Shortcircuit XT is in Beta!

[jrwaltb]

@EvilDragon Do you guys have a wiki/docs or log on the challenges and issues integrating with the existing codebase or just an overview of what was required to move this project forward? Honestly I am just interested and it seems like a much bigger lift than I assumed so I would love to read about what was required to get to beta.

[EvilDragon]

The whole body of work is in GitHub issues. You can filter by milestone, any issue marked as SCXT 1.0 is expected to be closed before we really call it 1.0, but the list is not necessarily set in stone and can be fluid.

[baconpaul]

If you double click on a sample with mapping data it will load it with that data intact. Whether to drag with that information intact is interesting. When we do it was reported as a bug upstream. Also we don’t parse the file on drag so we don’t know the root key if it is embedded. Some cost associated with that of course. Grabbing that metadata isn’t free.

The c3 / c4 thing etc… is so annoying that we are adding a clap extension so daws can tell us about it. Won’t help ardour where you will still need to be manual but I agree it is a shame that we as a society can’t agree that note 60 is c4 or whatever

[baconpaul]

@EvilDragon Do you guys have a wiki/docs or log on the challenges and issues integrating with the existing codebase or just an overview of what was required to move this project forward? Honestly I am just interested and it seems like a much bigger lift than I assumed so I would love to read about what was required to get to beta.

Basically we rewrote almost everything from scratch except for some of the Sample parsing and some of the dsp for sample playback; and we retained some of the dsp for a few processors.

Unlike surge which has a pretty clear lineage from the code when open sourced, here there is a clean “Ok let’s start again” moment - mostly because short circuit is way more complicated than surge and the programming tools we have now are way better and more expressive than the ones claes had in 2005.

The other reason it took so long is we didn’t shrink the ambition as we went, which almost made the project fail a few times. If we had dropped a few things (multi timbrality, multi output routing, varied polyphony modes by group, things like that) we could have gotten to “Edit some zones with samples” workflow more quickly. But I think it would have been a less interesting tool.

Finally you know, we did 3 surge releases, launched clap and wrote the clap wrapper, shipped six sines, revamped obxf, released records, and still have families and jobs and stuff. One reason it took a lot of time is just because it took a lot of time for reasons unrelated to the project.

I think trying to make open source dev like this work is an interesting problem though and I’m happy to share the experience with folks if curious.

[wikter]

I've found a problem with the PolacVST adapter not detecting Shortcircuit. It's a strage/weird error, maybe about VST3 ID or ... anything else. Dropping a message to Polac.
https://forums.jeskola.net/viewtopic.php?p=17873#p17873

...but i've foound also a solution for the multiouts not showing on Studio One:
Use the Polac VST3ishell with the Shell2VST tool supplied by Polac. It creates a VST2 that calls the VST3 adapter & magically... it works.
Multioutputs working in Studio One...

[baconpaul]

I've found a problem with the PolacVST adapter not detecting Shortcircuit. It's a strage/weird error, maybe about VST3 ID or ... anything else. Dropping a message to Polac.
https://forums.jeskola.net/viewtopic.php?p=17873#p17873

...but i've foound also a solution for the multiouts not showing on Studio One:
Use the Polac VST3ishell with the Shell2VST tool supplied by Polac. It creates a VST2 that calls the VST3 adapter & magically... it works.
Multioutputs working in Studio One...

I pushed a change to short circuit which makes multi out work in studio one (but technically means it no longer follows the clap spec properly)

I also followed up with the S1 devs and the thing which made them not work will be fixed in a future S1 (but I'll leave our fix in place for now).

Happy to share technical details but basically 'vst3 spec is underspecified on output bus types' and 's1 chose aux outputs to mean non-usable (unlike the other vst3 daws)' and 's1 followed that decision into clap land where the spec is clear'.

anyway grab the latest nightly and outputs in s1 will work.

[wikter]

Happy to share technical details but basically 'vst3 spec is underspecified on output bus types' and 's1 chose aux outputs to mean non-usable (unlike the other vst3 daws)' and 's1 followed that decision into clap land where the spec is clear'.

S1 dev team is not the same.
Happy to see SC-XT outs finally working but sad to know about another S1 flaw...

[baconpaul]

Happy to share technical details but basically 'vst3 spec is underspecified on output bus types' and 's1 chose aux outputs to mean non-usable (unlike the other vst3 daws)' and 's1 followed that decision into clap land where the spec is clear'.

S1 dev team is not the same.
Happy to see SC-XT outs finally working but sad to know about another S1 flaw...

That's a bit unfair. I bugged their dev who implemented clap and they wrote back to me in an hour and have fixed CLAP in an upcoming s1 release to meet the spec. The problem isn't the S1 team. The problem is the VST3 spec is ambiguous.

And since VST3 is ambiguous they rightly don't want to change current behavior. We are going to change the clap wrapper to make unlabeled clap outputs main vst3 outputs which matches what other VST3s do anyway.

[wikter]

That's a bit unfair. I bugged their dev who implemented clap and they wrote back to me in an hour and have fixed CLAP in an upcoming s1 release to meet the spec. The problem isn't the S1 team. The problem is the VST3 spec is ambiguous.

Just to clarify: S1 devs do a very good job. But the communication with the users & bugfixing is not the same it was in the first decade. I'm on S1 since 2009 and i've been using every other common (& some uncommon) DAW in the market. My perception is that in general they are smoothly switching from smart solutions to correct solutions.
...or maybe I'm turning into an angry old guy.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Well, smart solutions and correct solutions are both better than many other kinds. So there's that I guess.

Anyway, next Shortcircuit XT nightly (up in maybe half an hour or so) has some UI improvements in the processors. Update at your leisure.

[herbaltree]

Downloaded the latest version today. The version a couple of weeks ago had a 'zoom' menu button (top middle right) which I could click on and change the % size in order to see everything.
In the latest version this button isn't there (omni options there now instead). Are the zoom options further over on the right now? If so they are hidden from view when I open the plug in (until I click zoom, which I can't...)

[baconpaul]

Oh ha yeah it moved to the menu in the top right but we didn’t put it elsewhere for an emergency

You will have an xml document called shortcircuirusersettings.xml in documents/surge synth team/shortcircuitxt. Delete it and it will work

[herbaltree]

Oh ha yeah it moved to the menu in the top right but we didn’t put it elsewhere for an emergency

You will have an xml document called shortcircuirusersettings.xml in documents/surge synth team/shortcircuitxt. Delete it and it will work

Thanks. Unfortunately I don't seem to have this file - the surge synth team folder and shortcircuitxt folder are there but no .xml files

[EvilDragon]

The file is in %APPDATA%/Roaming/Shortcircuit XT on Windows, so I guess that would be App Support on Mac, and who knows where on Linux...

[herbaltree]

The file is in %APPDATA%/Roaming/Shortcircuit XT on Windows, so I guess that would be App Support on Mac, and who knows where on Linux...

Thanks, I'm on Windows. I don't have a Shortcircuit XT folder at that location (there is a Surge XT folder, and the FX folder there though).