Loop Construction into Sampler?

[Will.]

6 hours ago, Scott Wheeler said:

That went away ... I think after the second alpha?  Anyway, hasn't been the case for more than a year at least.

Original installation - no-nara! you have a clean install.

The problem comes in with 3rd party websites that creates their own install with some free vsts - with an advertising link to an App they offer that you have to install first, before you can install the actual product. 

I think you have to include this on the site. 

[Scott Wheeler]

56 minutes ago, Will_Kaydo said:

Original installation - no-nara! you have a clean install.

The problem comes in with 3rd party websites that creates their own install with some free vsts - with an advertising link to an App they offer that you have to install first, before you can install the actual product. 

I think you have to include this on the site. 

I don't quite understand what you're suggesting here, so  to be clear:  in our first couple of alphas, there was a background service that ran and didn't actively do anything.  (Being pedantic, a background service that isn't doing anything doesn't actually consume system resources:  its memory will be swapped out, and it doesn't take CPU time.)  When you start up Sitala, then and now, it checks for updates.  You can't upgrade an app from inside the app itself, so you have to start a second process to perform the upgrade.  In our first couple of alphas, we did that with a background service.  Now it just temporarily starts a second upgrader process that automatically exits when the upgrade is finished (and upgrading automatically removed that service).  There was never anything nefarious or advertising related, just some inexperience with Windows programming (the two of us that work on Sitala primarily come from macOS and Linux backgrounds).

[Will.]

55 minutes ago, Scott Wheeler said:

I don't quite understand what you're suggesting here.

I'm adding to what Chris said.

There's are still third party pirate companies that creates their own "exe" files with hidden apps and updates to that hidden product on an owned product. 

These apps hide their existence on  devices by removing their icons from home screen. 

Example: I was testing out another free vst, which I saw on a pop-up advertising link through a site I was on. I downloaded the file, but it asked me to download an anti-virus software first, boy did it caused problems on my laptop (always test things on it first before I officially install in on the studio system) I then for the original site to that plugin and I got a clean install there. 

But we all know it's impossible to search the entire World Wide Web for these copies. 

[chris.r]

12 hours ago, Scott Wheeler said:

(Being pedantic, a background service that isn't doing anything doesn't actually consume system resources:  its memory will be swapped out, and it doesn't take CPU time.)

Didn't know that so thanks for clearing that up. For me it was always that if something is loaded up with Windows session then it takes the resources.

20 hours ago, Scott Wheeler said:

That went away ... I think after the second alpha?  Anyway, hasn't been the case for more than a year at least.

How brilliant! I can now welcome Sitala on my production desktop, isn't that great news?  btw. I feel like I checked Sitala just a couple weeks ago... man, time is racing lately.

[chris.r]

21 hours ago, Scott Wheeler said:

The things we have in the upcoming release are automatic multi-out routing, and synchronized track names (so the pad name is automatically reflected in the pad name).  We already had note names working in Reaper in our last release.

Small steps for developers (or maybe not, idk?) but a huge leap for us music makers .

Edited December 7, 2020 by chris.r

[chris.r]

On 12/5/2020 at 4:58 PM, Starship Krupa said:

I just want to keep the distinction between the two "sampler" paradigms, some people know the term applied to both types, some one or the other.

I realize that my previous long, long post might have been somewhat obscure and clear as mud  but in a nutshell all I wanted to say was that I'd vote for all of them (all types) inside Cakewalk. A sampler is a sampler, an engine that operates on samples. The types of operation on the samples is where your distinction comes from, but I'm not sure what making this distinction, in context of a sample track for Cakewalk, should serve?

[Starship Krupa]

12 hours ago, chris.r said:

A sampler is a sampler, an engine that operates on samples. The types of operation on the samples is where your distinction comes from, but I'm not sure what making this distinction, in context of a sample track for Cakewalk, should serve?

I don't agree that "a sampler is a sampler." There are different types of hardware samplers, and that is mirrored in software. Both an Akai MPC and a Fairlight CMI are "samplers," but they have different functions, different vocabularies, and are primarily used in different styles of music. They're so different that for heavy users of one type, the other type isn't on their radar at all.

