Quick StepPolyArp Question?

OscarSouth

Is there any reason to buy the original one, or does 'unit' replace all functionality + more?

Zetagy

The original has an extra “double-finger drag” to move entire lines vertically. Other than that, buy the AU3 first, and if you can think of a reason to have two apps as well as x-amount of AU3s running, then buy the original.

Poppadocrock

Definitely go AUv3

cian

The AU3 does more.

OscarSouth

Cheers for the info all.

Having picked up the AU and learned that it seems to have sync issues which make it unusable with other apps at the present moment -- are there any alternatives that offer comparable or alternative flexibility? Looking for 'performance friendly' features that will sequence well into tracks from external MIDI input.

Hopefully I'm wrong about this though -- I'd like to hear if anyone else has it syncing with other apps in audiobus?

aplourde

@OscarSouth said:
Cheers for the info all.

Having picked up the AU and learned that it seems to have sync issues which make it unusable with other apps at the present moment -- are there any alternatives that offer comparable or alternative flexibility? Looking for 'performance friendly' features that will sequence well into tracks from external MIDI input.

Hopefully I'm wrong about this though -- I'd like to hear if anyone else has it syncing with other apps in audiobus?

Nothing quite like SPAU. It's incredibly powerful and flexible.

@Michael said he was going to look into a way to make SPAU work better with Audiobus, of course this ultimately looks like something Laurent needs to deal with.

In the interim, it does work well in AUM, you could run AB and AUM together.

god

+1 for SPAU. It’s a superb midi effect AUv3.

OscarSouth

@aplourde said:

@OscarSouth said:
Cheers for the info all.

Having picked up the AU and learned that it seems to have sync issues which make it unusable with other apps at the present moment -- are there any alternatives that offer comparable or alternative flexibility? Looking for 'performance friendly' features that will sequence well into tracks from external MIDI input.

Hopefully I'm wrong about this though -- I'd like to hear if anyone else has it syncing with other apps in audiobus?

Nothing quite like SPAU. It's incredibly powerful and flexible.

@Michael said he was going to look into a way to make SPAU work better with Audiobus, of course this ultimately looks like something Laurent needs to deal with.

In the interim, it does work well in AUM, you could run AB and AUM together.

As AudioBus is the source of sync in this setup (AUM being present just as mixer/busing) I can't think how I could get it to work like that. I guess I can play around a bit with different hosts though to get a feel for it. Shame that such a well regarded app has a critical issue like this -- hope that it gets sorted out.

Zetagy

Here’s the deal: you can use Link, but you cannot use it to send start/stop commands. What truly triggers SPAU are the notes sent to it, then Bob will be your uncle. This is the way.

Zetagy

Send your notes from Xequence, because it has this little gem:

Please read the Xequence manual for more info on what/how/why

OscarSouth

@Zetagy this is how I'm using it (with modstep). I don't use Link as MIDI clock is more suitable for live performance and is much easier to control/fine tune with Audiobus's excellent implementation. I didn't find a solution to this with these methods and tools, but I will try more when I boot my equipment up again later and report back.

aplourde

@OscarSouth said:
@Zetagy this is how I'm using it (with modstep). I don't use Link as MIDI clock is more suitable for live performance and is much easier to control/fine tune with Audiobus's excellent implementation. I didn't find a solution to this with these methods and tools, but I will try more when I boot my equipment up again later and report back.

Doesn't Audiobus work as a bridge between MIDI clock and Link? So you could sync AB to external MIDI clock and use Link for internal sync between AB and AUM?

Regardless, please do note the problem to Laurent so the underlying issue could be resolved!

OscarSouth

@aplourde said:

@OscarSouth said:
@Zetagy this is how I'm using it (with modstep). I don't use Link as MIDI clock is more suitable for live performance and is much easier to control/fine tune with Audiobus's excellent implementation. I didn't find a solution to this with these methods and tools, but I will try more when I boot my equipment up again later and report back.

Doesn't Audiobus work as a bridge between MIDI clock and Link? So you could sync AB to external MIDI clock and use Link for internal sync between AB and AUM?

Regardless, please do note the problem to Laurent so the underlying issue could be resolved!

