Adding some oscilloscope style probes to Zyn

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fundamental
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Adding some oscilloscope style probes to Zyn

Post by fundamental »

Hello everyone,

I wanted to show the start of a new Zyn feature being done by Micky who is working with the project through google's summer of code.

Zyn can be a complex beast, but I think part of that is due to having a variety of fairly simple blocks strung together and mixed together so the final output feels harder to control. To divide up the complexity signal watch points are being made to see the internal sounds passed within Zyn. Ever curious what the waveform from a voice was within a complex patch and you didn't want to disable all effects and every other voice/kit/etc? How about trying to see the input to a distortion effect without toggling it repeatedly? What about watching the harmoics of a single engine while listening to the overall mix? Well, that the sort of problem that signal scopes can address. Right now things are still in the early stages and we're looking for feedback on what problems you want to see solved, what workflows this will best help with, and what sort of features you think the system needs.

A video demo of the current development version can be found at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l914Xn2BOQ

Next up will be some triggering to stabilize those waves, but if you have feedback please help us build the best tool for you. :)
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AlbertoZ
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Re: Adding some oscilloscope style probes to Zyn

Post by AlbertoZ »

That's a really good idea, Zyn will benefit a lot with a scope "probe". My only feedback at the moment (apart from the obvious triggering stuff) would be to leave a much smaller area of the GUI for the Scope. Something like the U-He synths, if you know them...
Moreover, the scope should be pre-effects, right?
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Re: Adding some oscilloscope style probes to Zyn

Post by fundamental »

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the best places to fit the probes without messing with the layout of other components too much. I'd think that at a minimum for general add/pad/sub parameter editing there's already a visualization pane in place which it could swap out for or somehow share space with. In terms of shrinking it down, the design which has been mentioned as a reference so far has mostly been the ones at the top of renoise's UI. Once the probes are more thoroughly integrated it might be good to ask the question of "are these useful enough that they should almost always have some screen space or are they something which should get screen space only when the users are explicitly looking for them?"
Moreover, the scope should be pre-effects, right?
Let's consider two notes of a two voice add synth with two effects. From a signal flow you'd have:

(N=note, V=voice, G=global)

((N1V1.osc-(1)->N1V1.filter-(2)->)+(N1V2.osc-(3)->N1V2.filter-(4)->)-(5)->N1G.filter-(6)->)+
((N2V1.osc-(7)->N2V1.filter-(8)->)+(N2V2.osc-(9)->N2V2.filter-(10)->)-(11)->N2G.filter-(12)->))-(13)->
effect1-(14)->effect2-(15)->output of zyn

So (1)..(15) could all in theory be points where watch points could exist. The video is currently only showing off (2) though.
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AlbertoZ
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Re: Adding some oscilloscope style probes to Zyn

Post by AlbertoZ »

fundamental wrote:"are these useful enough that they should almost always have some screen space or are they something which should get screen space only when the users are explicitly looking for them?"
Hi Mark, to me the scope is useful as long as you tweak some parameters and you see the results "immediately": if I have to go in one page, tweak a knob, go to another page to see how it looks like, I'd say that this is not the best working flow .. that's why I'm for a "SSAV" ("small-scope-always-visible") paradigm :D . I know that it is a very general statement and should be ported into the Zyn architecture, which is not the most easy task, right? :wink:
fundamental wrote: ((N1V1.osc-(1)->N1V1.filter-(2)->)+(N1V2.osc-(3)->N1V2.filter-(4)->)-(5)->N1G.filter-(6)->)+
((N2V1.osc-(7)->N2V1.filter-(8)->)+(N2V2.osc-(9)->N2V2.filter-(10)->)-(11)->N2G.filter-(12)->))-(13)->
effect1-(14)->effect2-(15)->output of zyn

So (1)..(15) could all in theory be points where watch points could exist. The video is currently only showing off (2) though.
By this you mean that any point should be accessible by the scope? That would be a really flexible feature...
Thumbs up.

Alberto
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