PulseThanks for the update Frits, this was an eagerly anticipated set of features.
So I just downloaded and tested the beta. The velocity features worked flawlessly, with no bugs so far. But there’s a minor thing that happened in the “Adjust Points” dialog.
I was testing the features in the dialog on a “Bar Draw Mode” and for a little while the parameters stopped responding, no matter if it was on “Preview” or not. Then after some 3-4 attempts (reopening the dialog) they fixed themselves. I am still testing as I write, but this didn’t occur again, but still, maybe it is of some importance.
Another thing that I noticed is that when I adjust the parameters in the dialog and then close it, with or without saving the changes, every next time I open it, the settings are as I left them. This also happens when I create a new automation track for a completely different instrument, and then click the Adjust Points, the last used settings are remembered. The settings are remembered even after restarting Podium.
Maybe this is not a “bug”, but if they were neutral by default would be better.
And a little idea: Why not introduce “Invert” and “Reverse Points” to Velocity, something like “Invert/Reverse Values”. They are already there for the Curves, so it must not be that much of an issue I guess.
All the best
CC
PulseYes, I’m absolutely positive that when I first reported the issue I was testing 3.1.2, and everything went exactly as reported. (Should have taken screenshots)
But after I switched back to 3.1.0 and started a more in-depth work on a new project the same issues started, something that (almost) never happened before, numerous “illegal action” errors and freezes (and not only Oatmeal).
So in an effort to track down what was causing it I realized that the only thing that had changed after my last use of Podium was that I had Cantabile Lite installed as well. Why and what messed the plugin behaviour in Podium is beyond me, but after I uninstalled CL and rebuilt the Plugin Database things went to normal.
I’m messing around with different “problematic” vsts as I write, but I couldn’t reproduce the problems myself yet, which I guess makes this a good-news-post. 🙂
@Zynewave wrote:
…UI freeze after hitting the ‘Random’ button 50 times…
Oh, that is an issue with Oatmeal for sure, it is a well-known bug (hopefully mr. Fuzzpilz will update this monster) that it crashes while changing presets, luckily I don’t use such.
It will be interesting to see how’s the plugin performance on other machines as well.
All the best
CC
PulseWell, if Podium is x64 and Reason x32 then there is clearly an incompatibility between them. Both the master and the slave hosts have to be the same mode.
See here:
https://www.propellerheads.se/forum/showthread.php?t=147004
So either install Reason x64, or Podium x32 in order for rewire to work.
Hope that helped
All the best
CC
PulseI have already reverted back to 3.1.0 (the version I upgraded from) and everything is behaving just fine.
From what I can recall it was as follows:
– playback almost always stopped (I know a lot of plugins cause problems when tweaking/changing presets etc. real-time)
– using the mouse
– tweaking these parameters – the filter section, and switching back and forth between “serial” and “parallel” filter types, especially if there is “non-linear” filter involved. If it didn’t crash while adjusting the parameters, it would surely crash while opening and/or closing of the GUI. It was the same case with KarmaFX Deelay when playing with the Left an Right channel delay times, although not every time.
And now coming back to 3.1.0 I deliberately repeated these steps, trying to reproduce the issues but no crashes whatsoever.
However, Indie Free and Fnequalizer from time to time persist on an “illegal action” error, maybe it is plugin specific rather than a problem in Podium.
Hope that was clarifying enough
All the best
CC
PulseOK, just had the opportunity to install and test 3.1.2.
But unfortunately it took less than 3 minutes for the first problem to surface.
Shortly put Oatmeal is totally unusable here. All it takes for the plugin to crash is to tweak some parameters and the Source section goes red and of course the error message “A Plugin has performed an illegal action. This may have caused memory corruption in Podium”
This happens 10 out of 10 times, no matter if it is an old project or a new one. I created a new arrangement and loaded Oatmeal only, tweaked for a minute or so, closed the GUI, reopened it and it resulted in a complete freeze of Podium, followed by “Close The Program” error.
After a final test Podium completely crashed, followed by “Zynewave Podium has stopped working” message.
Then I opened some other projects just to check for other vst issues and there you go, Independence Free did the same, every time when closing a project the “illegal action” error appeared. Then the same with KarmaFx Deelay, (didn’t try to reproduce it though, it was clear enough)
Also Fnequalizer causes the same “illegal action” problem. But they do not crash and lock Podium.
And finally it seems that sometimes there is a problem refreshing the GUI of the plugins after powering on and off of the engine. The parameters revert to the default ones, and once you start playback they fix themselves. This happened here 4 out of 10 times with Tyrell, Oatmeal and Noisemaker among others.
Specs: Win7 64bit, Podium 32bit, clean install of both, 48khz project, 32 bit mixing engine.
All the Best.
CC
PulseNever heard of a microtonal soundfont player per se, but my go-to sampler is Vember Audio’s splendid Shortcircuit. There you can fine-tune your sounds by cents. Not the best thing to do, but one can surely delve in between the classical frequencies.
