randy's Recent Posts
I haven't heard sound stopping on any of the hosts I use for months. This could be something different. I'll make a note to try Freestyle and an NI host when I can.
(This already went out via the mailing list. I'm posting here for people who are just joining us.)
Sumu update.
Hi folks, thanks all of you who have purchased the Early Access release of Sumu or the Studio Bundle! Though I’m still deep in Sumu work, I’m also looking ahead to the updates of the other instruments, and to future projects I want to get started on. I couldn’t even imagine doing some of these future projects without full time to devote to Madrona Labs work. Based on the success of the Sumu launch so far, it looks like I’ll be able to have that time. This is huge for me.
So, the release got out, but not without hiccups. There are a few bugs that I created in my last week of work and as such, evaded beta testing:
- crashes on load on Windows, in DAWs including FL Studio and Cubase
- window too big on launch, preventing easy resize
- distorted sound coming from oscillators mod osc output
I am going to get a release out ASAP to address these—but also take the time to beta test everything properly. I have already fixed two out of three of these issues here, so I think June 3 is a realistic date for the next update. Other fixes will be in it also.
Sumu FAQ.
The scales menu is grayed out. Is it unimplemented?
Yes, everything grayed out is that way on purpose because it is not implemented yet.
I'm not finding the popup menus for patches and partials.
These need a right-click (Windows) or ctrl+click or two-finger click (Mac). This is confusing a lot of folks so I'm going to change it in a future release.
When will the 1.0 release come out?
Given a reasonable pace of three or four betas, I’m shooting for 8–10 weeks from now.
I’m trying to import my own partials but it’s not working.
The documentation is not complete but please look at this topic on our forums: https://madronalabs.com/topics/9253-sumo-preset-and-partials-maps-menu-selection
See also this Vutu quickstart, which is a little behind the current Vutu but a good intro:
https://youtu.be/crvpsnbLtt0
I can’t find the global settings […] menu described in the manual.
The manual has it wrong—I removed that one after telling George it would be there, because it wasn’t done yet. Please look forward to more menus in the future.
Is the Vutu / Sumu partials format proprietary?
No. Vutu exports partials as editable JSON text files with a .vutu extension. When Sumu imports the .vutu files it does two things: compresses them and moves them into the Sumu/Partials directory where they are saved as .utu.
Feature X is not working, is this a demo restriction?
The only demo restrictions are as follows:
- saving patches is not allowed
- a soft “demo wave” sound plays every two minutes Anything else that seems wrong is either a bug, or a weird synthesizer working properly.
The window size is too big, how can I change it?
To change the window size, you need to drag the triangle in the lower right corner. But this is impossible if it's offscreen! You can work around this in the meantime by setting your display resolution high enough to see the resizer in the lower right, resizing Sumu to a reasonable size, and saving that state in your DAW. On opening the saved patch Sumu should start with the saved size.
What input device(s) are you using where the current setup is preferable?
Mouse wheel on Windows and track pad on Mac.
Interesting that the presets should be similar in CPU load with the same voice setting. I checked both problem presets and they are set to 4 voices.
There are only a couple of things that are options that might make patches really different from one another: reverb and filter.
Unrelated feature idea: What do you think about making the hitbox (not sure that's the correct term) for all outputs like amp, pitch, noise etc. larger?
Good idea. We're honestly just at the beginning of using this very new plugin / app framework, and I know there will be lots of usability improvements. Seems like no downside to this one! There's only a downside when the area is so big that a click "nowhere" would seem to have an effect but I agree it's too tight now.
Clearly it's counterintuitive. I'll have a rethink.
Metadata would be a nice idea. I'm going to do a lot more work around patches, usability and workflow in the future.
I'm attaching a screen shot of the directory of patches synth_NYC sent. The ones with numerical names got renamed but any of the patches using those partials files (now in /synthetic/tidbits) are by him.
http://madronalabs.com/media/forums/randy/nyc-patches.png
They are very high quality patches! I especially appreciate his clever use of the space module.
