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Thread: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio content?

  1. Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Alright everyone I've managed to port my VST plugins to Audio Units for all of the Mac users out there. I haven't tested heavily, but so far they seem to be working, you can go to the releases part of the github repository here and then download the CymaticSpectraStrobeResources.zip file from the latest version (as of this post v0.1.1). In the zip file there are directories for VST and Audio Units respectively and you can find the plug-ins there. The Audio Units plug-ins are universal binaries and will work on either 32 bit and 64 bit machines, and the Windows VSTs are named with 32 bit (x86) and 64 bit (x64) file name endings respectively. You can read the read me for the plug-ins or start with the top-level read me of the repository for more information. Feel free to test and let me know how it goes or if anything was confusing. Apologies for no pretty graphics, but they work!

  2. Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    TomasC: the firmware .wav metadata bug appears to be fixed on my end. At the very least the file causing the problem does not encounter it at the end with the latest firmware. Thanks for adding that, it certainly gave me a nasty surprise, especially with the subpac on, and especially after being relaxed by a track and jolted back to reality

  3. #23

    Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Wonderful work, Cymatic! I use Logic on my home Mac and so will test the .au when I have a chance... and thanks again for deep-diving on this!

  4. #24

    Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Thank you very much for your great work, Cymatic! And for your confirmation that the FW bug in WAV playing has been fixed. I am testing your VST's in the Reaper DAW and they seems to work really well.
    I am looking for a way how to control the Frequency parameter of multiple CymaticLFO's (each in different track) by one 'master' automation envelope, if that's possible. That would make programming of the main entraining frequency easier and faster, I think. Now I have separate automation envelope for that parameter in each track. It is usable, just not that comfortable. Any advice would be much appreciated.

  5. Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Thanks TomasC. I totally understand the efficiency of wanting a master control for multiple parameters. I'm not totally sure of the perfect solution though. Each of the SS tones need to be in their own audio tracks for individual control - if they were on the same audio track their signals would be summed and the LFO would affect them all at the same time, but at the cost of individual control. There are probably a couple of solutions here, but some depend on the DAW itself. For example some DAWs have "macro" controls that let you assign one master parameter that is linked to control a bunch of individual parameters, but this will be a DAW-specific solution. Or if your DAW allows proper aux. bus routing, you could create a routing scheme where the 3 color tracks of the SS tones temporarily send their outputs to a combined submix, and use just one LFO effect to control them all globally on that submix, and when you want individual control, automate the submix such that they stop sending their output to the combined submix bus.
    Another solution would be for me to program the plug-in instances to be able to communicate with each other, but that usually requires using some sort of network-loopback-based message passing, and honestly it's not something I'm particular keen on investing time and energy into.

    But ultimately, even if you were not using these plug-ins and instead using samples, or audio tracks with a rendered tone track for the duration of the mix, you would still run into these same issues. I don't really think they pertain to these plug-ins as much as it is just a byproduct of how SpectraStrobe works and how audio mixing occurs in most DAWs (as well as in general). In order to get individual volume and panning these tones need to be isolated into their own stereo tracks, regardless of the tone source - this is going to mean any desired global adjustments will run into the same issues, and likely will just require copy/paste in the DAW's parameter automation editing workflow.

    The only way I could see around this would be to create a more sophisticated all-in-one SpectraStrobe plug-in that produced all of the tones simultaneously and also included individual LFOs for each tone internally, and then on top of it, some parameter which would allow individual LFOs to be temporarily/optionally linked/unlinked together - and the whole thing would just output to one stereo track. I did put thought into this, but I decided against it for multiple reasons: the single plug-in would be a bit more complex/time consuming to program, it would mean a fixed number of LFOs per tone, and the ability to modulate against incoming/input audio per color would be lost (or if there is a way to route multiple audio tracks into the same VST/AU, it's a bit beyond me, and I'm not really interesting in learning how to do it, plus the other issues still remain).

