SunVox v1.8 BETA

Multi-platform modular music creation studio
Koekepan
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by Koekepan »

A couple of comments:

The good:
I really like the new SpectraVoice, and your additions to Analogue Synth have vastly improved it.
I am hugely encouraged to see that you added another MIDI keyboard capability - not that I think more than one keyboard talking to a single module makes a big difference, but because I hope it means that you'll be adding more sophisticated MIDI map capabilities, maybe MIDI learning, for automation and other control.

The bad:
Nothing so far.
I still dream of full trainable MIDI input support, really powerful gracenote, slurring and similar capabilities, but I guess I can fake those with tracks, delays, patterns and so on.
No crashes, no obvious bugs. Maybe instead of just previous track, expand the idea to an arbitrary track? Use the velocity column to specify the applied track? Just mumbling ideas.
The alternative approach would be to focus on putting the effect capabilities in modules, and then just use tracks to automate the effects in the modules. That seems more sunvoxy, to be honest.

The ugly:
It took me a while to track down the pattern editor special commands. I think that this needs either a tutorial and documentation to advertise the abilities there, or a better interface. It's not bad, just kind of obscure.
dhry
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by dhry »

Excellent work on the beta!

Could I request a "pattern follow" feature please? So that not only will the playhead follow the current position, but the pattern display itself will scroll down and also automatically flip to the currently-being-played pattern to save having to manually do this, and so that the composer has an instant visual representation at all times of the tracks during playback. Most other tracker programs have this feature, which can be disabled or enabled as the user wishes.

Cheers
Dhry
Koekepan
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by Koekepan »

dhry wrote: Could I request a "pattern follow" feature please? So that not only will the playhead follow the current position, but the pattern display itself will scroll down and also automatically flip to the currently-being-played pattern to save having to manually do this, and so that the composer has an instant visual representation at all times of the tracks during playback. Most other tracker programs have this feature, which can be disabled or enabled as the user wishes.
I'm not sure how this would work in Sunvox. Bear in mind that you can have one pattern playing, then nothing, then suddenly five at a time all of different lengths, which get replaced piecemeal by others .... how would the system select which one to follow? I don't think there's an elegant automated way of doing this, so I think it would be a misfeature which would take development time away from more achievable improvements.

Just my two cents.
hseiken
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by hseiken »

Koekepan wrote:
dhry wrote: Could I request a "pattern follow" feature please? So that not only will the playhead follow the current position, but the pattern display itself will scroll down and also automatically flip to the currently-being-played pattern to save having to manually do this, and so that the composer has an instant visual representation at all times of the tracks during playback. Most other tracker programs have this feature, which can be disabled or enabled as the user wishes.
I'm not sure how this would work in Sunvox. Bear in mind that you can have one pattern playing, then nothing, then suddenly five at a time all of different lengths, which get replaced piecemeal by others .... how would the system select which one to follow? I don't think there's an elegant automated way of doing this, so I think it would be a misfeature which would take development time away from more achievable improvements.

Just my two cents.

I have a hardware device that works with different lengths of loops by just treating each loop individually, wherever on the song you hit play, it starts at that point when you're in 'phrase loop' but it will individually loop each phrase, regardless of how long that pattern is, so you get into strange polyrhythmic territory by playing with this feature and it leads to lots of neat surprises.

Maybe this text illustration will show you better what happens...

Code: Select all

Pattern 1 = AAAAA
Pattern 2 = BB
Pattern 3 = CCC

In the song, you may see arrangement like this:
---------------------------------------------
TRACK1: |AAAAA|AAAAA|AAAAA|
TRACK2: |BB|BB|BB|BB|
TRACK3:       |CCC|     |CCC|
--------------------------------------------

If we hit 'pattern play' with the cursor here:
------------v----------------------------------
TRACK1: |AAAAA|AAAAA|AAAAA|
TRACK2: |BB|BB|BB|BB|
TRACK3:       |CCC|     |CCC|
------------^---------------------------------

...then we'll hear this looped until we hit stop:
------------v----------------------------------
TRACK1: AAA|AAAAA|AAAAA|AAAAA|   
TRACK2: |BB|BB|BB|BB||BB|BB|BB
TRACK3: 
------------^---------------------------------

And likewise, if we hit 'pattern play' here:
-------------------------v--------------------
TRACK1: |AAAAA|AAAAA|AAAAA|
TRACK2: |BB|BB|BB|BB|
TRACK3:       |CCC|     |CCC|
-------------------------^-------------------

What we'll get out of our speakers will be this:
----------------------------------------------
TRACK1: A|AAAAA|AAAAA|AAAAA|
TRACK2: 
TRACK3: |CCC|CCC|CCC|CCC|CCC|
---------------------------------------------
As you can see, playing patterns of different lengths isn't difficult to visualize. I think having both the kind of pattern loop play we have know where whatever pattern in the song is selected (even a cloned one) just plays that chunk of loop from the song as it is, but this here would be a nice alternate as well. It would be interesting to see it boil over into the song playlist itself in some way too, maybe as option? Where you simply put a pattern down like it's a note and it will play until you hit post a 'pattern-off' event...