Combining multiple synch methodologies is almost always a losing battle -- just too much complexity and too many potential vectors for failure to be practical. I'm going to have a play around though as I've become something of a wizard of impossible synchs on iOS! (here's Auria Pro with Link, a good while back now! : https://youtube.com/watch?v=WsKohNyQzoc)

Zetagy

This is the kind of stuff I’ve been up to:

https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/34004/dynamic-scale-key-xeq-sb-spau-ns2
Skip to about the 3 minute mark to see AB/SPAU.

This is another, a bit further along, that has Xequence both as the command source,
and result midi recording destination, all in sync:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/35632/fun-with-triplets-dotted

I’m using “all the syncs” simultaneously, I think it’s important to have Xequence not “send link start stop”.
Alexander @SevenSystems wrote a great piece about how Xequence is using timing in a superior way, for me the upshot of it is that I have Xequence listening to itself and “using incoming timestamps”, perhaps it’s autocorrecting itself because I put a 500ms buffer? Certainly the “length correction” is needed for SPAU

Here’s a complete readout of my settings: I have found it invaluable to use multiple sync methods. I hope they help somehow.

Here’s where my composition studio is at now: I just finished writing out the alphabet that drives my engine, getting back to using it again. Behind the curtain stuff:

Here’s the engine showing Xequence as both the source and recording destination again, nice sync stuff while I sort out my music theory:

SPAU instances are generating every result note, sorry for extolling the virtues of Xequence a bit much.
I do have examples of X both using the AB/SPAU engine, and sending notes directly to my target sound source (Nanostudio), but I don’t think that’s represented here. But you _can mix both SPAU and other generators sending in sync. That’s all I got for ya-! Or ask away, could be it’s possible...

JohnnyGoodyear

@Zetagy This is boffinery at its finest Sir.

SevenSystems

@Zetagy as always, impressive (and slightly odd, but in a good way 😁) stuff. Thanks for posting!

aplourde

@Zetagy Crazy, mad-scientist stuff... I love it!

So I'm presuming you're not seeing the issue shown here: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/766224/#Comment_766224 ?

Basically, in AB the timing of SPAU is off and unpredictable. In AUM it is as expected.

Also shown in that video is the fact that until the last update, SPAU was playing the notes in the wrong order. Instead of 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, etc. it was missing the lowest note on the first cycle, so 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, etc.

Laurent fixed that note order issue (much to my chagrin as it changed a track I had been working on and now cannot replicate), but the timing is still out in AB. It also seems to be out in AUM until another Link-enabled app is loaded and then SPAU snaps into synch.

Zetagy

@aplourde
you sir are correct. I didn’t get it at the first go at all-!
I hope that this solution can also apply to your case, by having more than one type of source sending to your SPAU unit, namely, your live keyboard, and also another app that can feed an additional “timer” stream of notes to your SPAU instance

@OscarSouth
I think I may have a fix for this:

I am going to refer to the SPAU manual to describe a method:

Firstly, in the manual, Laurent will refer to “the arpeggiator”. When he does, he is referring to one of the (11) eleven lines present onscreen. There are 11 arpeggiators we have access to, all sharing the same source notes. We are going to sacrifice one of those lines to build a timer track, making our instance a 10-arp+timer setup.

01-Speed

This will determine the speed that our timer will send to SPAU. Let’s say we want SPAU’s time resolution to be 1/32 notes, so we will set this to 1/32.

02-Note order, or note order on the MIDI note map 0-127?

We will want to leave this setting in the ”UP” position, for the reason following:

What Laurent is saying is that
“the number (1),
when placed in a cell,
when the note order is set to “UP”,
will definitely make that cell respond to the lowest MIDI note played.”

So, when we are sending our source notes to SPAU,
If we additionally send 1/32 notes from another “timer” track in our source,
that note being so low on the MIDI scale it will definitely not be confused with our real musical material (note 0, C-2?),
Then we can be sure that this track with that lowest note will definitely be the only one triggering our “sacrificed SPAU arp line to timer” cells. And since our source timer track is sending out 1/32 notes, and every cell of our SPAU target timer track is filled with (1) ones, then there will be a one-to-one correspondence between source notes sent, and cells set to receive and respond.
In SPAU it would look like this:

03- The Response.
The one response we want, and the one we cannot circumvent, is that this one arp line will also drive the remaining 10 lines forward as well. We just need to insure that this is the only thing our timer line does, and does not send musical information anywhere. We do this by sending our timer line to a destination channel not being used by our destination app. Let’s say for sure the app that is receiving the arpeggiated musical notes is definitely not using channel 16. So, we would set our timer arp line to send on channel 16, which is effectively nowhere in our setup. In SPAU, it would look like this:

So now, we have completely thrown out the need for SPAU to be driven by any usual syncing method, instead opting to explicitly drag the entire arp forward by sacrificing one line to be used as a timer. Not Midi sync, not Link, this is anything-to-SPAU sync.