Here in the forum, it's just a matter of advocacy. The developers prioritize new features based on the perceived demand. In the past when the "Cakewalk needs a sampler!" cry has gone up there have been people who said they did not want Cakewalk to come with a "sampler," because they had already invested in Kontakt or Sampletank libraries and didn't want to have to deal with yet another format. To them a "sampler" is something with big libraries for doing orchestration or scoring or whatever.

I want to keep it clear that a Kontakt/Sampletank type of thing is not what I'm advocating for (although if someone else wants to, they can go right ahead). I think that an MPC-type phrase/pad sampler is something Cakewalk should have. If it had a way to map and stretch and pitch shift sounds across multiple keys, I wouldn't mind that either, but it's not as important to me.

[Scott Wheeler]

15 hours ago, chris.r said:

Didn't know that so thanks for clearing that up. For me it was always that if something is loaded up with Windows session then it takes the resources.

There are various ways that a poorly written service could take resources even when doing nothing, but a well-written service won't.  It will however take a little bit of CPU time when the system is started up.  What's confusing in the Windows system monitor is that it shows which resources have been allocated; that's only part of the picture though:  system memory can be swapped out to disk when it's not in use, and that will usually happen for a service that's not doing anything.

[Scott Wheeler]

On 12/4/2020 at 10:46 AM, Will_Kaydo said:

@Noel Borthwick Would you be interested in reaching out? 

I thought I'd go ahead and drop in slightly more technical details in case @Noel Borthwick or others are interested.

The API for this is very small -- basically the 4 functions that have to be implemented.  I just posted the current version (which we're using for Reaper at the moment) in a Github Gist:

https://gist.github.com/scotchi/4066f56b71b7b3b112b05df26d52034c

There are a couple core ideas here:

• We want create several very small interfaces, so that DAWs can pick and choose which extensions to implement
• We want to keep the interfaces very generic so they can be implemented frictionlessly by other plugins

[Will.]

3 hours ago, Scott Wheeler said:

I thought I'd go ahead and drop in slightly more technical details in case @Noel Borthwick or others are interested.

The API for this is very small -- basically the 4 functions that have to be implemented.  I just posted the current version (which we're using for Reaper at the moment) in a Github Gist:

https://gist.github.com/scotchi/4066f56b71b7b3b112b05df26d52034c

There are a couple core ideas here:

• We want create several very small interfaces, so that DAWs can pick and choose which extensions to implement
• We want to keep the interfaces very generic so they can be implemented frictionlessly by other plugins

And Intergrated too. ?+??=?

[Noel Borthwick]

On 12/7/2020 at 10:04 AM, Scott Wheeler said:

I thought I'd go ahead and drop in slightly more technical details in case @Noel Borthwick or others are interested.

The API for this is very small -- basically the 4 functions that have to be implemented.  I just posted the current version (which we're using for Reaper at the moment) in a Github Gist:

https://gist.github.com/scotchi/4066f56b71b7b3b112b05df26d52034c

There are a couple core ideas here:

• We want create several very small interfaces, so that DAWs can pick and choose which extensions to implement
• We want to keep the interfaces very generic so they can be implemented frictionlessly by other plugins

Hi @Scott Wheeler,

Thanks for the message. I'm not familiar with Sitala so I should check it out. I assume that the plugin is a multi-out VST instrument? Both VST2 and VST3 have  multi-out support. What is the purpose of the custom API?
Feel free to PM me and we can discuss further.

[Will.]

3 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Hi @Scott Wheeler,

Thanks for the message. I'm not familiar with Sitala so I should check it out. I assume that the plugin is a multi-out VST instrument? Both VST2 and VST3 have  multi-out support. What is the purpose of the custom API?
Feel free to PM me and we can discuss further.

@Scott Wheeler 

Thanks for taking interest in this @Noel Borthwick 

We appreciate you ×1000000  - no matter the outcome of it. 

 

[Starship Krupa]

On 12/4/2020 at 5:00 AM, Starship Krupa said:

For me, the minimum is dragging audio clips from Cakewalk tracks to the sampler's pads with no intermediate steps or conversions or leaving the app. If I could just do that, life would be so much simpler.

