Photosounder Spiral CM now out and about

[A_SN]

ETA for the full version ?

Also, any chance of some sort of built in midi visualization as well? I am a sucker for midi vis stuff. There are a couple of spiral midi vis out there already, but one more will always be nice. Especially something coded to work with a modern OS.

The full incomplete version is done, however it's taking so long to compile it all (between all the different plugin formats, 32 and 64 bits, the two platforms, demo and full) that I won't finish it tonight, so it'll be for tomorrow.

As for displaying midi, isn't it just better to display the synthesised sound?

Looks lovely, but will you consider an option to rotate the graph (e.g. A at 12o'clock rather than C)?

Well, is it really necessary? That would add an extra control just for that and it seems that chromatic circles are pretty standard with C on top.

[lahazard]

Just finished downloading my copy of CM 195 and now accessing SpiralCM from The Vault. Always look forward to something new from Photosounder. Looking forward to the release of the non-CM version.


(Been playing around with it for just a short time and I really like it. I am a visual person so.... sign me up! Very nice!)

[softska]

Looks lovely, but will you consider an option to rotate the graph (e.g. A at 12o'clock rather than C)?

Well, is it really necessary? That would add an extra control just for that and it seems that chromatic circles are pretty standard with C on top.

For myself anyway, I'd like to be able to change it so I can shift it with to key of the song. It would helpful to recognize patterns visually (e.g. similar harmonic movements in diff keys).

Hope you at least entertain the idea Look forward to give the full ver demo a whirl regardless.

[A_SN]

Looks lovely, but will you consider an option to rotate the graph (e.g. A at 12o'clock rather than C)?

Well, is it really necessary? That would add an extra control just for that and it seems that chromatic circles are pretty standard with C on top.

For myself anyway, I'd like to be able to change it so I can shift it with to key of the song. It would helpful to recognize patterns visually (e.g. similar harmonic movements in diff keys).

Hope you at least entertain the idea Look forward to give the full ver demo a whirl regardless.

Ah I see exactly what you mean. My plan for that was an option to turn the chromatic circle frame labels into numbers, with 0 being the key, so for example a tune in a minor natural scale would always only hit the numbers 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 10 (I only think of music in integer notation from the key, somehow it greatly simplifies learning) regardless of the key (you'd select the key using a knob), but your idea is possibly better as it would give consistent visual positions for notes (I don't know why I never thought about that, it is a good idea to always have the key on top, the only annoying thing would be keeping track of key changes, although you could always automate that). I guess I can have it all in the same knob (the one that will go in the empty slot in the lower right corner).

[Lee CM]

Hi all!

Big thanks to Photosounder for making this fantastic plugin for us

Here is a video about Spiral CM:



Spiral CM info page: http://bit.ly/spiralcm

The plugin is included with Computer Music issue 195, print and digital editions - just buy the mag and you can download it from our Vault system.

CM195: http://bit.ly/cm195

Cheers,

Lee du-Caine
Editor
Computer Music

[xx JPRacer xx]

It would be nice to have some form of "circular EQ" in the full version of spiral.

[aMUSEd]

Hi all!

Big thanks to Photosounder for making this fantastic plugin for us

Here is a video about Spiral CM:



Spiral CM info page: http://bit.ly/spiralcm

The plugin is included with Computer Music issue 195, print and digital editions - just buy the mag and you can download it from our Vault system.

CM195: http://bit.ly/cm195

Cheers,

Lee du-Caine
Editor
Computer Music

Wow that looks very useful. If it can analyse the notes in a sample so well would it be possible to use that technology to develop a plugin that can convert audio to midi in realtime?

[A_SN]

Good news everyone, Spiral is now downloadable and buyable (don't forget to enter a certain discount code in the Buy page if you have it), and it should all work smoothly provided that I didn't forget anything!

http://photosounder.com/spiral/

Of course it's still not finished, so you can expect updates pretty soon, but what's in there's already pretty great. Besides I've done close to zero testing with users, so it would be nice to get feedback.

Here is a video about Spiral CM:

Wow that was a pretty cool use of it!

It would be nice to have some form of "circular EQ" in the full version of spiral.

What would it be for?

Wow that looks very useful. If it can analyse the notes in a sample so well would it be possible to use that technology to develop a plugin that can convert audio to midi in realtime?

No. Here's the thing, it doesn't analyse anything any better than anything else, at the core it's just a big FFT like any other. The big difference is the way it represents the same information, which is much more usable than let's say your average spectrogram when you set it to 8,192 (about the equivalent of Spiral and SpiralCM's default resolution). So it doesn't give me any sort of leg up at all to do an audio-to-midi thing, and that already exists by the way, it's just not that great I guess.

[xx JPRacer xx]

don't forget to enter a certain discount code in the Buy page if you have it

What is it? Is it in cm mag?

