ZynewaveGlad you like the program Alphonse.
How do you automate “MUTES”?
The only things so far that you can automate in the Podium mixer engine is level and pan (apart from device parameters). As I see it automating mutes would just be an alternative way of automating level to silence and back again. I was hoping that I didn’t have to add a separate parameter for this. I try to a certain extent to limit the choices that a user faces when working with the arranging and mixing.
Also, once that controller data is written and viewable, are you able to select it, add points along the line, and fine tune it?
You can always open the curve editor and do your editing there. I assume you mean if it is possible to edit the curve within the arrangement editor. The answer is no, but in the distant future I intend to add support for editing curve points directly on the curve sequence events shown on the tracks.
Any chance of implementing DXI support?
Not on the plan. Some time ago I made a decision to go with VST, and to skip DirectX support. It would take a lot of time to add DX support, and this would only be a benifit once the Podium userbase grows considerably. I would probably implement Rewire support before considering DX.
can anyone recommend a suite of quality VST effects plugins?
I don’t know what your standard for ‘quality’ is, but if you don’t have a large palette of VST effects, be sure to check out the free classic series by http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com. With regards to reverbs I aim a little higher though. As I put a lot of emphasis on UI design in addition to sound quality, I am impressed with the http://www.spinaudio.com Roomverb M2 plugin. Also the free SIR reverb is an interesting plugin, depending on taste.
ZynewaveIf you right click on a sound object in the browser or in the object list window, you should find the ‘properties’ menu. If you right click on the audio events in the arrangement editor, you should find the ‘Sound properties’ menu. This should produce this dialog, where you can set the bit depth for the individual sound file.
ZynewaveIf you are using a monotimbral synth, then you can use the same mapping for both MIDI and audio routing, and Podium will then automatically compensate for latencies in the audio and MIDI interfaces. Take a look at the ‘Yamaha AN1x’ library file to see how a monotimbral synth can be configured with a single mapping.
If you use multitimbral synths, then you need to work with separate mappings for audio and MIDI channels and thus the association between audio and MIDI is broken, and latency compensation is not performed. I’ve been thinking about this. What I need to do is implement a global instance number for the hardware mappings, similar to the instance number used in multitimbral plugin mappings. This instance number is what enables Podium to link together different mappings for the same device and perform proper latency compensation. I’ll add it to the future list.
If this does not explain your problem, then mail me the project file so I can verify your setup.
ZynewaveHow do I load a second, third, ect… VSTI, and send different tracks to those VSTIs?
Use the Project Wizard to import all the plugins you want to use in a project. Once this is done, you have access to the plugins in the track inspector map panel. Select the track you want a plugin on, and double click the mapping, or drag the mappings to the tracks. If you are doing this on the imported MIDI file, you furthermore need to indent the plugin tracks so they are subtracks of the master track (use the ‘increase group level’ track menu).
Also, is bit rate for audio recording selectable? If so, where’s it hidden
Bit depth or sample rate? The default sample rate is set in the interfaces dialog. The sample rate can be set for each arrangement in the arrangement properties dialog. By default new sounds are created at 16 bit. If you want to change that you can do so in the sound properties dialog. This reminds me that I should implement a setting for default bit depth that will be used when creating new sounds. ‘ll go add that to the future list.
ZynewaveSounds great Alphonse, glad to to have your support 8)
Yeah I remember trying Bars & Pipes. The UI didn’t appeal to me though. I was more fond of the MusicX sequencer (not sure if I remember the name right).
ZynewaveHi Alphonse,
The current MIDI import was implemented before I added VST support to Podium, so it is not fully implemented and there are some steps that you need to do manually to make it work with VSTi’s:
You should start with a new project, open the Project Wizard, create audio mixer mappings, import the multi-timbral VSTi, close the wizard, import the MIDI file. In an ideal situation you should now be all set to play the arrangement. However the imported MIDI arrangement will not have the proper audio setup, and presets and parameters are also not correctly set up.
You need to insert a new track at the top and assign the master stereo map to it. Then you add a new sub track under the master track and assign the VSTi audio mapping to this (typically the first mapping in the folder for the plugin). This should be enough to get some some sound going. I will rework the MIDI import implementation at some point in the next couple of weeks.
Frits
ZynewaveHi civello,
I don’t have Halion myself, but I can offer some tips regarding the use of multitimbral plugins;
Assigning multiple program library presets (fxp) to different channels of a global plugin won’t work. VST unfortunately does not allow the transfer of fxp programs to be associated with MIDI channels, so if you assign fxp programs to several tracks using the same global plugin, they will overwrite each other on whatever is the current program in the plugin. So you should only assign ONE library preset to a track assigned with the plugin. Furthermore it should be a Bank library preset and not a Program library preset (use the track menu to create a bank preset). Most multitimbral plugins store extra information such as global setup of channels etc. in bank presets and not in single program presets.
