KVR Audio

Greg Houston · Post by **Greg Houston** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 4:19 pm

Minor detail, but the back button doesn't work in the demo installer.

Obviously completely different animals, but if someone had me listen to the demos and guess what instrument it was I would have said Padshop Pro. Will be interesting to see what other directions it can be taken in. Considering the price though I'm sort of hoping it doesn't click with me.

Hez · Post by **Hez** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 4:45 pm

Galbanum wrote: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?

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.

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.

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

From the manual:

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.

completely and perfectly possible...

Appreciate the detailed response!

Happened when going either from 2 backwards or 64 forwards. CPU stayed high until switching the number of duplicates again. Haven't managed to reproduce it yet, unfortunately (fortunately?).

Spent an hour or so reading the manual last night but obviously it's pretty dense, will need a couple more times through I think... Bouncing to audio definitely makes sense from the perspective of mixing a track down and certainly seems like one of the most accurate ways to take exactly what you want from a period of generative composing/twiddling. I guess there's always the ability to automate external filters/EQ etc. to add additional movement to a wide open KS patch until e.g. the Soft knob is running smoothly.

Can also imagine having a subfolder of 'chords' or 'song sections' in the tuning menu and automating/clicking through them during a live performance; with a couple of levels of control I think you could get quite a sophisticated progression going with that. I.e. have a repeating automation clip that alternates between the first 4 chords tuning files in a given subfolder, then map a midi control to switch folders e.g. from song 1 subfolder to song 2 subfolder, or even from 'song 1 bridge' subfolder to 'song 1 chorus' subfolder.

Apologies for immediately focussing on things it can't yet do by the way - it's only because I'm so bloody excited by the raw sound and potential that I can't stop myself from imagining using it in every situation possible

.

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:26 pm

Hez wrote: Can also imagine having a subfolder of 'chords' or 'song sections' in the tuning menu and automating/clicking through them during a live performance; with a couple of levels of control I think you could get quite a sophisticated progression going with that. I.e. have a repeating automation clip that alternates between the first 4 chords tuning files in a given subfolder, then map a midi control to switch folders e.g. from song 1 subfolder to song 2 subfolder, or even from 'song 1 bridge' subfolder to 'song 1 chorus' subfolder.

Ya, on a very fast computer (i have a 12-core Mac Pro cylander -- the best you can get from Apple as of today and also a Windows Dual Xeon workstation) changing tuning happens about in real-time. Which is actually kind of insane if you knew the amount of calculations needed to do this.

If you use Harmonic tunings you can think of the tonality as being a single note, so if you change the reference pitch this is like creating a solo melody... I'd "played" it some like this by keeping the Note panel open and changing this over time to follow existing music to get ideas for melodic progression. Then to actually use it, you have have render each note and cross-fade...

this gets into fringe areas of use though, as not really the normal opperational proceedure.

Hez wrote: Apologies for immediately focussing on things it can't yet do by the way - it's only because I'm so bloody excited by the raw sound and potential that I can't stop myself from imagining using it in every situation possible .

No problem. Me too. What you see in KS 1.0.0 is the first step on a journey. There is a lot more I want to do already. But we had to release this puppy... (speaking of I should actually do that instead of hanging out chatting. haha. ) I've been telling people it was coming soon for two years.

And it was, but we kept adding "one more thing". 371 builds for a 1.0.0 is quite enough I think.

But yes, it is a very pregnant idea and it encourages people to think about lots of possibilities, which is a rare and almost sacred thing these days IMHO.

So I take it completely as a deep compliment that you are already seeing all the other possible things that can be done.

lnikj · Post by **lnikj** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:38 pm

Andrew/Denis - after 371 builds I'm guessing this is as about as optimised as it can be. Is that right, or do you have further plans on this front?

Just want an idea of where things stand going forward.

This is another nail in the coffin for my existing computer I feel

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:44 pm

The obvious solution is for 2CAudio to give away a 12-core Mac Pro with every purchase

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:51 pm

lnikj wrote:Andrew/Denis - after 371 builds I'm guessing this is as about as optimised as it can be. Is that right, or do you have further plans on this front?

Just want an idea of where things stand going forward.

This is another nail in the coffin for my existing computer I feel

String resonators at high frequencies are not as optimized as they should be. You will notice CPU usage goes up (a lot) if you use a lot of high frequency String resonators... This is something that needs to be fixed/improved. It could/should be substantially improved.