It would be nice to have some form of "circular EQ" in the full version of spiral.

What would it be for?

I thought it would be nice to isolate certain parts of the spectrum or cut/boost certain harmonics. Sure it can be done in a normal EQ but I really like the way things are displayed in Spiral, it's easier to see exactly each harmonics. For me it would be much quicker and easier than a normal eq.

[A_SN]

don't forget to enter a certain discount code in the Buy page if you have it

What is it? Is it in cm mag?

Yep, gives you $30 off. So it's a good deal to get the magazine and then get Spiral .

It would be nice to have some form of "circular EQ" in the full version of spiral.

What would it be for?

I thought it would be nice to isolate certain parts of the spectrum or cut/boost certain harmonics. Sure it can be done in a normal EQ but I really like the way things are displayed in Spiral, it's easier to see exactly each harmonics. For me it would be much quicker and easier than a normal eq.

Okay, but how would you control it? A curve going in a Spiral might be awkward and hard to see what it does, what else is there? A sort of grid? Some sort of mask painting?

[GaryG]

Here is a video about Spiral CM:

That does look useful, I could pick apart some of my 'improvisations' and finally know what the hell I was actually playing.

[xx JPRacer xx]

I thought it would be nice to isolate certain parts of the spectrum or cut/boost certain harmonics. Sure it can be done in a normal EQ but I really like the way things are displayed in Spiral, it's easier to see exactly each harmonics. For me it would be much quicker and easier than a normal eq.

Okay, but how would you control it? A curve going in a Spiral might be awkward and hard to see what it does, what else is there? A sort of grid? Some sort of mask painting?

Yes, mask painting, with a knob to control falloff and another for cut/boost, like in this especially spectacular picture!


Of course, if you think you can do something better go ahead!

[xx JPRacer xx]

I don't want to sound like an asshole but considering SplineEQ is $19 isn't $99($69 with code) a bit steep? Was Spiral that hard to code?

Please don't take it in a bad way, it's just that considering the prices of your other products I was surprised.

[A_SN]

I don't want to sound like an asshole but considering SplineEQ is $19 isn't $99($69 with code) a bit steep? Was Spiral that hard to code?

Please don't take it in a bad way, it's just that considering the prices of your other products I was surprised.

Well I'm not gonna condemn myself to underpricing everything, mostly when I look at what kind of plugins get sold for $99 (like, plugins with 3 knobs that do something pretty common). SplineEQ was different in that it was my first plugin ever, had a lot of competition and lacked many features most EQs have, but more importantly it was also an experiment in seeing how underpricing could affect popularity (the results were mixed).

Spiral is different, there's nothing quite like it, but more importantly I didn't make it to sell it (whereas I really just made SplineEQ to sell it), I made it for myself, I didn't even think of selling it for months, I guess you can consider the price tag a premium for the privilege of using the toys that I made just for myself . And actually I did put a lot of work into it, it's the first plugin that uses a 48-bit linear RGBA framebuffer (linear as opposed to gamma-compressed, because it doesn't make sense to do antialiasing or compositing/blending and so one in a gamma-compressed colour space, the results are just wrong, which unfortunately every image editor even Photoshop gets wrong), the entire interface except the font and the knobs is calculated using gaussian and error functions the first time the plugin runs (no 3D, no Photoshop, just simple math), and perhaps more importantly I spent a lot of time researching colour theory and came up with my own colourspace (since CIELab was woefully inadequate, its blues are too bright for one thing), mostly for having a HSL-like system (which is how you define the pan colour gradient, hue and saturation, brightness being fixed) that doesn't rely on an arbitrary device gamma (like the sRGB HSL), truly having equivalent perceptual brightness over a given brightness level (unlike in HSL where yellow is clearly brighter than red) so that pan colours may not distort the loudness, and how pure colours end up mixing with white when they're too bright to be represented using only pure colours and how to do that in a sensible manner (you can see that when things get pretty bright). Science! I also perfected my antialiasing techniques and some other stuff, like subpixel font placement.

Also you have to consider what's coming up next that I haven't had the time to implement yet, like time-stretching (the knob that says OFF is how you'll turn up the time stretched sound, the knob in the middle is how you'll control the playback rate).

Also it's boring to get paid $19, I'm like "oh some money ...no wait, it's only 13 euros".

[xx JPRacer xx]

^ Hey man it's all right, I'm sorry if I offended you, that was not my intention. Like I said I was just surprised, considering the price of your other products and considering it's a novelty product.

I'm not good at math and all this, but it was nice reading about the technical stuff! If you like this stuff (gamma-compressed color space bla bla) I remember reading some nice technical things about this in 3d engine. Google "Uncharted 2 hdr lighting" or "Uncharted 2 gamma correction", there's a guy that done about 300 PowerPoint slides about this.