Frits
ZynewaveThere was a preorder offer at 75US$ for the beta users, which expired when 1.00 was released. Thing is, I hope my customers don’t feel they are beta testers. Sure there are many features missing, but Podium is a fairly robust application. The demo version is also not that restrictive, so people will be able to determine if they can use Podium as it stands currently.
You wouldn’t believe the amount of work I have put into this application. Considering this, I don’t think 90$ is a high price. The price will not go down.
ZynewaveHi Spe3d, and welcome,
As to direction for this app. What is the target audience? Are you going to be competing against the big boys like Cubase and Cakewalk or are you setting your sites lower?
I am aiming at making Podium into a professional tool. So yes, I will eventually try to compete with the big three/four/five. There are many months of development still to come before this will happen though. There are tons of features in the big sequencers that are not included in Podium. This is the force of these tools but also their disadvantage. Many users, including myself, tend to be discouraged when they are flooded with more or less weird options when trying to do simple things. So I am not aiming at implementing all the features of the big sequencers. My goal with Podium is simplicity in the song-writing process.
Also is there a quick at a glance ‘full’ feature list that I can see – it’s not clearly evident and lots of people like me won’t want to hunt round a whole site and forum to get the full specs – good tip this
There is sort of a ‘negative’ feature list 😉 by which I refer to the ‘future development’ topic. At some point I need to write down that detailed feature list.
ZynewaveFirst check that the default samplerate in the interfaces dialog is set to 48000. Furthermore when you want to work with arrangements you should set the samplerate in the arrangement properties dialog to 48000. The Freebees demo project are set to use 44100, so you need to change the samplerate to 48000 in the demo arrangements.
ZynewaveHi Spe3d,
I think the VAT is very high too.
Sadly there is nothing I can do about the VAT.
ZynewaveThe reason I assumed it is because when I load a project with Halion it takes a lot of time to start playing (or after pressing the monitoring button) .But the reason is that it’s only at that moment Halion start to load its samples >> not while loading the project.
There are several steps involved in starting a plugin. Loading the project will instantiate global plugins so you can open the plugin editor. The VST2.3 spec introduced a new initialization step that is supposed to occur when adding/removing a plugin to the audio processing. Podium calls these functions when starting monitoring, so it may well be this that causes the delay you notice. I doubt there are any plugins other than the Steinberg plugins, that respond to these new effStartProcess/effStopProcess functions. Also any plugin presets are only recalled when monitoring is activated.
Zynewavejust read your response in the ‘Preset recall bug??’ thread…gotcha.
comprehensive new program => learning curve!
Great, this forum software is turning out to be a very valuable support tool 8)
You might also want to check out this topic regarding library presets.
ZynewaveHi civello,
To be able to start Podium without hanging, you could temporarily move or rename your project file (.pod), so that Podium will not find and auto-load the project on startup.
The Halion icon I never saw. I thought podium only loaded/initialised the vsts when enable the monitoring switch and not while loading
If plugins are imported as multitimbral, they are configured as global plugins and thus are loaded when the project is loaded.
After starting Podium you could try to load the moved/renamed project to see if the Halion dialog will appear again and if so, what the the dialog is telling you.
The extra Podium icon in the start bar could be the lingering Splash window. Not necessarily a driver dialog.
Frits
ZynewaveI think the only thing that stuck in my head was that I constantly wanted to switch between the various tools, which meant I kept having to move over to the tool selection whenever I needed to change tools.
You probably are aware of this, but the right-click context menu contains shortcuts to tools, so you don’t have to move the mouse all the way to the top toolbar. Maybe I should move the tool shortcuts to the top of the context menu?
I think the only thing that comes to mind at the moment is the ability to resize a track’s height needs the pencil tool… I think that certain ‘action’ should be available in all the tools… it shouldn’t conflict with anything.
The reason I implemented this only for the pencil tool, was that the resize area overlaps the bottom of the track header (depending on the space between tracks as configured in the profile). So you would not be able to edit/drag stuff that was shown only partly at the bottom of the header. Thanks to this thread, I have now seen the light, and implemented it for all tools. Will be available in 1.06.
I had a bunch of VSTs imported into Podium before you had VST automation via it’s parameters. I’m assuming I need to reimport them… is there a way to automagically rescan them?
No magical shortcut, sorry. Suggestion: New project, import plugin, browse to and select the ‘VST Parameters’ folder, copy (Ctrl+C), reload original project, browse, paste (Ctrl+V).