does anyone care to try this? i don't know a lot of pd-minded people around my place and i haven't shared this with anyone yet. the development has gotten quite far by now though. it's been some years of work and trying to make pd handle the digital part of my live setup. i am not sure yet about when and how to release this (it will be completely free though, that much i can tell). i'd really love to get some experiences and opinions before that though. Or get an idea if there's even any point to this in pd and if it is worth documenting it and maintaining it for the public.

the patch offers ten layers of granular/spectral soundfile or live input processing. there's 100 preset slots that can be accessed from within each layer and morphed between. full osc/midi control is possible. a pd port of the great polygome monome-patch is included. you can also load instrument banks, and play them as oneshots or using the sample slicing engine (just name each sample by it's corresponding midi pitch and choose the folder the samples are contained in). there's lfos and one assignable multi parameter for each layer. all settings and samples are stored in the presets to make it a fast and intuitive live instrument, that was my priority. it harmonizes perfectly with korg nano kontrol.

so far it was made and tested by me only in pd-ext 42.5 on osx. in addition only the soundhack externals are needed to get the decimator to work. loading might take up to 3 minutes or more! that is normal for now, but i hope i can do something about it in the future.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/nigredo.zip

thanks for checking it out! the udpsend error is normal. it's a bit annoying and i'll look into it when i find the time. it's just messages coming into a udpsend that isn't connected at the time.
there isn't any documentation yet, so here's some additional hints:
-it works only with wav files so far, but there should be a converter in the folder.
-you can switch the effects interface to the different layers with the keys 1 to 0.
-the four bangs in the corresponding effects interfaces map the multiparameter or lfo to different parameters in different ways. this is all saved with the presets.
-at http://www.freesound.org/ you'll find a vibraphone sample bank that i recorded and mapped for nigredo

any questions or ideas about the whole thing and the structure of it are very welcome!

that patch is so big my computer can't open it

just open _Nigredo.pd and give it some time. it definitely runs reasonably efficient on osx. i still have to figure out how to reduce loadup time, but it shouldn't be more than 3 minutes or so.

so did noone get this to run, or is it just too klutzy?? it definitely runs smooth enough on my machine to use it on stage. or is the lack of documentation the problem? i'll try to get some manuals together once i get back home and maybe some example videos to show what this is capable of. a lemur template for fast preset switching is on the way as well so that you don't need to look into the screen for performance at all.

is there any general comments? anyway, this forum has been a tremendous help in putting this together so thanks to all of you! i'll probably upload this on a separate page sometime soon. cheers

Hi ralf!
I tried, but I got "Error: invalid command name "pd"" every time I touch anything. Although I am on vanilla and I expected that I will need some missing objects, but these two messages were printed maybe 100000 times (didn't count them all).

symbolGUIB: no such object
purityGUIB: no such object

Your patch looks promising, looking forward to try the fixed version.

hi and thanks for checking it out! i had the "invalid command name "pd"" problem as well. the problem was that i had pd-ext 42.5 and 43.1 in the same folder. so i trashed the old version and things started to work as normal.

the error messages you mentioned are normal and they don't indicate any misfunctionality. some receive objects are created dynamically, and these particular ones probably just don't exist at the time.
i understand the annoyance that all the error messages cause because it makes it hard to tell what a "real" error is, and because it spams the console. but this is such a big patch that i had to struggle hard to debug the serious flaws and make it run at all, so i considered these error messages to be a rather cosmetic problem. i will try to fix that for the next release.

i just uploaded a major update. things aren't tested yet but i guess it should be working fine, since most changes have been simplifications rather than new additions.

all the arrays for the fft processing and the corresponding statesave and control engine is gone. all the spectral processing is now handled by csound, so you need to have [csoundapi~] installed, which should install automatically with csound.
my plan is to keep GUI, control structure, audio routing, and statesaving as it is and replace all the processing with csound as far as it's possible and reasonable. sadly sound quality isn't pds strong side, so i had to make that decision.