I sincerely hope I do not sound like a total crackpot and have actually made some sense that can be useful for your own setup.
You may need to change some details, but I hope the theory is gotten across. I have built and used this in the past, it does work.
Thank you for listening and much love to all the AB community that has kept me amazed, and more importantly occupied, for some long time now.

OscarSouth

This is genius work going on here and I’m excited to try it out.

SevenSystems

@Zetagy the "notes as a timer tick" thing is indeed ingenious. Kinda sad if you look at it -- there's a million different syncing mechanisms already in the iOS world, but none of them is as good as rolling your own (OK, I generalized a bit now and Xequence is of course slightly guilty as well for not supporting MIDI Slave Sync...)

But at least Xequence's note timing seems to be good enough to actually use its note output as a perfect sync reference

JohnnyGoodyear

@Zetagy said:
@aplourde
you sir are correct. I didn’t get it at the first go at all-!
I hope that this solution can also apply to your case, by having more than one type of source sending to your SPAU unit, namely, your live keyboard, and also another app that can feed an additional “timer” stream of notes to your SPAU instance

@OscarSouth
I think I may have a fix for this:

I am going to refer to the SPAU manual to describe a method:

Firstly, in the manual, Laurent will refer to “the arpeggiator”. When he does, he is referring to one of the (11) eleven lines present onscreen. There are 11 arpeggiators we have access to, all sharing the same source notes. We are going to sacrifice one of those lines to build a timer track, making our instance a 10-arp+timer setup.

01-Speed

This will determine the speed that our timer will send to SPAU. Let’s say we want SPAU’s time resolution to be 1/32 notes, so we will set this to 1/32.

02-Note order, or note order on the MIDI note map 0-127?

We will want to leave this setting in the ”UP” position, for the reason following:

What Laurent is saying is that
“the number (1),
when placed in a cell,
when the note order is set to “UP”,
will definitely make that cell respond to the lowest MIDI note played.”

So, when we are sending our source notes to SPAU,
If we additionally send 1/32 notes from another “timer” track in our source,
that note being so low on the MIDI scale it will definitely not be confused with our real musical material (note 0, C-2?),
Then we can be sure that this track with that lowest note will definitely be the only one triggering our “sacrificed SPAU arp line to timer” cells. And since our source timer track is sending out 1/32 notes, and every cell of our SPAU target timer track is filled with (1) ones, then there will be a one-to-one correspondence between source notes sent, and cells set to receive and respond.
In SPAU it would look like this:

03- The Response.
The one response we want, and the one we cannot circumvent, is that this one arp line will also drive the remaining 10 lines forward as well. We just need to insure that this is the only thing our timer line does, and does not send musical information anywhere. We do this by sending our timer line to a destination channel not being used by our destination app. Let’s say for sure the app that is receiving the arpeggiated musical notes is definitely not using channel 16. So, we would set our timer arp line to send on channel 16, which is effectively nowhere in our setup. In SPAU, it would look like this:

So now, we have completely thrown out the need for SPAU to be driven by any usual syncing method, instead opting to explicitly drag the entire arp forward by sacrificing one line to be used as a timer. Not Midi sync, not Link, this is anything-to-SPAU sync.

I sincerely hope I do not sound like a total crackpot and have actually made some sense that can be useful for your own setup.
You may need to change some details, but I hope the theory is gotten across. I have built and used this in the past, it does work.
Thank you for listening and much love to all the AB community that has kept me amazed, and more importantly occupied, for some long time now.

Thanks for the nudge on this. I have a deep-rooted notion that for all the hundreds of apps I have, SPA is the one I should just sit endlessly with until I land the fish I don't even know I'm looking for. This sort of explanation convinces me further, but also makes me realize my boat is far smaller than some of you serious fishermen....

_smund

Where the flippin heck is Spau? I can't find it, halp

yowza

@_smund said:
Where the flippin heck is Spau? I can't find it, halp

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/steppolyarp-unit/id1361313588