XT Software

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 11:12 pm

Why wouldn't you want to use reverb live? I tend to use external processing for vocals, as it is better for the front-of-house guy to ride the vocal level because its impossible for me to tell if its right or not whilst I have my big mouth open.

mooter · Post by **mooter** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:05 am

I might be taking a wrong direction here, but I would imagine the primary importance for effects during a live performance is efficiency (even over sound).

I'm guessing that the pristine nature of the effect isn't as important in a live setting as in the recording studio.

I'm also guessing that you can probably drop reverbs in general and replace them with delays - especially on vocal performances?

Personally I'd take quality over quantity. Besides, I only have 2 hands and so many knobs, so I'm only going to select a few options from a few effects, or lots of options from a synth and/or both... I can only control so much at once, and with my testing there are a lot of vst/i's that are not live tweak friendly. This may be partly due to my Echo ASIO driver, but some stuff I don't have problems with. The problems I get are usually slight crackles when tweaking, but it still crackles even if I set the latency high. MDA and SmEx stuff work great, and so does Reaktor. A lot of SE stuff is not friendly, especially delays. It's very common to have a crash when there is high feedback and low delay time, in Orion and XT, so I assume it's the plug.

And to me Delay and reverb are too different sounding to substitute for one another.

Remember Northpole? That still rocks.

seamoss · Post by **seamoss** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:54 pm

my only complaint about using XT live is that there is still not a tap tempo. this makes setting up delays and any type of sequences almost impossible on the fly.

I play with a live band so I never know exactly what the tempo is going to be. using a 3rd party tap tempo app like analogX is really not efficient enough.

I prefer not to even touch my computer once set begins. I like to control everything through the controller.

a tap tempo that could be sent via midi would be a dream come true.

Exit Zero · Post by **Exit Zero** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 3:01 pm

I'm sure XT will eventually have tap tempo. Until then, you should check out Brainspawn Forte. It is built from the ground up for band situations like yours. Also, XT and Forte make a great combo, as you can use XT as a VST or VSTI to great effect inside of 'Forte'.

seamoss · Post by **seamoss** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:42 pm

Exit Zero wrote:I'm sure XT will eventually have tap tempo. Until then, you should check out Brainspawn Forte. It is built from the ground up for band situations like yours. Also, XT and Forte make a great combo, as you can use XT as a VST or VSTI to great effect inside of 'Forte'.

although I haven't tried any of the releases in the last year, I always found forte to be buggy. Seems everytime I tried the demos I got crashes from something or another. My desktop and laptop are completely stable with other apps, so I know it isn't a system thing.

With XT, my computer is always stable and this is a must for live use.

I love XT and hope that eventually this feature will be implemented.

I will possibly give Forte another try. Can anyone confirm that it is running stable now?

Exit Zero · Post by **Exit Zero** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 5:58 pm

Forte has been rock solid for me. I purchased it at the beginning of the year and have done a couple shows with it with absolutely no problems. Look into it again, there's even a stability routine to check for potential problems. You might want to re-check current versions of all your plugs as well. I have run across some VST/VSTi that run perfectly in one app but crash Forte. Just need to find the right combo of plugs and I think you'll find Forte to be very stable.

lunik · Post by **lunik** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 6:55 pm

I'm becoming more and more interested in eXT... especially after learning about its Live mode. I downloaded the demo and I must say the UI is very clean and clear with the default skin - nice icons etc.

I've played a couple of gigs using audiomulch to mangle and process my bass guitar, controlled via foot midi controller. This works fine. I'd like though to have Ableton like loops functions so as to do live performances of my songs (semi-industrial avant-rock) rather than just ambient improv.

One scenario is laying down bass and drums with Ableton like support, while having a processing line to create drones with vsts/guitar over the top.

Ableton does not really support this. 2 laptops would work but that gets expensive and a paint to set up.

I'm very curious in that eXT may be able to do this.
Does this sound feasible?

One option could be to run EXT as the pattern player within audiomulch? Or do it all within EXT?

In more detail:

Basic modules and paralell signal flow:

MIDI note on messages->
Audio Loop 1
Audio Loop 2
Audio Loop 3
VSTi patterns
etc
->audio out

Audio in ->
'nebulous' Vst processing chains (like you can do in audiomulch)
-> audio out
Audio in ->
by pass everything
-> audio out

MIDI program changes ->
switch between vst processing chains for different types of sound, including bybass them and just send the guitar signal straight through.

