Audiomulch metasurface with plugins

[aMUSEd]

With the demise of Kore I am looking into other ways to create complex patches with a strong performance element and realtime morphing - the only option I can find at the moment seems to be Audiomulch but it is much more complicated. All the examples of the Metasurface seem to use the built in generators but can it work with plugins too and if so how do you set it up to move between presets? - the documentation is pretty weak (mainly a nice video of it in use and a scientific paper but I need more a step by step tutorial - same for the host itself in fact). Also can you record your movements on the metasurface as automation?

[acousmod]

Hi,
Yes, it works very well with most plugins.
It doesn't morph between plugins but between values of parameters.
It is very simple to use : move the faders in the plugin like you want and store the snapshot. Do the same as you want, and you can morph between all the values of all the active plugins. Extraordinary powerfull.
In Audiomulch v2 you can record the movements in the integrated automation curves.

[aMUSEd]

Hi,
Yes, it works very well with most plugins.
It doesn't morph between plugins but between values of parameters.
It is very simple to use : move the faders in the plugin like you want and store the snapshot. Do the same as you want, and you can morph between all the values of all the active plugins. Extraordinary powerfull.
In Audiomulch v2 you can record the movements in the integrated automation curves.

Where do you store the snapshot? - that was one of the things that confused me about the included examples - there is a list of preset names (snapshots?) with colour values beside the metasurface main panel but I can't see what they correspond to in the structure (which is made up of maybe 10-20 modules). Can it make use of existing plugin presets and morph between several of those?

[adenozin]

Yes it works with third party plugins !

Actually it's very simple, the meta surface enables you to navigate between "snapshots" which can be seen as global presets of all your plugins at a given time and then you just navigate between them with your mouse or controler.

To create a snapshot you click on "new snapshot" in the top right hand corner of the second column of the metasurface windows and then you can drag and drop it wherever you like on the meta surface. Done

edit : sorry I didn't see that it had already been answered.

[jonahs]

Audiomulch is great. I love it.

Here's another possibly more expensive option, but easier:

(Ableton Live + Kapture pad)

I also think you can do this with Logic's environment, but I haven't had a need to as of yet.

[allofdrab]

Did you read the AudioMulch Help section on the Metasurface? (Shortcut - command 1 - on a Mac)
Seems pretty thorough to me.

The AudioMulch Metasurface is absolutely brilliant.

Still, not sure if you have Bidule (plugin version), but if you run in to any problems (not that you for sure will) controlling 3rd party plugins, try hosting them in that. i used to do the Bidule trick with AudioMulch 1.0.

In 2.0 you can also control the Metasurface with MIDI.

I've been recording Metasurface movements into the automation lanes, and it's freaking great, a totally new way of composing, and then of course you can loop that on the fly.

[Bronto Scorpio]

I once treid Audiomulch and the metasurface is really nice!
Here are some great tutorials from the Audiomulch Vimeo channel:

Using the metasurface: http://vimeo.com/7493482
Controlling the Metasurface with MIDI: http://vimeo.com/9058555

I hope this helps.

Cheers
Dennis

[unguitar]

I agree, Audiomulch is a very flexible application.
I have never had any problem in hosting any plugin I tried and I tried many.
I think that it offers a leaner interface and general concept to let things go and catch the moment without getting crazy.
I have a very complex routing/splitting/mixing setup on multichannel and using several hardware processors. All the audio is managed in Audiomulch together with many Vst's.

Metasurface does exactly what you can see in the video jonahs posted, I actually think it may have been the inspiration for the application he is showing.
Metasurface allows for infinite ( actually I arrived to 20 but it doesn't seem there is a limit) snapshots/positions.
Also consider that the man behind it is always active at listening to the users base, take a look here:
http://www.audiomulch.com/forum

have fun !
Luca

[s_frit]

Hi Guys,
As others have said, there is the AudioMulch help file which ships with AM, and there are some basic video tutorials here:
http://www.audiomulch.com/content/tutorials

Gearwire did a tutorial on the Metsaurface for AudioMulch 1, back in 2007:
http://www.gearwire.com/metasurface-audiomulch.html

I also blogged about using the Metasurface for morphing vocal formants here:
http://www.audiomulch.com/blog/metasurf ... -synthesis


I was interested to learn that Kore is being discontinued. I'd be really interested to hear some pros/cons between Kore and AudioMulch from anyone who has used both. Feel free to post to the AM forums at http://www.audiomulch.com/forum or email me at rossb@audiomulch.com

I'm about to start beta testing MIDI switching of Metasurface snapshots (without requiring the interpolation surface) so if anyone is interested in that, please drop me a line. I reply to my email and I'm more often on the AM forums than here.

Thanks, Ross B.

[aMUSEd]

So far none of my attempts at morphing between different plugin presets have worked - I take snapshots but nothing is hapening. I still would like to see some examples - no one seems to be posting example patches using plugins, only the internal modules. I am looking at this as a possible alternative to Kore but so far the morphing in Kore is just so much easier to set up and use even though I can see potentially the Metasurface is more flexible (plus the integration with the hardware is superb).

[s_frit]

So far none of my attempts at morphing between different plugin presets have worked - I take snapshots but nothing is hapening.

What plugins are you using? Let me know and I can try to investigate further. I have heard of reports of problems with specific plugins.

Also, check that you have the parameters enabled for recall in the parameter tree in the Metasurface (right hand column).

[aMUSEd]

So far I've just tried it with simple plugins like FreeAlpha and FabFilter 2 and just a couple of snapshots (just selecting 2 presets for ease although I have also tried it just picking a couple of params like cutoff and res and saving two snapshots for different states of those). Yes params are selected (all the checkboxes have an x in them). So far I haven't got it to work with any plugin but I haven't had time to really get into it yet.

[Bronto Scorpio]

So far I've just tried it with simple plugins like FreeAlpha and FabFilter 2 and just a couple of snapshots (just selecting 2 presets for ease although I have also tried it just picking a couple of params like cutoff and res and saving two snapshots for different states of those). Yes params are selected (all the checkboxes have an x in them). So far I haven't got it to work with any plugin but I haven't had time to really get into it yet.

Do you have U-He Runciter?

I'm 100% sure that the metasurface worked with it when I tried Audiomulch.

Cheers
Dennis

[aMUSEd]

Not yet but that one doesn't have lots of params - I wonder if that is a factor here?

[aMUSEd]

Would also be great if there was some sort of automatic recognition of params when recording automation instead of having to set it up manually (i.e. just click record and move knobs - like Cubase write, latch or touch modes)- much of the time I don't know which knob or function plugin param names are referring to and it's almost impossible to work out what is what from a list 200 or more params long