the central spectral effect is now a csound based remake of grm tools contrast, which thanks to the great pvs opcodes sounds no less amazing than the original. it also has a flashy interface build on maelstroms beautiful abstractions.
there's a granular time stretch based on the partikkel opcode (it's cpu intense, so watch your settings), which replaces the spiral stretch.
the spectral soundfile scanning will be replaced next. also i will have a look at how to reduce loadup time and how to shut these annoying error messages down.

the pvs opcodes will introduce some latency, but it shoudn't really matter for the kind of music this is intended for. i think it's totally worth it and i'm stoked by how this sounds now.

cheers

Dose this even open on windows? It must be killer!

i tested only on osx so far but i don't see a reason why it wouldn' work on windows as well. csound has to be installed though. you have to check if [csoundapi~] is creating to get some of the effects to work.

I get plenty of errors, including:
It can't create the csoundapi~ files
For some reason it can't create [+decimate~], even though I have the library and I can create the object in any other patch.
the udpsend error, and
signal outlet connect to nonsignal inlet (ignored)...I guess this in not so important.
Quite some work you've done there, though. Thanks for sharing.

the decimate problem sounds strange. i'll have a look at that.
th csoundapi should be installed automatically when you install csound. i had troubles with one of the latest csounds versions where the csoundapi~ just wouldn't create. i went for an older csound version and it fixed it. I only tested it on the 32 bit 42.4 PD version on OSX so far. There might be issues with creating objects on other setups.

thanks for your interest. in the next weeks my website will be up, with videos/demo sounds, to give a better idea of what this thing is about.

i'm posting a small update now:

-improved compression settings
-reduced amount of error messages
-some faders run smoother

things aren't fully tested yet. i hope the changes didn't break too much functionality. more updates are on the way soon.

Hey Ralf,

on my macbook pro / lion 10.7.4 and PD Extended 0.42.5 your patch opens fine - in much less than 3 minutes. I just wanted to check it out quickly and open some samples but failed already... where is the open sample dialog?? - i guess a little manual / how to would be nice.

cheers, t.

hi tilllt,
thanks for checking this out.
in the upper window you change to sample mode, then in the bottom window you hit the sample button in the pink field on the top right. dsp has to be turned on for the sample to load, and it has to be a wav file.

i'll post a new update tomorrow, with lots of improvemens and bugfixes.
cheers

new version. i finished it up a while ago, but i barely got to test it.

a lot has changed:

ALL effects are csound based now, except for the granular delay. that one has changed significantly as well though. it sounds a lot smoother now with improved windowing.

there's three sample playback options now:
csound based pvoc, csound based granular, and the old synced looping

the interface is a lot tidier now and should give faster and more intuitive access to the functions.

there's a random LFO option now and there's lots of bug fixes

a great side effect of out-sourcing dsp to csound is that you can actually make use of multi core processors, because different csound instances spread up their cpu load.

i hope this update is final for some time. i feel much more like playing than like coding right now.
better docs and sound examples are still coming up though and there's an ipad lemur template for fast access to all the presets plus a nano kontrol template coming. but i still have to test those.

hi thre,

how can i get the link to give this a try?

thanks

drew

I was so intrigued by the fact that you made your effects with csound that i tried myself. How is the cpu load compared to your pd-only patch (i cannot open yours :p)? Is it worth making things like summing in csound ? I should try to make a test patch.

here's another small update to fix some gui updating issues and get rid of some error messages. the link is up in the first post.

it seems to me like spectral stuff is a bit lighter on cpu in csound, but not significantly much. the sound is way better though. for granular processing i am using the partikkel opcode which is crazy cpu hungry, if you go for a dense grain cloud type of sound (or if you set it up wrong). the granular time stretch effect is barely usable on my core2duo macbook. you always have to make sure to keep the density parameters on a reasonable level, and always mute layers that are not in use.

generally it's hard to compare pd and csound in cpu because the functionality of both patches isn't exactly the same. both are hungry enough to make me consider getting a new computer some time soon though.

i don't really know what you mean by doing summing in csound. i use it mainly because i like the sound engine better, not really for saving on cpu load.

"i use it mainly because i like the sound engine better, not really for saving on cpu load."

Ok, that is the answer to my main question.

Thanks !