Anyone else experimenting with this?
I wanted to compare the results of playing Aalto with OSC messages vs. playing it with just MIDI messages in Ableton Live 9.
In Live, I set up my first MIDI track with Aalto, but set the track to No MIDI Input. Aalto was connected to OSC directly from the Soundplane. Track 2 (audio) was set to record audio from Track 1.
Track 3 (MIDI) recorded MIDI coming from Soundplane IAC out.
I recorded a performance simultaneously to Tracks 2 and 3. Then I inserted another instance of Aalto with the same preset onto Track 3 (which can't also connect to OSC because the Track 1 version is.) I recorded audio to Track 4 using the MIDI from Track 3.
(I didn't try recording both instances of Aalto at once, although it probably would have been fine. Wanted to keep it simpler for me to keep track of.)
What this gives me is two audio tracks from the same gestures through Soundplane/Aalto, same sound patch, one with the OSC version and one with "regular" MIDI. They are very different! The OSC version seems to have more subtleties, but the MIDI version has a completely different slant on the instrument. Putting them both into the Arrangement view to compare, they have similar flows, but sometimes where one is very quiet the other is louder or has a different resonance or frequency. They sound good separately or together. For this experiment I used a sound which is like a Chinese mouth organ/flute (Soundplane dizi.)
On the technical side, per Randy's suggestion (thanks, Randy!) I turned the OSC rate on the Soundplane down to about 30, which seems to work OK in Ableton. Do you have more specific recommendations on this? Or on MIDI rate?
The main reason to use MIDI would be so you can record the note data--as yet, there isn't a DAW that supports recording and editing OSC data.
OSC goes directly to the plugin, bypassing the DAW itself. The right data rate will depend on your system and how loaded down it is with other work. I have good results with 100 or so. Note that the timing of an initial note onset is not affected by the rate dial---notes are always sent ASAP, then pressure and other continuous information is sent at the rate you select.
I guess there will be differences between the results with MIDI and OSC. In the dizi example, which is basically a physical model, things like the timing of the pressure data could for sure affect how the instrument speaks.
Please see my other message about documentation, I'm going to repost the docs for the Soundplane app today and take the opportunity to clean things up a bit.