Hmmmm...could be interesting.
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Koekepan
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by Koekepan »

I see what you're saying, hseiken, and I've played around with that, but it does not seem to be what dhry was talking about.
So that not only will the playhead follow the current position, but the pattern display itself will scroll down and also automatically flip to the currently-being-played pattern to save having to manually do this, and so that the composer has an instant visual representation at all times of the tracks during playback.
That is about what is displayed, in the pattern display, during playback. Which pattern's tracks should be in the pattern display if there are five currently playing? It's easy if the user manually selected one, but a lot less clear after that one has been played and the playhead moves on.
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SolarLune
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by SolarLune »

It could just grab the next pattern that's closest to the previous pattern when the playhead moves on. Since you already put patterns one after the other to arrange a song, Sunvox can assume that the next pattern you'd like to see visualized would be the one in the same row (as possible). This would work well if you arranged your song in such a way that each row indicated a different portion of the song (rhythm, piano, keyboard, synth, automation, sound effects, etc).

EDIT: If you don't have a pattern selected at the beginning, just grab the one closest to 0,0 (there's a horizontal line in the timeline window that could double as the 0 on the Y-Axis). That could indicate the "main" pattern.
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SolarLune
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by SolarLune »

NightRadio wrote:Thanks guys! :)

to SolarLune: please also set the Play Song controller to ON.
Ah, I see now. This is really cool - I like that there's no set limit to the length of an arpeggio (like other programs tend to enforce), and that it's really an entire song that you can arpeggiate. However, it still would be nice to have arpeggiator features, like automatic playback of inputted notes - it's kinda difficult to use at the moment because you're tied in to a specific sound (the modules in the metamodule) and a specific chord or chord structure (the notes in the timeline in the metamodule).

Thanks for it, nonetheless.

P.S. The Load button's no longer first in the Sampler - could you put it back where it was originally?
Carbonthief
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by Carbonthief »

The Spectravoice changes are awesome!
iaon
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by iaon »

Great improvements all around!

In the new simple song example 'metamodule_arpeggiator2' std effect code 09 is used to start metamodule playback from any line. Turns out this was already possible before this version, though i don't recall it ever being mentioned. Makes one wonder about other undocumented (or lesser known) functionalities...
hseiken
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by hseiken »

On PalmOS, Sunvox can load songs with MultiCtl, MultiSynth, etc. but you cannot actually create these modules in your own tracks...I was going to use my palm to work on special metamachines while on the train to bring back home and use on the computer...but since it's missing those great machines, it's quite limiting on what kind of metamachine I am able to make.
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NightRadio
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by NightRadio »

On PalmOS, Sunvox can load songs with MultiCtl, MultiSynth, etc. but you cannot actually create these modules in your own tracks...
Are you sure? I can create them without any problems on Palm TX.
Only the following modules are not available in PalmOS version: Input, Vorbis Player, MetaModule. You can find the comparison of different SunVox versions here: http://www.warmplace.ru/wiki/sunvox:man ... t_versions
hseiken
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by hseiken »

Problem was with dual install on PalmOS. 1.7.3b was installed to the device and for some reason, when I ran the newest one off of the SD card, the internal version was launched instead. I uninstalled the old version and the newest one launches now...
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SolarLune
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by SolarLune »

Using the Spectravoice with no attack or release, a high or low sample size, a single harmonic, and no bandwidth gives a sine wave that wavers around in terms of volume and phase, I suppose? Is this intentional?
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NightRadio
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by NightRadio »

Using the Spectravoice with no attack or release, a high or low sample size, a single harmonic, and no bandwidth gives a sine wave that wavers around in terms of volume and phase
Yes :) Actually Bandwidth=0 is not a real zero. It is slightly larger than pure sine.
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SolarLune
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Re: SunVox v1.8 BETA

Post by SolarLune »

Being that this could mess with sounds if you're trying to get perfect harmonies, could you set Bandwidth = 0 to be a real zero? So that there's no "wavering"?
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