NielsoMar 4

AudioDamage AD061 Descent won't let me off the hook.

It's a granular delay/reverb #plugin that is a lot of fun. However, I now found out that what I'd like to have is something that is more related to the granular delay in my beloved #Soma #Cosmos “Drifting Memory Station”.

The big deep bass #drone to rule them all, with sparkling mid-high freq stars!

So, adding to yesterday's video, I added a stereo auto panner and a looper. The #Guitarix looper isn't that great to use, for real fun I'd need to get my AKAI button controller to interact.

It's the first time I am considering taking a PC-based setup on stage one fine day. The sound is just too great…

I usually use a simple Mooer RedTruck for playing fretless bass live, but in comparison to the FX by TC and the Eden WTDI + Descent plugin, it sounds cheap.

Check out yesterday's gear porn nerdcore #LinuxAudio video: https://makertube.net/w/hMwaXVNb1mTMGMv28yDvwU

#GranularDelay #Bass #BassGuitar #FretlessBass #AudioDamage #AudioDamageDescent #SomaCosmos #Linux #LinuxProAudio

Show threadNielsoMar 8

🧵 Still amazed by this granular delay plugin, AudioDamage AD061 Descent.

I had tried a setup that resembles my #Soma #Cosmos effect engine in the preceding toot. However, the #Guitarix looper is kinda difficult for me. So I remembered there is a quite crazy #looper for #vcvRack. Thus I tried to re-implement the entire #Carla-based setup in #VCV.

It is very easy to use MIDI controllers in VCV. (Guitarix looper was horrible for that.)

It sort of worked. What's difficult perhaps for many people, the routing and controlling, is easy for me as a nerd. VCV has plenty of interesting modules to do whatever to your audio signals.

Yet what it really doesn't have that much is decent equalizers, or a working noise gate. So it's time for rack as a VST host again. And… it doesn't really like to run multi-threaded on my system. My PC is an Xeon with weak single core performance, but using all its 16 CPU cores, it is a beast… mh.

Unsure which route to follow. Plus, the looper in VCV is somewhat idiosyncratic, too.

Show threadThomasMar 8

@nielso If you feel like the solution might be to acquire more gear, you might have a look at #Zynthian. They implemented the #SooperLooper engine and you can run plugins via Carla.

https://zynthian.org/

Home

Open Synth Platform. Imagine having all the sounds you ever dreamed of in the palm of your hand.

Show threadNielsoMar 8

@tm

I am actually a post-zynthian person. But that was some years ago…

… after some interesting crashes of VCV rack I might as well just do voodoo to get #GxLooper midi-controlled for my crazy ideas.

It turns out, that while @falktx created a pretty sturdy plugin host with Carla, @x42 has given us some neat MIDI tweaking plugins. These might actually manage to translate from my #Akai #LPD8 to what #Guitarix #Looper needs.

Show threadNielso

🧵 #MIDI madness for controlling #Guitarix #Looper from my #Akai #LPD8…

The Akai's touch buttons / drum pads can send Note, CC or Program Change. #Carla needs MIDI CC to control plugins, #gxLiveLooper needs one-shot messages for erasing tracks, yet it needs something on-off for recording. Basically: “hold the rec button” – but how, I need my hands to play, so I need to toggle that.

Solution: Set Akai controller to note mode. Split the “keyboard” so that the upper 4 keys/drum pads get passed on straight in channel 9, and the lower 4 run in channel 10, to which MIDI Note Toggle reacts. Then convert anything note to CC using MIDI Note to CC.

Let's see of this works in a little jam…

Note that I do not intend to do a timed looping performance like these many YouTube artists overdoing Ableton Live, I need drone sounds from bass guitar to be fed into #AudioDamage #Descent #GranularDelay, so timing is not that relevant.

@tm @falktx @x42

#LinuxAudio #LinuxProAudio #LinuxMusician

Mar 10 at 8:35amWeb
Show threadNielsoMar 10

@tm @falktx @x42

… having figured that out I would like to say… it would be beautiful if someone did a basic plugin clone of the old Boss RC-303 looper. This hardware unit was so easy to use. Yet it was only 16bit and had some bugs and the I/O was too limited, so I sold mine long time ago.

@amadeus – is there a plugin wish list? 🤪

EDIT: It's actually Boss RC-300. Roland 303 was something else.

Show threadAmadeus Paulussen5d ago
@nielso @tm @falktx @x42 No, there is no official plugin wish list yet. 😜
Show threadAmadeus Paulussen5d ago

@nielso @tm @falktx @x42 Did you ever had a look at Giada? I wanted to give it a try since a while, but… no time! 🫣

https://giadamusic.com/

Show threadErcanbrack5d ago

@amadeus @nielso @tm @falktx @x42

Giada is awesome!! It's incredibly powerful, and very simple. 😊

Show threadMorten Mosgaard5d ago

@nielso @tm @falktx @x42 @amadeus two options:

I once build a setup similar to the Boss looper in MainStage using 3-4 instances of SooperLooper: https://sonosaurus.com/sooperlooper/

I could see you build something similar in your daw of choice.

Or perhaps check Cardinal by Falktx and @dreamer which might be able to host a looper in a Modular as VST: https://cardinal.kx.studio

SooperLooper - Live Looping Sampler

Show threadNielso4d ago

@mosgaard @tm @falktx @x42 @amadeus @dreamer

I tried sickoLooper in VCV Rack, which is crazy in other ways. However, my patch would crash every now and then. Don't know why, perhaps AudioDamage Descent doesn't like to run in VCV.

For now, Guitarix Looper does this single job okay, I was just wondering why apparently there's no clone of the Boss loopers, given they are so widespread.

But then again, maybe gxLiveLooper isn't too far away from a basic Boss looper.

The Guitarix amps sound rather sad in my opinion, compared to my cheap Thomann tube amp.

Show threadMorten Mosgaard4d ago

@nielso my idea of using a DAW to get the AudioDamage plugin to an environment which we know it works in, where you have extensive options for midi triggering and such.

But perhaps it makes more sense because I’m a Bitwig user, and internal routing and custom remote controls is part of the normal workflow.

Show threadNielso4d ago

@mosgaard

Mhh I get it. As a Mixbus / Ardour user, I'm not so much used to custom remote controls and stuff, but of course what I did in Carla would also work in Ardour. I guess Reaper can would be a better match for that occasion, but I'm not intending to switch.

I'm still a little unsure about all of this. I really like using this virtual rig I created as it is now. But I never used computers live on stage, it feels weird to me and not that stable.

I mean, compare this to a tc Plethora X5, which is available for 350€ and will likely never crash. It can run 5 FX simultaneously out of a a huge collection, storing 175 complete setups.

… which is what MainStage could do on Mac, but Carla can't do that easily: Switching the setup for the next song.

… but then again hardware granular delays are weirdly expensive, and tc doesn't have any.

But yeah, switching the setup between pieces is my main concern, I guess.

Show threadMorten Mosgaard4d ago

@nielso now we talk about it, there is a whole in the marked on Linux where MacOS has MainStage.

I have been using looping and effects a lot for improvisation, and mostly hardware setups. Whenever I have used a laptop for my projects, MainStage has been the only solution that truely worked in a live setting for me, because of the way you create a custom GUI which is easy to control via midi and the option to create lists with setups/presets you can change through.

Show threadDRMR4d ago
@nielso Cardinal comes with its own plugin host modules (Ildaeil and Carla) that should work :#