DataMind Audio Concatenator

[morphex]

My first encounter with Concatenator, triggering experimental cello samples with an atonal piano improv. Although the pitch detection is quite off sometimes I really like the results, pretty amazing stuff, lots of potential for further exploration.

Hey Simon, are you running Concatenator on your M-processor Mac? It looks like the CPU usage is relatively high for a minimal amount of notes being played. I'm wondering if that's normal for this plug-in. Thanks in advance for any info.

Yes, CPU can be high depending on the resolution settings. This was on an M3 MBP.

I appreciate the reply, thanks. Wow, that's one heck of a hungry plug-in! It appears to be around 25% with very minimal polyphony. This type of effect is new to me, although I think that I saw something similar in a M4L device a while back, but the name escapes me at the moment.

I'm assuming that high CPU usage sort of comes with the territory when using this type of effect. I hope that they'll be able to tweak that a bit, because I can see how that could be very limiting in a session with other plug-ins that also require lots of power. I'm also curious about its ability to create 'musical' results, or if it's a tool that's aimed specifically at a kind of experimental collage of sorts.

[sandandpaint]

My first encounter with Concatenator, triggering experimental cello samples with an atonal piano improv. Although the pitch detection is quite off sometimes I really like the results, pretty amazing stuff, lots of potential for further exploration.

Hey Simon, are you running Concatenator on your M-processor Mac? It looks like the CPU usage is relatively high for a minimal amount of notes being played. I'm wondering if that's normal for this plug-in. Thanks in advance for any info.

Yes, CPU can be high depending on the resolution settings. This was on an M3 MBP.

I appreciate the reply, thanks. Wow, that's one heck of a hungry plug-in! It appears to be around 25% with very minimal polyphony. This type of effect is new to me, although I think that I saw something similar in a M4L device a while back, but the name escapes me at the moment.

I'm assuming that high CPU usage sort of comes with the territory when using this type of effect. I hope that they'll be able to tweak that a bit, because I can see how that could be very limiting in a session with other plug-ins that also require lots of power. I'm also curious about its ability to create 'musical' results, or if it's a tool that's aimed specifically at a kind of experimental collage of sorts.

on my fairly old win11 PC under Reaper with what look like similar settings to Simon I get around 20% CPU - jumps up a bit but not much. I can run 12 instances with not much of a problem - the CPU hit jumps into the 60s but no dramas.
However I can max out on a single instance if I go max on number of particles and polyphony. I think this is covered in the manual or one of the videos. Which makes sense

[Sampleconstruct]

This is still a very early version of Concatenator, in the thread on VSL the dev has already announced further improvements especially regarding pitchtracking and "grain bubbling" as he calls it. Maybe some CPU optimisation is also possible but this kind of technology will always be CPU demanding and I don't really think about it.

[sandandpaint]

datamind is on discord and as it is early days some bugs are around which one can report there - eg running under Reaper Concatenator did not like being on a 4 channel bus

Seems a high quality developer, glad I bought this

[Sampleconstruct]

Using an improvised cello line to trigger a bunch of processed and unprocessed vocal recordings/samples from various theatre projects, tweaking the Concatenator parameters on the fly. Turning the polyphony down often helps to get less chaotic and more musical (or totally otherworldly results), the better the corpus samples fit the input signal, the better the pitch tracking will be - but abusing Concatenator for creating strange and totally alien textures is actually much more fun

[XComposer]

This seems an interesting tool. Has anybody had any chance to compare it to Krotos Reformer Pro?

[Kalamata Kid]

Or compare it to Transformizer Pro or Transformizer Basic?
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/transformizer-pro

[c_voltage]

Well, need say, initially personally me was afraid about cpu usage, but by fact this is pretty not high, and very depends just by two parameters - polyphony and particles amount (as mention already). So, if take default values (8 and 200, resp.) - it's just about 3-4% eating. (If even less values - near to zero usage).

Also should note that during idle state (no loaded samples, or no playbak/processing) it's zero eating too.
That good.

From first catches - won't load mp3 (although flac for example load ok).

UPD: also there is some relation with host' transport by some reason - seems plugin give different result with during playback and with stopped transport state. Although i not see obvious reason for this. (this is with empty mod section). Not sure if this by design (?)

UPD2 As well, transport restart can change sound character of one and the same setting pretty noticeable.

Resuming, i would say this is thing for rendering "in place", in current state at least.

[Ah_Dziz]

any updates since the new year? I like this, but I'd love to see some added control and some cpu optimization.

JJ

[Sampleconstruct]

Using a cello and later an alto flute phrase to trigger a mixed bag of samples in Concatanator (DataMind) - tweaking various parameters on the fly.

[Ah_Dziz]

Well, need say, initially personally me was afraid about cpu usage, but by fact this is pretty not high, and very depends just by two parameters - polyphony and particles amount (as mention already). So, if take default values (8 and 200, resp.) - it's just about 3-4% eating. (If even less values - near to zero usage).

Also should note that during idle state (no loaded samples, or no playbak/processing) it's zero eating too.
That good.

From first catches - won't load mp3 (although flac for example load ok).

