MusE and Automation

[Tutorius]

Hi,
i am using MusE sogether with Carla and a bunch of Synth- and Effect-Plugins for some time now.
The last years, i did a setup which needed two files to be created/saved. One for MusE, the other for the Carla-Setup.

Today i tried a setup which uses the Synthesizer as Plugins loaded inside MusE, and i have some problems here.
My sort of music is living from Automation of synthesizer-parameters as Filter-Frequencies, Resonances, Phases and so on.

So i made a synth-track containing a Odin2-synthesizer, and added an automation for filter1-frequency. I can edit the automation, the curve of the automation is sjowed in the color i have choosen. But the Synth-plugin does not take anything of this.

I opened the generic view of the plugin, showing the values with bars, and no knobs. The automation is put to the slider of the filter1-frequency, but the filter does not use this value.

Is this a porblem of MusE with the Odin-Plugin, or am i doing something wrong?

Bildschirmfoto zu 2023-06-17 18-31-44.jpg (97.49 KiB) Viewed 2506 times

[oscillator]

Hi!

You must "read enable" the track. On the single mixer strip for the track to the left, you hopefully have a button that says "Auto off". Click it and select "Read".

Cheers,

Staffan

[Tutorius]

I have forgotten to mention, but i have used any setting, read, touch, write, and these changes do not change the behaviour.
If it is of interrest: I use an Arch-Linux.
I Will try other synths (LV2) to see if it works in other combinations.

[Tutorius]

I can use the automation when using internal values like volume. The synth-parameters are not realized by the synt. Tried this with Surge-XT, too.

[Impostor]

Automation not working with LV2 synth parameters confirmed with: Dexed, Vitalium, Odin2, Pianoteq 7.

With their VST counterparts (as far as I have them) it works fine.

The Calf LV2 synths (and Calf effects) seem to work OK too. I don't have other LV2 effects to test..

Same behaviour with Git Master and the release 4.1 Appimage by the way.

[Tutorius]

Thanks a lot. Will try some VST-plugins if they work. am not sure if i have Odin2 as VST, perhaps must have a look for it...

Automation not working with LV2 synth parameters confirmed with: Dexed, Vitalium, Odin2, Pianoteq 7.

With their VST counterparts (as far as I have them) it works fine.

The Calf LV2 synths (and Calf effects) seem to work OK too. I don't have other LV2 effects to test..

Same behaviour with Git Master and the release 4.1 Appimage by the way.

[Tim E. Real]

[Sigh...] Jeez, automation again? What now?

Checking... Hang in there...
Thanks.

[Tim E. Real]

Verified. Found problem. Fixing... I noticed something else too, studying a fix for it as well...

[Tim E. Real]

Try it now. Fixes pushed to github master.

This little synth helped reveal a bug that was lurking and only occurred in certain circumstances.
Odin-II has an LV2 freewheel port, and puts the port at the beginning of the ports. Other plugins have no such port, or put it later in the list.
This helped reveal that a controller loop was not progressing, not skipping over the freewheel port to get to the other ports.

Thanks very much for spotting that!

[Tutorius]

Wow, that was amazing reaction time... Will try to install, perhaps somebody has made an AUR-inclusion already for Arch linux

[Impostor]

Odin-II has an LV2 freewheel port, and puts the port at the beginning of the ports. Other plugins have no such port, or put it later in the list.

Fix also fixes vitalium, pianoteq 7, and dexed. What is a freewheel port anyway?

[Tutorius]

It works... could use the odin-Synth, think it will work with the Cardinal-Synth, too...

There is a slighly difference when creating new automations. With the old version, the standard-form is "interpolated", now new points are created as "discreet"... But they can be changed to interpolated by the pipup-menu.

Many thanks, will compile it on my music-machine now and make a tutorial for youtube...

Tutorius (or RambaZamba, my music-channel)...

[Impostor]

There is a slighly difference when creating new automations. With the old version, the standard-form is "interpolated", now new points are created as "discreet"... But they can be changed to interpolated by the pipup-menu.

You can make "interpolated" the default:

[Tim E. Real]

Any selected points can also be easily converted to/from discrete/interpolated via the right-click context menu 'Graphs' sub menu.

What is a freewheel port anyway?

When a DAWs 'bounce' (mixdown) feature is used, instead of having to wait for the whole song to play at normal speed
before a finished bounce track is produced, 'freewheel' allows the entire process to proceed at lightning fast speed.
Essentially it is like an 'offline' operation that doesn't care about audio 'cycle time' and just goes as fast as it can.
Jack supports freewheel. (There's a MusE setting to enable it, on by default). And our dummy audio driver supports it.
And, some plugins actually support it as well.

Why would a plugin need such a setting?
When 'bouncing' at such fast speed, the trick is that all manner of effects and processing MUST be preserved
as if the song was played at normal speed. Think reverb tails, echos etc.
Normally most plugins don't even need such a freewheel setting, they are just fine without it when 'bouncing'.
However, certain plugin features may require it. Think arpeggiators or plugin built-in sequencers etc. They need to
be informed that the playback speed is now different during 'bounce'.

[Tim E. Real]

This may not be the best place to point this out, but here goes:

It may be noticed that our audio automation graphs are sensitive to tempo.
That is, change the tempo and the graph points actually move around.
This is not good, it would be much better if the points stayed where they are.
The problem stems from the fact that our audio automation is in units of linear 'frame time' not musical 'metered time'.
I would like to fix that someday by changing to metered time, but that's just the way MusE's audio automation was built years ago.

However, some relief can be found in our midi track controller graphs.
Look closely and it can be seen that when the midi track is driving a synthesizer, midi controller graphs are available
that are mapped to each of a synth's audio controllers.
Thus midi controller graphs can be drawn for each of the audio controllers.
And, midi controller graphs are in units of musical 'metered time'.
And thus the actual graphs are not affected by tempo and 'just work' no matter what the tempo is.

Hope that helps.