 'one shots', but the first thing I was struck by is the beauty of leaving a sequence running for a long time. It's so spectrally dynamic that you could create a beautiful track with just this, a drum machine and a couple of reverbs and delays, if you got a good grasp on how to force melodic evolution over time.

completely and perfectly possible...

[arachnaut]

For those who use Sonar (I use X3e Producer), here are the settings I found best using my Saffire Pro 14 Firewire interface (48KHz).
I have a core-i7 2700K running at 4.3Ghz, (Sandy Bridge). Using Reaktor Spiral to generate MIDI notes sending to Bazille and then Kaleidoscope in the FX chain, I see 4-5% CPU on one preset (see pix below).

Sonar settings:

Driver Mode: WDM/KS
64-bit Double Precision Audio Engine
Sample Rate 48Khz
Pow-r 3 dithering
I/O Buffers 512KB for Playback and Record

Kaleidoscope settings:

Oversampling: 1x
Maz Res: 512
Multithreading: 100%
Buffer size: 2048

Focusrite Saffire Mixcontrol settings:

ASIO Buffer size 2048

[arachnaut]

I have a small change in the KS skin. I mix up the various arrows sometimes.

Here it is:

http://www.arachnaut.net/images/Kaleido ... n-mods.rar

(original and new PNG images for skin are in the RAR archive)

The new skin looks like this (the green is not in the skin - it's the changes):

[arachnaut]

Everyone say hi to Denis!

He worked his ass off on making my impossible requests/demands a reality! Denis rocks!

We will both continue to do so to make KS run as smoothly as possible on any and all hosts. Thanks for all the feedback. It is helpful and we are listening.

Hi Denis!

I was one of the beta testers - the 2C Audio team was a joy to work with and have a passion for excellence that is hard to beat.