Here’s a list that can help you:
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/referhtml/cents-hz.html
But if microtonal scales is what you are after, then:
Starting with the monster-synths:
– ZynAddSubFX – the thing just sounds spectacular, for the expense of the UI though.
http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/doc_2.html
Go to 2) Scale Settings and read the possibilities. It imports .SCL and .kbm Scala files.
– BR808 – Import of scala files
http://audio.rosseauxnet.de/software/plugins/br808/
And the usual suspects:
– Synth 1
Click on Opt and from there adjust the master tune. The default is not surprisingly A4=440
– And of course Oatmeal
There you can adjust your Master Tuning, your Octave settings, Cutoff reference frequency and on top of that fine-tune each note individually, and achieve pretty weird and esoteric tunings if you know what you are doing.
********
—>EDIT – a few useful resources:
More than 4000 scala format scales:
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/microtonality/scales.html
Make your own scales and export to scala format:
http://www.h-pi.com/CSEsoftware.html
********
Hope that was useful
All the Best
PulseOh, I would definitely use it.
But speaking of polls, it will be most efficient if Frits himself creates a Thread dedicated to FR polls only. Thus all of them will be in one place, otherwise we will have tens of poll-threads all scattered all over the place and following them will be somewhat difficult.
All the Best
CC
PulseWell, if an arpeggiated synth is all you require, then there are already many free (and awesome sounding) alternatives out there.
Oatmeal:
The 38-1 fullpack zip
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=319602&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60
Ugo Rez 3:
http://www.ugoaudio.com/plug-ins/rez
UniRetroPro 2.5 & Addvector:
http://wd81p901z.homepage.t-online.de/products.htm
HGF Alphatron Free:
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/4606
Angular Momentum Analog Warfare & Unifyer:
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/analog_warfare_by_angular_momentum
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/unifyer_by_angular_momentum
Hope that helped
All the Best
CC
PulseOK, since all will be in one thread I can name a few others, including fancy stuff.
First the small things:
– Solo, Mute, Record buttons in the Inspector for the selected track/s (in case multi-track selection is implemented – ctrl/shift+click). Multi-track selection to affect “delete” as well, rather than manually delete say 15 unneeded tracks of a multitimbral instrument.
– An additional Phase invert icon (both audio and midi tracks). Something like this – Ø – Thus reducing our plugin database with 1 🙂 and the hassle of opening the audio editor and do it there.
– A simple duplicate function to markers, that will duplicate all child clips. If global MIDI cc learn is implemented, this can be the beginning of a new performance tool for live, or improvisational uses. Ex. Assign C1 to trigger Marker 1 up until marker 2, D1 – Trigger Marker 2 to 3, E1 – Marker 3 to 4 and so on. This can be integrated in an arranger track as well.
– Colouring MIDI clips individually, no matter what the colour of the track is, making recognizing variations etc easier.
* * * * * * * *
Now the fancy stuff:
– Expanding the Audio clip volume curves. That is – instead of the two points of Fade In and Fade Out, introduce unlimited number of volume points in between. And of course with the real-time waveform change view. This can be an awesome tool for say, transient designing.
And finally:
TABLATURE EDITOR
Now this will be something special that will make Podium shine in DAWland. To my knowledge there’s no host that offers such a thing, and this was bugging me for some time now.
It will be immensely difficult I guess to start from scratch so there are few open-source tablature editors that can help the start:
TuxGuitar
http://tuxguitar.herac.com.ar/
PowerTab
http://www.power-tab.net/products.php
The best thing is that they offer score editing as well, and real-time conversion tab <-> score.
On the other hand there is MuseScore – a very deep and open-source score editor.
http://musescore.org/
Taking the best of them, then complement their features, remove the unnecessary ones, maybe add new ones, and divide into two logical groups, all integrated into Podium:
– In the MIDI editor there could be small piano icon – standing for the classic piano roll view, next to a Clef icon – the score, and finally a Tab icon – for tab view, with the specific functions and tools for each editor could be where the piano keys are located now.
Granted the smooth workflow thus Podium will “speak” to a remarkably broader range of people with different needs for different purposes, make it more popular ( increase the sales I guess ), become so much more capable and special in of itself.
Cathing-up with the big boys and their features is one thing (important in fact), but one must think of new things that will push the boundaries further and serve originality.
Note: My primary instrument is the guitar, and if there are other guitarists out there ( besides Tele ) we can join forces to thoroughly test and improve this and help Frits in case he decides to implement it, since there are many subtleties to this, way too many to go in-depth now.
All the best
CC
PulseSorry Tele, this is your thread, but I will break few of the rules because I don’t intend on posting requests any more. So this is my not prioritized list, just to make it possible for others to compare their notes and needs with it:
2. Real-time time-stretching, audition loops in the browser with the project tempo, fit their tempo upon dragging them to the timeline. Some sort of time-stretching markers on audio tracks that will allow to transform loops rhythmically, create grooves, or just correct, say, drum / vocal inconsistencies.
3. There are so many things to be wished about the audio editor. So to keep it easy, support for an external audio editor.
4. Mp3, flac, etc file import/export.
5. Master Tempo automation.
6. In-track automation. This can be midi cc parameters, vst parameters or preferably both. They are already there, but making them available in the midi editor as well right next to velocity, release etc, will be a huge workflow improvement.