Spring resonators (which are generally more advisable to use when using tons of lines like max image height of 512) are very well optimized.

Topics related to multi-threading performance and buffer size affect on performance in all the various host/os/hardware combinations can likely be improved as we gather more data from the general population now...

We have a few other tricks up our sleeves too.

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:53 pm

aMUSEd wrote:The obvious solution is for 2CAudio to give away a 12-core Mac Pro with every purchase

yes, maybe Apple will buy us and agree to that??

Steve? Tim? Anyone??

...crickets... (like the synthetic ones in the start/end of "Sunrise in Bali" in the demo compositions -- made with KS... hehe

)

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:58 pm

Hez wrote: Happened when going either from 2 backwards or 64 forwards. CPU stayed high until switching the number of duplicates again. Haven't managed to reproduce it yet, unfortunately (fortunately?).

So I suspect what happened is you were using one of the String Resonator modes, and switching between 1 and 64 duplicates drastically changed the frequency distribution of the resonators. With 64 most of them were lower freq. With 1, many of them got into the more extreme high freqs? Extreme high freq settings for Strings cause more CPU usage than they should at the moment, as explained in the previous post.

You think this is what happened?

lnikj · Post by **lnikj** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 5:58 pm

Galbanum wrote:
lnikj wrote:Andrew/Denis - after 371 builds I'm guessing this is as about as optimised as it can be. Is that right, or do you have further plans on this front?

Just want an idea of where things stand going forward.

This is another nail in the coffin for my existing computer I feel
String resonators at high frequencies are not as optimized as they should be. You will notice CPU usage goes up (a lot) if you use a lot of high frequency String resonators... This is something that needs to be fixed/improved. It could/should be substantially improved.

Spring resonators (which are generally more advisable to use when using tons of lines like max image height of 512) are very well optimized.

Topics related to multi-threading performance and buffer size affect on performance in all the various host/os/hardware combinations can likely be improved as we gather more data from the general population now...

We have a few other tricks up our sleeves too.

OK. Thanks for the additional info. I'll speak to my bank manager

For reference, which hosts etc. do you feel are well tested so people know (by elimination) which ones you might be looking for feedback on.

Cheers.

Greg Houston · Post by **Greg Houston** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:01 pm

If I had the cash to purchase this and a better CPU to run it on, undo/redo would be nice as well as a built-in compressor, perhaps something like Steve Duda's OTT - Multiband Compressor for controlling resonances a bit and bringing out high frequency details more. Somewhat minor, the clickable area on the "Preset" button is a bit large. I accidentally clicked it more than once in my brief demo.

Greg Houston · Post by **Greg Houston** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:05 pm

Trade Steve a good reverb algorithm for his compressor code. Win/Win.

lnikj · Post by **lnikj** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:05 pm

Greg Houston wrote:Trade Steve a good reverb algorithm for his compressor code. Win/Win.

+1

Greg Houston · Post by **Greg Houston** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:30 pm

One last thing and I'll step out. I own all your reverbs and your Architecture Waveforms, but the best chance of me purchasing something in this price bracket is a FabFilter demo policy, 30-days, fully-functioning, enough time to get attached/make sure it's a proper fit, without hassle while I put aside the funds.

adamj · Post by **adamj** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:39 pm

I previously wrote:
it's really not performing for me in Ableton Live 9 64-bit on OS X. I have a 2010 Mac Pro, 3.33 GHz 6-Core, and can generally push my DAW pretty hard with a quite a few CPU-hungry plug-ins, like u-he DIVA, without much problem.

I only have a simple drum loop and KS, and set my buffer size to 2048 in both Live and KS. I've tried experimenting with various multithreading settings and buffer settings. Lots of crackles and pops.

I gave it another shot today and it seems a lot better. I think Ableton Live may have gotten into a bad state after the buffer size changes I kept doing. I left it at 2048 and restarted Live and it seems ok now. I tried with both the internal white noise generator, and with external audio input on both a MIDI track and an audio track. Sounds good this time!

Alright! Off to read the manual and try to understand how this thing works...

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 6:44 pm

Greg Houston wrote:One last thing and I'll step out. I own all your reverbs and your Architecture Waveforms, but the best chance of me purchasing something in this price bracket is a FabFilter demo policy, 30-days, fully-functioning, enough time to get attached/make sure it's a proper fit, without hassle while I put aside the funds.

demo is 80 hours of usage time. For most people this will actually be longer than 30 calender days.

Usage time is only counted while in a active use state.

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