MIDI controller changes ->
change params on the vst plugins

Imagine trying to create a one-man 'ambient godflesh' and you start to get the picture... semi-improvised with a solid core of drum patterns/keyboard lines.

Some songs may swap things around so the bass is played live, and the drones are autocreated.

I suspect eXt *is* capable of all this and I'm getting quite exicted by the potential. Though I may need a new laptop LOL (its only a 1.2 gig)

Lives 'up/down/trigger' scene commands seem pretty useful, rather than having to have different notes for each pattern: midi pedal board soon runs out of pedals and then switching banks...gets all complicated.

Exit Zero · Post by **Exit Zero** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:11 pm

The Answer?

Yes, yes and yes. You might need a couple of 'nicfits' plugs and some other midi plugs like NDC MIDI Channeliser, but basically you're good to go on your 'Ambient Godflesh' idea. This, I would term as LivePA. Find out more about LivePA here.

Btw, Nicfit is working on a midi plug for me that will give XT users the grid-like functionality you are referrig to in Live's session view. I'll post it here when I know more.

lunik · Post by **lunik** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:31 pm

Wow, this is really powerful then and, quite cutting edge. And the midi editing in XT is so much better than in Live. Multi time sig support would be required at some point but I hear thats being worked on...

lunik · Post by **lunik** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 7:30 pm

Been playing more with the live mode in ExT...
It really does have a great deal of the power of ableton Live!... sans sample stretching, but I never use that anyway. Setup time is greater than live, learning curve steeper.
I've sussed giving audio parts their own volume envelope, but havn't fulled sussed evelopes for other params yet, unless you attach an evelope to a mixer param.
Arrangements seem to be the equivalent of a Live 'clip' - but with the added flexibility of multiple tracks, audio+midi etc.

Still, I'm not sure many ppl are aware of ExT competitive features in this regard. I had no idea!

This seems like a 'stealth competitor'.

Re: templates to reduce learning curve - if vst plug objects could be 'empty', then empty templates could be made without needing plugs installed. For instance, there could be a 'live!' template with send chains already made so you just pop in your own plugins, and a bunch of empty arrangements with envelopes already set up ready to automate samples you drop in.

Exit Zero · Post by **Exit Zero** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 2:24 pm

If some nice person could donate the server space, we could have a community vault of templates dedicated to those interested in using XT in a live performance situation.

Glad to hear you've found the hidden treasure.

respirator · Post by **respirator** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 9:21 pm

While I've played around with live mode (great, GREAT feature) I also uses XT as a live performance tool where I "just" process incoming audio. I've just submitted a track to the september "contest" including a pic of my XT patch in case anyone is interested: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... t=#1386943

suthnear · Post by **suthnear** » Thu Sep 29, 2005 1:14 pm

Aj@uma wrote:Thanks inkinen. I already have some of those on the list and will try the others out.

You could also try the betabugs's simple squeeze

soma · Post by **soma** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:52 am

...
On the subject of a more usable live mode, I've alwasy been a huge fan of Ableton Live. Then I saw a picture of P5 V2 that looked very inpiring. The image show what looks like the perfect melding of live and multi arranging for XT. Check it out (sorry for cross posting)

I'm talking about that list of patterns part that looks like Live.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=108215

Maniah · Post by **Maniah** » Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:12 am

Man do i feel dumb!!! I made a FR a while ago to implement a feature in Live mode which would allow me to trigger specific arrangements with one controller (in this case my qwerty keys). So if there were 10 arrangements with say 5 tracks in each, i could use the same qwerty keys to trigger each track within each arrangement but not simultaneously. This is not possible within Live mode alone, however, using Bidule i got the work done and it was staring me in the face all along

1)Simply load multiple EXT instruments within bidule

2)load Trollo to assign qwerty keys to trigger arrangement/tracks for each EXT instrument's Live mode

3)have them split using Bidule's MIDI switcher (Duhhrrr)

I have 10 key pads on my edirol controller so i set those to call up each "switch" on the MIDI switcher.

That's it!!

Now you can set up a crossfader to crossfade between arrangements within each EXT-i and route to seperate soundcard outs to preslisten.
The beauty is you can have a plethora of EXT instruments, or as many until your PC chokes.

One thing that is an absolute MUST HAVE for EXT is time stretching. This would allow me to load up files as opposed to plug in hungry arrangements.

Add to this that dynamite new plug, LiveSlice and one is set to roll!!!

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The XT Live Performance Thread