KVR Audio

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:35 pm

I had just created this Kaleidoscope preset for another thing I'm working on in conjunction with several other processors, when finished I turned everything else off and had a little Rhodes jam with this preset, which creates this very sustained and evolving reverb-like texture, it's all KS, no additional reverb in the video:

blortblort · Post by **blortblort** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:30 pm

Sampleconstruct wrote:I had just created this Kaleidoscope preset for another thing I'm working on in conjunction with several other processors, when finished I turned everything else off and had a little Rhodes jam with this preset, which creates this very sustained and evolving reverb-like texture, it's all KS, no additional reverb in the video:

spectacular.

Really lovely stuff, Simon

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:47 pm

Thanks

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:50 pm

Galbanum wrote:
Neon Breath wrote:
cryophonik wrote:Hmmmm, neat concept, but seems very...ambient niche-y? I wonder how useful it will be for music that doesn't make me sleepy.
Ambientish and sound design oriented? Sounds cool to me!
KS (believe it or not, I can not actually spell Kaleidoscope, so I either cut/paste it each time, or i just type KS ) is the ULTIMATE tool for ambient music.... which of course also extends fully into film scores, tv scores, game scores, etc.

Not to be over pedantic, but the suffix "scope" refers to the visual... and while I know there's a visual component to this plug in... wouldn't Kaleidophone be a better name?

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:54 pm

Oh, we had that with Chromaphone:
Chomaphone
Chromazome
Chromophone
Phomazone
Chromamona
Cromulentone
Chromodome
Colonscope
Comazone
Chromapoem (Ben Steele)
MonaChroma

lnikj · Post by **lnikj** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:56 pm

Sampleconstruct wrote:Oh, we had that with Chromaphone:
Chromodome
Colonscope
Comazone

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:04 pm

Very cool...

New use: if you are a reverb designer you can use KS to test your delay distribution schemes.

(actually I am NOT kidding... but this is an obscure use of course...)

Min Frequency for Strings and FIR mode is 0.125 Hz. This is 8 seconds! At 512 delays/combs/strings * 2 channels this = 8192 seconds of delay time!!

(There was some talk about 30 sec being a lot lately...

)

KS is NOT generally designed to be a normal reverb. Aether, B2, Breeze are much better under normal circumstances, and more efficient for such puposes... But KS is very cool for exploring things like granular delay FX, and very complex morphing LFO delays...

I did not actually make a ton of presets in these categories yet... but it is a very cool thing to explore. It's largely uncharted...

FIR mode can be like Logic Delay Designer except you have up to 1024 different delays each with their own modulating gain/pan... and each with their own damping filter... which can be different for each delay...

you can adjust the distribution of these all on a macro level simply by changing the tuning...

you can adjust the modulation by changing the images and their timing settings...

they can be tempo synched as well. (but not only to 1/16th or 1/16 triplets, but also 1/5, 1/7 11/17 or whatever other freaky thing you would like to try...)

Simple delays like H-Delay, Replica etc have 1 delay time. KS can offer 512. (technically 1024 as they are different for L and R) You could have a 1/16 delay that happens only on the even measures and 5/16 on the odd, and have them moving around your head indpenandly...

etc etc etc.

I did not even imagine all that is possible yet... it will take us all years...

Kaleidoscope is both an effects processor as well as a content generator. This is a pretty great example of that and drastically different from the audio demo's I have posted so far...

very nice Simon!

Sampleconstruct · Post by **Sampleconstruct** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:10 pm

Galbanum wrote:...it will take us all years...

I agree.

Galbanum wrote:very nice Simon!

Thank's

TwoToneshuzz · Post by **TwoToneshuzz** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:30 pm

Watching this with interest.. Nice Demo there Simon.. I've downloaded Kaleishoopascoop and think its very interesting and hard to spell too. I get okay performance on my 3.1 Ghz i5 iMac I think to aid it I'll upgrade to the full 16 Gb ram..

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:34 pm

Breeze wrote:Wow! I think you and Daven from Amaranth should start an "Envelope Pusher's" group here on KVR! It's really nice to see some novel thinking that isn't tied to conventional hardware paradigms.