Well, this is kind of embarrassing, although in a pretty great way.

I was working with pitch shifting some imported audio in CbB this afternoon and reading the Reference Guide. In amongst the various nuggets, I spotted this:

"You can drag and drop clips from Cakewalk to another application or to a directory in Windows."

Um, say what? I knew you could drag and drop into Cakewalk, but not the other direction. I opened an instance of Sitala and grabbed a clip from an audio track and dropped it onto one of Sitala's pads, and it worked perfectly.

Between Cakewalk and Sitala, and I tried Speed Drum Lite and it worked just the same, they already do what I most want a phrase sampler to do.

[Will.]

7 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Well, this is kind of embarrassing, although in a pretty great way.

I was working with pitch shifting some imported audio in CbB this afternoon and reading the Reference Guide. In amongst the various nuggets, I spotted this:

"You can drag and drop clips from Cakewalk to another application or to a directory in Windows."

Um, say what? I knew you could drag and drop into Cakewalk, but not the other direction. I opened an instance of Sitala and grabbed a clip from an audio track and dropped it onto one of Sitala's pads, and it worked perfectly.

Between Cakewalk and Sitala, and I tried Speed Drum Lite and it worked just the same, they already do what I most want a phrase sampler to do.

Yes, this has been possible for years. Not recently, but yeeears. 

[Glenn Stanton]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

I was ... reading the Reference Guide. ...

oh man! now you've done it! broken the "real men don't read manuals" law-of-the-universe... ? 

[chris.r]

On 12/7/2020 at 2:10 PM, Starship Krupa said:

I don't agree that "a sampler is a sampler." There are different types of hardware samplers, and that is mirrored in software. Both an Akai MPC and a Fairlight CMI are "samplers," but they have different functions, different vocabularies, and are primarily used in different styles of music. They're so different that for heavy users of one type, the other type isn't on their radar at all.

Well, I could go even further and call it a sampler, a synth, whatever. I have this old vintage synth (although I don't feel it like that) Yamaha EX5 where beside the tens of thousands of waveforms you can also sample your own audio. In the OS, only the part for capturing audio and simple basic treatment is called a sampler, what you can next do with the output is just anything from assigning samples to the keys for triggering (one shot, key held down, or latch), building your next to none drum kit (128 keys, 128 velocity layers each, plus processing) up to sending it through a regular synth path as one of the four parts (four waveforms>PEG>FEG>AEG>Effects>Controllers), all this is then reffered in the manual as synthesizer . So yeah like I say, in the end it's all down to what are the tools built into the sampler. And, well, I'm guilty as charged... I read manuals too .

[chris.r]

6 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I knew you could drag and drop into Cakewalk, but not the other direction. I opened an instance of Sitala and grabbed a clip from an audio track and dropped it onto one of Sitala's pads, and it worked perfectly.

You can drag MIDI and audio clips from clips pane onto browser for building your collection or exchanging data ?

[Will.]

4 hours ago, chris.r said:

well, I'm guilty as charged... I read manuals too .

??

A youtube video will only show you what that person knows and not much of a "why" we do that. 

I'm big on wanting to know why.

I remember asking my grade 1 teacher a "why" question. Apparently I was 5 in the video my mom took at the time and keep on playing it every year on Christmas days. 

Little Me: Mrs. Jackie - why is 1 - 1 = 0 when there's two "1's" 

Mrs. Jackie: If you have 1 apple and you eat that apple, how many apples do you have? 

Me: None

Only a couple of teachers could tolerate my WHY's through my school days. 

So, Yeah! I too read manuals. ? 

[Maestro]

Honestly, I think a sample editor is a lot more important than a sampler - the two not being mutually exclusive.

I also think that would be a far easier transition for the Loop Construction View.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Maestro

[Will.]

28 minutes ago, Maestro said:

Honestly, I think a sample editor is a lot more important than a sampler - the two not being mutually exclusive.

I also think that would be a far easier transition for the Loop Construction View.

Yes, but what if you can hit both birds with one stone? 

Sitala plus an Editor? Sitala as the sampler (Drum machine) and loop construction as the editor? 

Or . . .

Sitala as both.

I like that idea more.