H-man's Forum Page

I fist became aware of the Chordspace plugin through the CM 200 best plugins special.

IMO this is an awesome creativity/music theory/productivity tool and would love to see it working in Podium.

So I guess that’s …. +1!

Okay, cool. Just trying to help 😀

As you will know I haven’t been working with Podium for all that long and I have chosen to start new compositions rather than migrate old ones (from other DAW).

Needless to say, sooner or later (probably sooner) you get to the point where the load on the PC is getting high and you want to do everything possible to keep it all ‘dynamic’, squeeze in that extra reverb and not have to boucne to audio.

We all try and run ‘quiet systems’ and I noticed that you had some good advice regarding Nebula3 performance (http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1399&highlight=nebula3) for both Podium and Nebula3.

Needless to say I am very interested in this type of info for Podium (XP and Vista) and although there are plenty of pearls of wisdom in this forum, It might be nice to aggregate them somehow?

@Conquistador wrote:

Podium seems to be running perfectly OK as far as the Windows task manager is concerned…only 5 % roughly CPU changes at any given time.

No 20 -30 % spikes, so as you suspected it may very well be Podiums CPU meter that is perhaps too sensitive.

But within Podium random spikes continued sometimes once during an 80 bar track at times more than once. While all this was going on the Windows task manager showed a steady CPU load with only a 5% change roughly either way.

Conquistador, I have done some testing on my sytem recently and have observed that Task Manager (when open) causes these (20 – 30%) spikes.

Instead I used System Informaiton for Windows (SIW) http://www.gtopala.com/ for which the spikes did not appear.

Everyone’s PC is different however I can assert that on my system, I would certainly see these spikes (in Poduim) when Task Manager was open, and they would dissapear when Task Manager was closed.

(Typical load for tests was 60 -70%, Anti-virus off)

Thanks Frits, I look forward to now giving the final release a try. Nice to see the other refinements as well …some from issues raised less than a week ago!

Just a quick update on the testing with the contol surface Mackie implementation, and of course a question.

First, in the previous post I mentioned that I liked the ability to add VST Parameters for a VST Instrument and use the faders to effectively draw the automation curves. Upon using this I found that a track with several (like 3 or 4) parameter child tracks gives me a new level of control, however after a while it drives you crazy because the recorded automations have the faders dancing up and down tirelessly, especially when using looped playback.

I was going to ask if these child tracks could be ‘compacted’ so that the fader only acts on the parent track and ignores the child tracks, however I just tested it and it works already …nice.

Note that to do this you have to right-click the parent track and choose Hide Tracks in Group. Clicking the + / – on the parent (group) track tidies up the display however the BCF2000 still responds to the automation tracks.

The one question I do have relates to the recording of the automations.

First, I have noticed that you don’t have to enable record on an automation track to write events to it. Anyone can test this with a mouse or pitch-wheel. Movements on these tracks are written as events even during regular playback.

Second, I have also noticed that written events cannot be changed, once written, by using the faders. In other words, the fader will just tear out of your hand on its merry way to following the automation curve.

Sooooo …given these observations, would it be possible to introduce a Record function on the parameter tracks that would enable editing of existing automation curves from the faders?

Okay Frits, faders go up, faders go down, faders go up, faders go down, faders …you get the idea. woot!

Note that things didn’t work right away so here was the sequence I used in the end (nothing special here, just a sure fire way of getting it working) 😉

1. Boot the BCF in to MC C mode and exist Global Parameters
2. Launch Podium
3. Create new Project (not really necessary)
4. Create new arrangement and throw in some plugins and activate midi-in on VSTi track
5. Check midi/Audio interfaces (see pic)

6. Turn on Monitor (Activate Monitor) and the faders should jump to life!

Note that Mute, Solo, Rec etc. all seemed to be working fine as well.

I guess the above sequence seems a little banal however like I said I couldn’t get the thing working on the first few tries and even ended up trying the other emulation modes such as LC (Logic) etc.

Eventually I set the BCF back to MC C, went through the sequence above, hit the monitor button and ZIP!! go the faders and I’m not too proud to say I jumped a little (the BCF is a little noisy) .

Oh well, good result as far as I can tell so far however given the overall quality and stability of everthing else in Podium I probably should do some more testing.

Anyone out there with a control surface (supporting Mackie Em) is gonna dig this 😀