7. MIDI effects, midi track <-> audio track routing.
8. Global MIDI CC learn.
9. Computer keyboard as keyboard. Extremely useful for people without MIDI controllers. (They are far from affordable where I live.)
10. Piano Roll specific – Scrub tool. A list with all available midi tracks in the project with a tick-box next to them, in order to choose which ones to be visible in the editor as ghost-notes, while working on harmony. The only way to do this now is to constantly mute, unmute as they are all visible, and in more complex tracks, the background is a total mess.
—Some new midi note specific features; flip vertically/horizontally to name a few.
—Scales specific for the selected MIDI clip.
—Velocity randomizer / humanize.
11. Improved project management. When creating a new project, a folder with the project name to be created as well, with sub-folders “Samples” , “Bounces” , “Arrangements” , and to copy the samples, loops, bounces… used in the project to their corresponding folders in the project folder, either by default, or at least to have the option to do so in the project page. Shortly put, keeping things nice and tidy, and all in one place.
There can be a project-specific plugin database file in there as well, for different purposes – composition, recording, audio processing, mixing, post etc…
Template files to have a different extension and better integration. Something like .temp / .template / .podtemp / .tempod etc. Now they are just like projects, interfering with the plugin database, project name, arrangements and so on…
12. CTRL+Click / Shift+Click on tracks both in the timeline and the mixer, to select multiple tracks, and adjust Volume, Pan, size etc. with relation to one another.
About the “fancy” features, I have some in mind, but I know they will never be implemented. Let’s first have the years-old requests materialize, maybe then.
All the best
CC
Pulse@Ionnas wrote:
…but the cpu overloads also in parts where that particular VST doesn’t play…
…
Also, if I use a x64 host and x64 plugins, will it make the program perform considerably better?
Exactly these CPU spikes, no matter if the plugin is actively processing MIDI (or audio) are the denormals caused by some plugs. This was the main factor why I let go of many old plugs in the first place. Synth1 however is very light an in use here quite often.
So here I can suggest you my all-time favorites – Oatmeal, Atlantis, TAL Synths (and FX) – light and great sounding, with dozens of instances of them, the CPU is way lower than 90% with Podium Free on a 3.1GHz AMD – That was my setup for a long time.
@Ionnas wrote:
…with only the 7 VSTs I’m using on 11 tracks on my current project, it makes my CPU usage overload already…
Oh, you can max out your CPU with just one 🙂 – Just an example – If its demanding, play big polyphonic chords, use many voices per osc, have long release times and all internal effects are on. 😯
About the RAM usage – Most softsynths and effects depend on the CPU, the ones that are RAM dependent are those dealing with samples (and soundfonts) – samplers and sample-based synths, or just sample playback – as they are loaded into RAM. So if they constitute a big part of your work, then the x64 environment will dramatically improve the performance. Otherwise – not a big difference.
Well, just bear in mind that you have only one core at your disposal and act accordingly, go for optimized vsts, bounce, and things should be OK.
Hope that Helped
All the best
CC
PulseThese crackles and glitches occur when there’s a CPU overload. You can see this in Podium in the lower right corner. When things reach 99-100% strange things happen.
So it seems that there’s a problem with the notebook, because my machine is quite older than yours, and still, when I was using Podium Free I was able to run around 60-80 tracks flawlessly with CPU around 95% (depending on the used plugins.) using ASIO4ALL as well, with 768 buffer. So you might wanna check some of your plugins one by one for denormals and unusually high CPU usage, some vsts are not so CPU friendly.
A good way to avoiding such high CPU usage and subsequent crackles and artifacts is to bounce your tracks to waves, then unload your vsts.
On the other hand Podium Free is limited to use only one CPU core, no matter how many you have. This is the only limitation in terms of the number of tracks you can have. Oh, and to be able to access all of your 6 Gigs of RAM, you must use x64 Host, and run x64 plugins only (or bridge them with jBridge)
Good Luck
CC
PulseYeah, VoS plugs are used here all the time, especially EpicVerb and NastyDLA – simply gorgeous sounding little machines. Still testing the Thriller though.
As for EQs – there’s actually a newer version ( however oldie by now ) of Posihfopit.
Electri-Q Posihfopit Edition
There are tons of different curves and filter types. Amazing plug, wish it was updated. And there are some really beautiful skins for it over at KVR. But it crashed Podium a few times – “illegal action…” Maybe some memory leaks.
http://www.aixcoustic.com/index.php/posihfopit_edition/30/0/
And another splendid EQ that is hard to believe it is free is SonEq
Shines especially when used with acoustic instruments, and in my experience outstanding on el. guitars ( real ).
EDIT: Sorry for the Offtopic
All the best
ॐC☸Cॐ
PulseJust Ctrl+Drag. Works for both Samples and MIDI clips 🙂
Good Luck
CC
PulseNot a vocoder user myself, yet here’s another free one you could give a shot to: TAL Vocoder (and the other TAL plugins in general)
http://kunz.corrupt.ch/products/tal-vocoder
And a short set-up demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYUBUlTmoU
All the Best
ॐC☸Cॐ