UPD: also there is some relation with host' transport by some reason - seems plugin give different result with during playback and with stopped transport state. Although i not see obvious reason for this. (this is with empty mod section). Not sure if this by design (?)

UPD2 As well, transport restart can change sound character of one and the same setting pretty noticeable.

Resuming, i would say this is thing for rendering "in place", in current state at least.

I'd guess it has something to do with the "counter" used for the parameter that stops the same sample from playing over and over (don't have it in front of me).

Edit: variation is the parameter

[c_voltage]

Ah_Dziz

Well, need say, initially personally me was afraid about cpu usage, but by fact this is pretty not high, and very depends just by two parameters - polyphony and particles amount (as mention already). So, if take default values (8 and 200, resp.) - it's just about 3-4% eating. (If even less values - near to zero usage).

Also should note that during idle state (no loaded samples, or no playbak/processing) it's zero eating too.
That good.

From first catches - won't load mp3 (although flac for example load ok).

UPD: also there is some relation with host' transport by some reason - seems plugin give different result with during playback and with stopped transport state. Although i not see obvious reason for this. (this is with empty mod section). Not sure if this by design (?)

UPD2 As well, transport restart can change sound character of one and the same setting pretty noticeable.

Resuming, i would say this is thing for rendering "in place", in current state at least.



 

I'd guess it has something to do with the "counter" used for the parameter that stops the same sample from playing over and over (don't have it in front of me).

Edit: variation is the parameter


 

Well ok after additional exploration my initial "complaints" were changed a bit.
(looking ahead - no, this is not because Variation param)
Instead, it is turned out that there is some specify in work of "Spect Weight" parameter in 0 value.

Here I think could limit to a few phrases, but i already prepared info anyway, so, that it doesn't go to waste, better also post it here that anyone can explore this behavior and decide if it important (I would put this paragraph in a spoiler to reduce the size, but I can't find how to do it):

[spoiler]
Spect Weight "zero" behavior, successful reproduction variant:

1) Load plugin (default state patch)
2) Import single wav (let's it will be speech sample about 15 sec length) to corpus.
3) Let's use the same sample in DAW' track (as incoming audio for processing resp)
4) Set "Polyphony" to 1 (and ok, Variation to 0)
5) Now run transport, and during processing (transport playback) if we set (in realtime) "Spect Weight" parameter to minimum (zero), we will get not so big changes
6) whereas if now we - first stop playback (by DAW transport), and then run again (not necessary from start, even just continue) - changes will be drastically.

Better reproduce exactly with 1 polyphony, and with single\the same wav (in corpus and for processing).

Hovever, later i found, that button "Particle reset" (in the upper left UI corner) make the same effect as transport restarting (with Spect Weight at 0 resp).

"Particle Reset" button explanation (from user manual):

The particle reset button can be used to randomise the states of each active particle, which forc-
es the plugin to choose new sounds. Experiment with this while using a high stickiness and a low
spectral weight to hear the effect. You can trigger a particle reset by clicking the particle reset
button, or by pressing ‘R’ on your keyboard while the plugin interface is focused.
Note: If Spect Weight is set to 0.0 when the particle reset button is pressed, you will experience
‘grain splattering’ where the algorithm is rapidly switching between random grains. To fix this,
simply increase Spect Weight to a non-zero value.

So, yes, here mentions zero value of Spect Weight, but with no transport relation.
Although yes, the assumption is that restarting transport produces the "Particle Resetting" effect seems pretty logic lol, but nonetheless, being non documented, such implementation of this relation may be non obvious for user.
[/spoiler]

======================================

Next behavior example (transport related too) - already not so conditional as before, but rather obvious issue. This is when we want use plugin in, so to speak, modular manner. Ie with no transport playback at all, by using generated incoming audio.
Agree that this is not an exotic scenario at all, given the aesthetics of such plug.

And this time without Spect Weight "zero" factor (this is will be at normal default, 10.00 value).
And no rules about incoming material \ imported to corpus material, difference will be noticeable in any case i believe. Ok, let it be again the same single sample in corpus. (but regards incoming ie generated signal - can be any sort of..synth etc, as you convenient).

Now values set (simple all to minimum, except Spect Weight):
- Polyphony 1
- Variation 0
- Particles 10
- Stickiness 0.1
- Amp Weight 0
- Spect Weight 10

And now just hear difference of result' processing With and Without transport playback.

(Fun thing that often i find more interesting result in stopped state, well with described config at least)
==============================================

Like summarizing (if no time to read) - there is probability to get completely different sound from one and the same saved preset, depend from DAW' transport state. (Despite lack of obvious\documented reasons for this).

[c_voltage]

del double

[kraster]

Version 1 of Concatenator is now out.

It comes with a sample library and a preset system. It has a one shot mode for shorter samples and more control over the length of the grains used. (Min Max length). It also has a point cloud for the corpus.

It also has more modulation sources (to be honest it's not the kind of plugin that needs a huge amount of modulation but it's nice to have)

One thing that has improved massively is the ability to track pitch correctly. Using shorter grains it tracks pitch much more accurately.

Good update.

[Ah_Dziz]

Awesome!! I'll have to try out this update out. Have you noticed it behaving very differently on existing projects? I have some neat things I made that I might should bounce to Audio before updating if so.