Presets - audio unit tweaks

[decrepitude]

I just want to say Numerology has incredible possibilities for my live performance needs.

I'm having some confusion about presets. I can make variations of a note pattern easily enough. But if I make tweaks to an audio unit (such as Free Alpha) for each preset (like cutoff freq.) the tweaks aren't saved between each preset. Whatever tweak I make on the audio unit edit panel itself is retained as I switch presets. I was assuming the tweaks would be kept in each preset. So for example, for each preset there would be a slightly different cutoff freq setting. I hope I've explained myself clearly.

Ive' scoured the manual and haven't found any clues there. Can you guide me?

[steff3]

AFAIK there are too many problems with AU param changes (some AUs are doped VSTs which can cause problems because not 100% behaving like AUs, and then some AUs/VSTs take to long to change etc.)

So if you want to have changes for AUs you should/could use a CV sequencer/Faderbox (with parammod-module) etc. which can directly connect to the AU parameter (like automation) and you save changes in presets.
If the AU/VST(i) lets you control that by midi you can also use MIDI-seq to control and change the setting with Num-presets.

hope that helps

best

[jim]

That is correct, and it is a recent change.

It is a long story, familiar to most AU developers. In order for Numerology to be able to accurately change AU presets in conjunction with stack presets, it has to be able to reliably make those changes on the background audio render thread. 90% of the time, there is no issue, though sometimes there are glitches, as some AU's have very, very large presets. However, once in a while, an AU finds it is missing something (such as an audio sample file), and decides that it needs to popup a dialog to inform the user. Well, when you try to do this on a background thread, you get a blank window and a frozen UI. The members of the CoreAudio Team have been very clear that this should not happen, but some plugins still do it. What the AU should do is return error codes to the host app making the call, and have its UI component (i.e. the edit window, which in AU-land is essentially a separate plugin) inform the user when appropriate.

So, in the interests of maximizing compatibility, I've turned off stack preset/AU preset change, but the old code is still there, and I may re-enable it later on. There are a couple workarounds:

- Almost all 'larger' AUs will respond to MIDI Program Change messages, so you can use those.
- If you only need to change a few (> 12 or so) params, then you can setup FaderBox or TripleXY modules in conjunction with ParamMod modules to create a semi-custom UI. This is an interesting-enough technique that I plan to make a video of how I use it with Augustus Loop later on.

Best,
Jim

[ZenPunkHippy]

That is correct, and it is a recent change.

It is a long story, familiar to most AU developers. In order for Numerology to be able to accurately change AU presets in conjunction with stack presets, it has to be able to reliably make those changes on the background audio render thread. 90% of the time, there is no issue, though sometimes there are glitches, as some AU's have very, very large presets. However, once in a while, an AU finds it is missing something (such as an audio sample file), and decides that it needs to popup a dialog to inform the user. Well, when you try to do this on a background thread, you get a blank window and a frozen UI. The members of the CoreAudio Team have been very clear that this should not happen, but some plugins still do it. What the AU should do is return error codes to the host app making the call, and have its UI component (i.e. the edit window, which in AU-land is essentially a separate plugin) inform the user when appropriate.

So, in the interests of maximizing compatibility, I've turned off stack preset/AU preset change, but the old code is still there, and I may re-enable it later on. There are a couple workarounds:

- Almost all 'larger' AUs will respond to MIDI Program Change messages, so you can use those.
- If you only need to change a few (> 12 or so) params, then you can setup FaderBox or TripleXY modules in conjunction with ParamMod modules to create a semi-custom UI. This is an interesting-enough technique that I plan to make a video of how I use it with Augustus Loop later on.

Best,
Jim

Hi,

Just discovering your software after finding out about it in a KVR thread related to Zebra / Uhbik. I love the concept - it fills the void between working in Logic and my external gear that's been frustrating me for a while, so I'll be buying a licence in the next week or two. In the meantime I'm checking out the demo's and reading all I can on the forum, and this AU preset problem in re-wire mode seems to come up a lot ... which I'm sure it's quite frustrating for all concerned.

A solution might be to implement some kind of preferences pane where a list of "user-validated" audio units can be specified i.e. the user specifically chooses the plug-ins they are confident will reliably respond to preset changes and don't display GUI warnings. You would only allow those AU's to be issued preset changes on the stack in re-wire mode.

In the last 6 months, I cannot think of a single instance where a synth plug-in or FX module has displayed a dialog during general use, and most of them respond to program / preset changes very well.

Sure, it's a problem with samplers and missing files, so obviously the user would not include them in the list ... OTOH the user might be certain that all the files exist in the correct location and so is prepared to take the associated risk.

This would offer the best of both worlds: the feature is turned off by default, and at the users discretion - with appropriate dire warnings if necessary - becomes enabled only for plug-ins selected in preferences. Maybe it could be labelled "experimental mode" or similar if you are concerned that users might get the wrong idea about it working fully.

Just my 2 cents. It's not a massive problem, I'll buy a license anyway, but I can certainly see plenty of uses for this feature (and slight feeling of disappointment that it isn't possible) so I would love to see it back in the mix :)

Peace,
Andy.

[jim]

My current thinking is basically in line with yours. The code to support all the old behavior (AU's in ReWire, sample-accurate preset changes) is still there. The main reason I shut it off for now was to make sure I wouldn't get any nasty surprises during the release. After 2.0 has been out for a while and things have settled down a bit, it won't take much more than a few prods to get me to re-enable it.

Cheers,
Jim

[ZenPunkHippy]

That's great news and makes a lot of sense, stability is a key issue with .0 releases / re-writes.

I'm really inspired by Numerology, it's going to enable some amazing possibilities both in the studio and for live sets. It certainly feels a lot less sterile than working with traditional hosts like Logic, and I'm very happy that I won't need to go down the Ableton Live path! Nice one :cool:

Peace,
Andy.

[jim]

Awesome, thanks!

Cheers,
Jim