Thanks for the clear report! This is bad! I'll fix for 1.0.1. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I'm going to add an option to change scroll direction because I don't think any one choice works for everyone, considering the different possible input devices.
I'll be doing lots more work on performance, thanks for the info. I'll definitely check out why those two presents might be particularly worse. Is it possible we left the number of voices higher on those? FYI, any preset pretty much should use the same amount of CPU, and uses an amount proportional to the number of voices set in the input module. So if we left one of those presets on 8 voices or something that would explain it.
*** updated with latest Mac and Windows links ***
I've just posted a public beta of Vutu for MacOS (edit: and now for WIndows!). Vutu is the sound analysis program for the upcoming Sumu synthesizer.
links:
Mac: http://madronalabs.com/media/vutu/Vutu%200.9.9.dmg
Windows: http://madronalabs.com/media/vutu/VutuWin0.9.10.zip
A Vutu quickstart video is also online now. I haven't had a chance to write any better documentation yet, and I"m not sure I will before I get the Sumu beta out. However, Vutu in its current form is pretty simple anyway, and most of what you need to know you can find out by fooling around with the dials and listening and looking.
Vutu analyzes sounds using Loris, developed by Kelly Fitz and Lippold Haken at the CERL Sound Group. A detailed intro to Loris is available on Hakenaudio.com: Current Research in Real-time Sound Morphing More publications are also linked from the CERL Sound Group Loris page. Loris is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and thus, Vutu is also. Vutu's source is available on Github.
Vutu is built on a cross-platform GUI framework I developed called mlvg. Compiling it for Windows and Linux should therefore be a reasonably easy task, but I know there will be a bunch of details to iron out, so I'm not taking that on until after I can make a Sumu beta.
That was a lot of info and links. Why would you want to play with Vutu right now? Some reasons might be:
- You want to get started making your own sound bank for Sumu.
- You have to try out the newest audio software, whatever it is, and this was just released today.
- You enjoy looking at bandwidth-enhanced partials and hearing odd noises.
Each voice of Sumu will be able to play back 64 bandwidth-enhanced partials simultaneously. A bandwidth-enhanced partial is basically a single sine wave, modulated with noise. So at any given instant of time, in addition to frequency, amplitude and phase, it also has a bandwidth, or noisiness. Making sounds out of such partials is a very powerful technique, and I think it's pretty easy to grasp. What's been difficult about additive synthesis is the large amount of control data that's needed. How do you generate it all? My answer in Sumu is to use the familiar patchable interface, but extended so that each patch cord carries separate signals for each partial. This allows sound design in a playful, exploratory way that should be familiar to any modular user. Honestly I think it will be fun as hell.
Thanks to Kelly Fitz and Lippold Haken for creating and sharing Loris. Thanks also to Greg Wuller for helping me get going with the Loris source code, and for utu, which became Vutu. Utu is a Finnish word for "mist" or "fog", like Sumu. Vutu is short for visual utu.
Vutu requirements
A Metal-capable Mac running MacOS 10.14 (Mojave) or greater.
Vutu is native for Intel and Apple Silicon.
Since it's an analyzer and not a real-time program (except for playing the results), CPU doesn't really matter.
Thanks for the report, I could reproduce immediately. I look forward to fixing this for 1.0.1.
Thanks for the feedback and feature requests. I'm always improving workflow things and Sumu is very new so I'll definitely be fine-tuning these things.
I'm surprised that the volume ever goes above 1.0 with clipping on. It should hard limit everything to 0dB. inter-sample peaks or downstream processing, possibly? If you can give me detailed instructions I'll try to reproduce.
I don't really understand what you are seeing here with performance. It was bad, but mysteriously got better in Cubase? You can try closing the plugin window to see if that affects things—different DAWs handle it very differently. Your computer should be fine, I think.
