ZynewaveHi Jean-Marc,
You’re the first to express an interest in the multi-channel capabilities. Podium do support multi-channel wave files and playback/recording of multi-channel audio. I do not advertize Podium as being a ‘surround’ production system, because I still lack e.g. builtin panning support for surround audio. Since the surround features have not been used extensively, you may encounter some bugs in your tests.
(I use a RME Multiface).
So do I, with a HDSP cardbus interface.
1. When I import a multichannel wave file I can hear it only when I select a stereo output and the sound is very distorded, like if it were “subsampled”. When I select eight channels outputs I simply hear nothing.
I have just tried this, and I can confirm it is a bug. It appears that my multi-channel to stereo conversion routines has a glitch. You need to manually create a device mapping object for 7.1 output. Go to the Devices folder, copy/paste the ‘Master Stereo’ mapping and edit the new copy to ‘Master 7.1’ and change the channel configuration from stereo to 7.1. If you assign this mapping in your arrangement, the 8-channel sound files will be played correctly to the 8 audio output channels. Another way to check the audio playback of multi-channel files, is to use the project browser to open the audio editor for the sound object. Pressing play here will output the sound to the first audio channels that you have enabled in the interfaces dialog.
2. I’ve searched a way to use multiple inputs/ouputs VST plugins, but the only way that seems to be allowed is to split it in several stereo sub-plugins and use them in subtracks ?
I have not added support for the channel/speaker information supported by the VST standard. So importing plugins will only produce mono or stereo mappings. You can manually modify the mappings after import, to create multi-channel configurations.
But I didn’t found how to process a sound with them…
Applying plugins as a destructive processing in the audio editor, is not implemented yet.
I suppose too that there is a way to bounce tracks with multichannel buses, but how ???
I’m not sure what you mean here. Do you want to bounce-record the bus output?
4. I’ve seen that I can import 11 channels wave files (12 channels files are imported but with a bizarre channel assignment) but that the buses seems to be limited to 8 ?
Device mappings only allow up to 8 channel configurations. I did not expect anyone would need more :wink:. If need be, I can add more channel configuration options here. The buses support up to 32 channels, which you then can access using multiple device mappings with different channel offsets.
Frits
Zynewaveby then using -6db panning law won’t this hide the fact that the track is too centre heavy?
I don’t see any problems of this sort. Your mix will just attenuate mono source signals that is center panned. After your have a near complete arrangement, you can try to change the panning law for the arrangement, to hear what effect it has on the final mix and the stereo width perception.
ZynewaveFound and fixed the bug. It turned out to be a different problem I had overlooked. Fix will be available in release 1.18.
ZynewaveSearching the net should bring up a bunch of articles concerning panning laws. The short run-down is that, panning a mono signal from side to side, it will not sound equal in loudness/power if the signal is not dampened when approaching center. This depends on many factors such as the nature of the signal, and speaker/headphone setup. -3 dB is the most commonly used method in music production. -6 dB is more used in broadcast. Use whatever sounds best to you.
i’m not masking problems using -6db am I?
Not sure what you mean by masking?
ZynewaveZynewaveYou can’t do that yet with the mouse. I have it on the plan. Resizing an event that is part of a multiple selection, should resize all events, both note events and sequence events in the arrangement. I’ll put a higher priority on this. Until then you can do it using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus. They use the current quantize value in the editor as step value.
ZynewaveZynewaveZynewaveHi Eli,
Thanks for the bug-report. I actually had detected this problem during development, and fixed it, but something must have gone wrong subsequently. I’ll look into it asap. I hope you can live with this bug for the next few days.
Frits
Zynewaveoh, I hope it’s not my system, I do hope so!!!!
It is not your system. The problem has been brought up some time ago, by another Podium user on the ConcreteFX forum on K-v-R:
http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=612595
I contacted Jon with the few details I was able to determine concerning the bug. In the last email I received from Jon, he said he had changed the memory manager which seemed to fix the problem. He said he would await the response from ageis before releasing a new demo version. I’ll email Jon again to ask what the status is.
ZynewaveZynewaveI will prepare a project and send it to you ok?
Yes, that would be helpful.
ZynewaveZynewaveYou should create a new track dedicated for system setup parameters under one of your tracks with a SW1K mapping. On this track you drag any setup or mode parameters onto the timeline area of the track. This will create parameter events that you can use to change the modes during playback. On this track you should e.g. always put the ‘XG System On’ as the very first parameter, to ensure that the XG card is put in the right mode of operation before your arrangement starts. This XG system on command will require a few millisecs to initialize, so generally when using this, you would start your sequences on bar 2 to make sure all modes and program changes are complete before the song starts.
ZynewaveOpen a list window (Ctrl+L), use the right side file panel to locate your wave or MIDI files, and drag them onto tracks. Dragging a MIDI file onto a track will only import the first sequence of the MIDI file. If you want a complete track arrangement to use as a template for starting your songs, you could create a basic arrangement in your default project, and then copy/paste that arrangement when starting on a new song.