Here here! While I'm always up for a "how close are we to vintage analog?" synths, this, and tools like it, are really what's exciting now in instruments. Makes me sad that developers like Roland killed their VariOS tech. I'll be the first to admit that the results of it were not to my liking, it was an amazing first generation and I bet if they had continued to develop it we'd really have something amazing in the world of hardware synths today. Alternately, the Hartmann Neuron was on the right track, but we found out that it was an Intel based CPU running Linux in a custom synth controller box anyway... and notoriously hard to work with and prone to breakdowns. Of course it's now free software that'll run on an Intel based Mac, so that's that. And that's not the full list... we can look at all the Kurzweil additive synths and the Synclavier, etc... all long gone.

But, I think in this case the software just got too complicated for a traditional hardware style interface and at the same time mainstream musical tastes push for more "retro" electronic instruments. The cutting edge hardware synths are pretty tame these days. All the really interesting stuff is happening in software. It has to. I don't think a hardware version of Kaleidoscope would have a big enough market to be successful considering it would have to have at the very least a iPad style touch-screen to make it really usable and that would sky-rocket the cost.

Anyway, I'm procrastinating.

I should be demoing it instead of blowing hard in a pontification fest.

Phorous · Post by **Phorous** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 8:04 pm

This looks really promising for ambient sound design. Reminds me of some Reaktor ensembles that I have customized for similar minute atmospheric sounds except way more powerful. Going to have to download the demo and hope NAMM is a disappointment for the sake of my wallet

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 8:37 pm

Not sure what i'm doing wrong but i get only distorted crackling sounds. Even with 2048 samples and limit to 64 lines. I'm using the demo with my MacBook pro (late 2013) i7 quadcore 2.0 Ghz. If this will be not enough i'm think i'm out...

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 8:56 pm

Cinebient wrote:Not sure what i'm doing wrong but i get only distorted crackling sounds. Even with 2048 samples and limit to 64 lines. I'm using the demo with my MacBook pro (late 2013) i7 quadcore 2.0 Ghz. If this will be not enough i'm think i'm out...

What audio hardware? Host hardware/host buffer?

As a test, set to use the built-in OSX hardware audio driver, and try larger buffer sizes.

Really 256 or 512 size buffer should be enough for reasonable performance on most systems. Going to max settings like 2048 samples might give 20% more in efficiency or so.

Trying to run at around 64 samples uses a LOT more CPU resources -- well technically it's just the memory subsystems that can't keep up as is often the problem esp with threaded applications. It's possible for a couple instances, but things are much more efficient if you can tolerate larger buffers. For stand alone sound design use there is really no reason not to simply always use max buffer settings since even 1/10 sec latecy or whatever is really completely fine in such circumstances.

I actually wanted to allow even bigger than 2048 samples, (I noticed some improvements all the way to to 16,384 or my 8 and 12 core machines) but we have to do some more testing before that is possible. Also we are trying to be able to set different buffer sizes for real-time and bounces so you have have low latency for real-time but always the max render speed for bounces... this requires more testing though as it is very tricky to do in various hosts.

If you want to play instruments into it live and such like Simon has been demoing, try 256 or 512 for your host and for KS if you can tolerate it. Or more if it is OK with you. I'm a reasonably decent pianist and 256 sample latency is not really that huge of a deal to performance IMHO. Esp if we are not talking about playing extremely virtuosic things. (If we are, then yes, I like lower myself too for performance. If this is critical and you are want to use KS also int he same piece so the performance and the KS-ing as separate processes. No problem. )

Some firewire interfaces seem not to like it when the hardware buffer is different than the KS buffer size.

We are exploring this stuff now that we are gathering more data from many more users/demoers. Probably there will be a few minor updates and hot fixes etc. as is common to happen with products that try a lot of new things. Don't worry.

But you should certainly be able to get more than 64 active lines from your machine.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 9:23 pm

I use (mostly) 256 samples within Logic Pro X. I tested it without any external gear. I can't get more than a few crackling sounds out of all presets whatever i do. I could be me since i'm still a beginner in music but i did everything i could imagine....
Seems this tool is out of my reach

Andrew Souter · Post by **Andrew Souter** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 9:29 pm

Cinebient wrote:I use (mostly) 256 samples within Logic Pro X. I tested it without any external gear. I can't get more than a few crackling sounds out of all presets whatever i do. I could be me since i'm still a beginner in music but i did everything i could imagine....
Seems this tool is out of my reach

Strange. What else is in your project? This happens if you create a new Logic project, add a single stereo audio track, and then add KS? You should really be perfectly fine to run a couple instances at max settings like this...

2CAudio Kaleidoscope | It's A Trip | Latest Update 1.1