Version 2 may be free or discounted if you have bought version 1 recently. Other details I don't know yet, because the software is not even done yet. But I guess this makes you want me to finish it sooner!
Hmm, this is new to me. However, I've never tried any of these hosts.
One way to test your hypothesis would be to turn down Sumu to 1 voice (save that setup if needed so it will come up with 1 voice immediately) - then CPU use will be low. You can find out if it still gets cut off by your DAWs after that change.
After a brief break here I'll be working to fix any compatibility issues. In particular the whole NI ecosystem is kind of a separate thing I have not had time to approach yet. Thanks for your patience and please keep us posted if you find more info.
Hi again, answered on the other thread, the short answer is that's unexpected, please email support! Thanks.
This is working as intended. It has caused confusion though, so I either need to change the way it works or explain it better.
Another way to explain it is: choose your Vutu partials folder to import. All the Sumu partials files in the directory Sumu/Partials and its subdirectories will be replaced with the partials files in the folder you select and its subdirectories.
So, the assumption is you have a directory of utu files (possibly with subdirectories) you have orgainzed somewhere, and you're picking the root of that tree.
Now that I have shipped Sumu 1.0 I'm going to turn my attention to this and hopefully get out an update soon. I have a new WIndows machine in the studio and I can hopefully reproduce this now. If not, I can use the newer licensing code I made for Sumu. Thanks for your patience.
When I open Sumu the window only shows the upper left part of the gui and cannot pull it bigger to show the full interface. Am I missing something?
That is unusual—please send a screen capture of this with your DAW and OS details to support @ madronalabs — I'll check it out!
Thanks for the clear report. Sorry about the links issue!
I made a GitHub issue: https://github.com/madronalabs/plugin-issues/issues/44
I have pasted your links into the Github issue and it fixed them up. Cool! I took a quick listen, but please keep them online in Dropbox for now if you are able to.
Thanks again, I'll try to address this for the next Kaivo update.
Hi, thanks for writing. I need it too! This is the first major thing on the list for after 1.0, so hopefully very soon.
Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can make it not get rid of the Scales.
Hi, thanks for the suggestion about online storage for patches. I'll make a note to try this and make changes if necessary to support it. In general, the 1.0 release is very focused on stability and sound quality. I'll be paying much more attention to workflow improvements and features after the 1.0 release.
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Hi, thanks for the report—what do you men by uninstall? Are you on Windows using the innoSetup installer? Honestly I wasn't even aware it provided the option to uninstall. So I guess it removed the scale files, that makes sense if it just tries to remove all the files Sumu might be installing.
I'll see if I can remove this possibility for confusion in the fuure.
I'll send out another Discord signup link in the next newsletter.
I'm working on this.
Nice, thanks!
I think SoX is what I have used also. I tend to just look this stuff up every time so I didn't take good notes unfortunately. I found some scripts here: https://superuser.com/questions/483625/script-to-run-sox-to-combine-multiple-mono-tracks-to-stereo
Four channels is the maximum we can use in Kaivo.
As far as other software to make multi-channel files, I have only used Audacity, and command-line tools to stich mono / stereo files together.
How can i export a .sumu file from Vutu?
I'm sorry I missed your post! Here's the flow:
- Vutu exports .utu files
- Sumu imports .utu files and writes .sumu files.
This is so .utu files can be in a text-based, non-compressed format. Vutu doesn't even know about Sumu for GPL-related reasons but we may be able to make this more seamless in the future after the 1.0 release.
I think this answers the next question from @zef36 also—just open the .utu file in a text editor and all should be clear. Also, the code that reads and writes the .utu files is available in https://github.com/madronalabs/vutu/tree/main .
Oh I see what you mean now. At some point, I could add a "default size" setting that controls how a plugin window appears before you resize it. Thanks for the suggestion.
I've thought about this for a long time. It might happen!
Each instance of the plugin remembers the size you drag it to in your DAW document. Newly created plugins get made at the default size. If this doesn't seem to be working in some DAW, let me know which one!