randy's Recent Posts
I'm going to try something a little different this Summer and put Aalto on sale for two weeks. From now until July 30, 2013, everyone’s favorite patchable, semi-modular software synthesizer is 50% off.
Whether you have the demo, the Aalto CM version, or no Aalto in your life at all, this sale is a chance to get the polyphony, full email support and future updates that come with a full license, all for half off. Visit http://www.madronalabs.com/products/aalto for happy clicking and saving.
In other news, Summer’s in full swing and I hope you’re having a great one. I'm spending most of my time working on the next big thing from the Labs, a new software instrument. Most details will be under wraps for a little while longer yet, but I’m aiming for a release sometime this summer, so you curious synthesists will not have long to wait. What I am saying is, it’s a new take on physical modeling with an Aalto-like user interface. It will be the first product to a certain kind of physical modeling, so far as I am aware. Green is its color. More details to follow.
Frankly, at this point Aalto’s reputation is a lot to live up to! I'm working hard to make a second software instrument that will play off Aalto’s strengths, provide a whole new world of sounds, and keep the quality bar very high. I can’t wait to get this out there and hear what you think.
I don’t think there will be stream You could check out the Decibel Festival site for video after the fact. In any case, I will post more info about Kaivo soon.
The Finnish for 'well' is what I was going for, as in a deep well of sounds. When you hear it, I hope you’ll agree!
I hope there will be video too. In any case, there will be lots more info from the monome crew as well as me.
Work is going well. Looks like I'll have something to demo at Decibel.
I don’t want to give anything away. I’ll just say it can't hurt to wait a week.
i'd be very happy to use a text editor. thank you. do i need to email you offline, or will you make that public as well?
I'll send it out to all the Soundplane owners as an option ASAP, and possibly put it on the website if it's looking good enough.
I'll have some news on this very soon after the new plugin comes out. You will like the news!
Thanks for all the info. This will help me track down what's going on in the Windows build.
You can click on "My Account" to make sure you are signed up to receive the newsletter. I do skip a month sometimes if I'm, say, cranking hard on a new plugin that's coming soon...
I'm Madronalabs on Twitter, in case you want to read some of my more random updates and DSP nerd in-jokes. :-)
I would like to add an email notify feature to the forums when there is time.
Hi folks, you are exactly right, the combination of working on the new plugin along with supporting Soundplane and Aalto customers completely blew my schedule for the mapping stuff out of the water. I apologize for the delay.
I realized a way I can speed things up. I will make a version where you can edit the mapping descriptions with a text editor. This will let me get the features into your hands ASAP, and add the fit and finish later. Thanks for your understanding and support!
The new synth is coming along well and has definitely been designed with the Soundplane in mind.
Hi sunsyn,
Thanks for letting me know. There's nothing I did on purpose that would increase CPU use in 1.4. I will check and see if, as they say, mistakes were made.
One thing to check is turn off the dials updating with 'anim'-depending on how you are metering CPU the animations can make it appear as though the plugin is taking a lot more DSP.
Aalto is not the biggest CPU hog on the market... not anymore at least! The first version was pretty bad. But since Aalto 1.2 or so I would call it reasonable, and now many other good sounding plugins are out there that can gobble more CPU.
Four voices of Aalto take around 20% of one core on my (still new and excitingly fast) 4-Core i7. on my previous laptop, a 2.4GHz core i5 from 3 years ago, it was about 35% of one core. 3rd generation Core processors were a huge step up from the Core 2 Duo, and could be a pretty cheap upgrade for you at this point.
There are still some things I can do yet to reduce CPU use in Aalto. I will definitely work some of these optimizations in, in the future. but in general people seem to think it's acceptable now, so I have been focusing on other fixes and, of course, the new plugin.
If you already have an account you don't need your email to log in to the Madrona site. Just log in with your username / password, and then you can change your email in the "My Account" settings.
If that doesn't work, email me at support@madronalabs.com and I will help you sort it out.
Thanks for asking, but I have to say this is not likely. There is only one of me, so I need to focus on the AU and VST versions.
Thanks for reminding me, and I'm sorry I haven't had time to look into it more.
Mack Fisher, who pops up on these forums sometimes, is looking into Max usability issues with me in a sort of intern capacity. I will see if he can look into this sooner than I would get to it. If an issue comes up and can be well-defined, I can probably be quick to turn around a fix to Aalto.
Thanks to all... I really appreciate the feedback and ideas.
Note that if you want to set a dial by click-and-drag, without it jumping, you can also do this by clicking on the number area.
I am trying to imagine the patch bay without multiple connections potentially overlapping but I can’t think how this is possible.
The fruit is ripening on the tree. It looks delicious now, but is not quite ready to eat.
Hi Sebastian,
This is an interesting idea, maybe a donation could be made in the name of anyone who wants to "return" Aalto after some time has gone by. When I have time to do something I want to consider all the ideas I can to make sense of this situation.
Meanwhile I have donated 1/2 an Aalto to eff.org, a group working for internet freedom and government transparency.
all the best,
Randy
Hi t.m.,
Thanks for the very patient "bump." All the info is really helpful to pinpoint what went wrong. I will make time to give the sequencer a rework for the next update. There are not too many changes to get in, so this will be before the new instrument comes out.
Hi Ed, Aalto does not check updates automatically. You can compare the version number in the upper right against the latest version, which will always be listed on the product page. If you sign up to the newsletter, or my Twitter feed, you will get info about new releases.
not just yet...
Converting presets only turns .aupreset into .mlpreset or vice versa. This has nothing to do with the versions.
Any version’s presets will work on that version or higher. Since the upgrades are all free, I recommend to use the latest version when distributing presets.
If you did not see the option to convert, it’s possible the presets were not in the right place, or something else went wrong.
HI Clif,
Thanks for letting me know. I overlooked this possibility with the latest Aalto release and will fix the situation with the next.
best,
Randy
Hi Ed,
If this is not working, it’s possible the patches were made in a newer version of Aalto than the one you are pasting them to. In this case I think the paste fails without warning, and I should make Aalto more informative somehow.
The tomatoes are getting orange now, so it’s hard to say.
OK, I added these good ideas to my list. Most likely they will come with a future, fully modular version. Thanks for writing!
Nice idea! I have added it to the virtual whiteboard.
The tunings in the KEY section are all Scala-format tuning files. They are just text files, so if you look up the format you can find out how to make one. Or just copy and edit one of the existing ones to play around with it.
The files are always in the same place on Mac: Library/Audio/Presets/Madrona Labs/Scales. If you have OS X 10.8 you might have to un-hide your Library folder.
I’ll try not to break 10.5 compatibility unless there is a good reason.
Hi there,
It appears I broke support for OS 10.5. Sorry for the inconvenience. I plan to fix this for the next update.
Be advised that support for 10.5 won’t last forever though. It gets harder over time to add new features while keeping backwards compatibility.
They should be with the factory patches in C:/Appdata/Roaming, not in Users. This assumes you are on Windows 7.
Or just search on one of the scale names like "slendro."