    So ultimately I decided to keep things modular. Not only does it keep my coding overhead down, but in my opinion it is the most flexible. For example I can add any number of LFO plug-in instances to the same SS color tone track to create modulation schemes of increasing complexity instead of just having a fixed LFO or number of LFOs. If we were working with something more like the Kasina Basic Editor, and just creating/editing control signals for the Kasina to internally produce the output we want, I think doing something like you are asking would perhaps be a bit easier, but since we're stuck in the world of digital audio and DAWs we're kind of stuck having to respect those mixing metaphors. Personally I have no problem editing/copying/pasting automation envelopes into multiple tracks, which is what I would have to do for any normal mixing project regardless of if it was SS or not. I think what you are indicating is more of a DAW workflow issue than a plug-in issue, and each DAW is going to offer different solutions for tying parameters to a master control (which some definitely offer). I'd rather not trade off flexibility for convenience (and increase programming work) in this case.

  6. #26

    Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Cymatic, thank you for your detailed response. Actually, I didn't want you to re-program the plug-ins, they are perfectly usable and flexible as they are. Your concept of their usage is thought out very well. It was just my idea to find a comfortable way how to control LFO frequency in all SS RGB tracks and in some track with modulated audio by one common master automation envelope, similarly as it works in Mind WorkStation. One of the reasons is that I am not very familiar with DAW's, so my editing of automation envelopes and other things in a DAW are slow. I have found (with help of Reaper Forum members and Andy from this forum) two or three ways how to use one envelope to control the same VST plugin parameter in multiple tracks, so my 'problem' is resolved.
    Thank you once again!

    BTW, the Reaper is very capable and flexible DAW, with relatively low cost. And it works with your VST plugins very well. I recommend it for SS sessions creation.

  7. Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    TomasC: That makes sense. The audio mixing metaphor isn't as clean as a purpose built tool, but the ability to create along side a music/soundscape project and to follow inspiration of the interplay of sounds is probably at it's most flexible, which is a nice trade off. I personally haven't used Reaper, but I have a few good friends that swear by it. Maybe I'll give the demo a download and add a few more templates to the resources repository, sample-based templates for Renoise, Ableton, and Repeaer, and maybe even VST/AU based templates for the same DAWs as well. People getting started would probably benefit from that, especially.

    I'm curious if anyone has a sense of: are most people creating content now using 64 bit setups, or are there still a lot of people working with 32 bit versions of DAWs and plug-ins? I know for a while I was personally reluctant to switch to 64 bit until the main plug-ins I used were well supported and all had 64 bit versions, but I would think by now there is little value in 32 bit versions. I could make 64/32 bit versions of the templates as well, but I wonder if it's worth my time of installing both versions side-by-side in two OSes and duplicating effort.

  8. #28
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    Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Thank you for your continued efforts. This will be of great benefit to the (small) community of people that like to create their own content, and are comfortable with DAW software.
    As far as 64/32bit, I wouldn't see any reason to bother spending any time making anything 32-bit. I can't see anyone who's serious still using a system that old.
    -Andy.

    Hey, if someone makes a good post, don't forget to click at the bottom of their post to add to their reputation!

  9. #29

    Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Cymatic: Thank you for your effort too. In fact, I considered creating a VST plugin(s) for creation of SS based sessions myself, several months ago. But since I am not much familiar with the world of DAW's and VST plugins, I had to study and explore a lot of new things. Since there were other things with higher priority... you were faster. :-)

    I use 64 bit version of the Reaper and your plugins, so from my personal point of view there is no need to create / maintain 32 bit versions of everything.

  10. Default Re: Recommendations on maintaining precise SpectraStrobe control for given audio cont

    Awesome, thanks for the input guys, I feel the same way about 32 bit vs 64 bit, but I wasn't sure the size of the community creating content with DAWs and what people out there were using. I think beyond what I've done, I'll keep work going forward to 64 bit focused.

    Another interesting bit about the Cymatic LFO plug-in that I should probably mention in the readme: it's an audio rate LFO. Most LFOs in DAWs do not update at audio rate in terms of the signal processing chain, they update at many multiples less (sometimes 100x less - their internal oscillators do not update every sample at sample rate). Usually in audio mixing this is fine, and actually preferred as it keeps CPU load down and such high rate/precision of modulation is not necessary for music. For something like SpectraStrobe and it's correlation to a visual component, I wanted to keep the LFO oscillator as fast/accurate as possible. How much impact this has at the end of the day, I'm not really sure, but I figure for this application it can't hurt, and it's probably worth noting, as it makes this LFO plug-in a bit more custom-built for SS/AS than perhaps a stock LFO/modulator in a DAW.

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