PaulXStretch - has an update....

[essejlc]

Hi essejlc, I'm responsible for the initial push to get paulstretch working in 64-bit OSes, with of course deep thanks to xenakios for doing the actual work!

He listened to our outlandish requests and implemented ultra-long buffer sizes, and a few other things not initially present in the first edition. The end product gave us great numerical feedback and 'that' sound.

With that in mind, can I ask that you consider implementing a similar feature set? Looking at it alongside the Xenakios' version, can I ask that you

- put in the octave and 5th additional pitch-layer levels (in the Pitch section) back in. This is a really great way to thicken up the stretched sound, and add an extra layer of harmonics, and we all love extra harmonics
- larger FFT window - the previous version had a maximum of around a minute (at 44.1kHz) and this feature shouldn't be discarded
- better visual numerical feedback regarding
- FFT size (should be in milliseconds not samples, and scaled to seconds when value exceeds 1000) Screenshot 2022-04-25 at 12.08.42.jpg
- the previous version gave us the option alter the 'range of available sizes from a menu item Screenshot 2022-04-25 at 12.19.28.jpg
- estimated length (the output values in the GUI seem to be capped at 24 hours, so if the stretched length is 1 day and 4 minutes, only the 4 minutes is displayed - perhaps add a 'day' parameter to that value),
- add back the Space bar as a 'play/stop' controller

And a question: what does the red bar in the waveform area represent? It doesn't seem to change with any parameter adjustment so I'm struggling to determine what it is showing us.

Other than those issues, it does look great, so no qualms there!

Hello! I'm a little confused because I started from what I thought was Xenakios's latest git repository, which didn't have those features exactly as you mentioned. I see that Xenakios is now on this thread, perhaps they can help set the chronology record straight? Maybe you had an earlier version where the layout was different? (You can get the version I originally started from at Xenakios' wordpress page: https://xenakios.wordpress.com/paulxstretch-plugin/ )

The Ratios module and tab may be where the extra harmonic thickening features are now?

You can still alter the prebuffer size by clicking on the prebuffer meter at the top.

I can add spacebar as play/stop if you want.

I'm not seeing a red bar in the waveform area... ?

[Xenakios]

CinningBao seems to be referring to the older version of PaulStretch I developed, that was purely a standalone application. But development of that was completely scrapped once I started work on the plugin version. There might be some feature discrepancies between that and the plugin but I don't recall exactly.

The "red bar" in the waveform is by the way because of the setting "Show technical info" being enabled, which I added for debugging/testing purposes during development. The red bar shows which part of the waveform is currently cached in memory. (There is no user setting for the caching amount.) Also some other measurements are shown when the technical info display is enabled.

[essejlc]

This may be a dumb question (and I can't get the tutorial on https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/ to actually appear), while it works fine in Cakewalk By Bandlab, I can't actually see how to get the processed audio *back* onto a track (that's when using it as a plugin - I can obviously run the standalone and do the processing offline).

My apologies, the link was wrong! I've corrected it, and here it is too (the UI in the video is the older version, but it has all the same features):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLvAbLEremk

[essejlc]

I've tried both with and without an audio clip, and silence reigns in both cases. There is such a flag (which I set) and I don't think it made any difference - I'm going to go through more methodically later.

There is one setting which does seem to be necessary for playback of the effected audio beyond the boundaries of a clip in the track ("Stop At Project End" - disable) but that is a pain to leave like that as the transport never stops rolling.

You might need to actually create a new track to do the recording on, where the output from the original track with the plugin is routed to the input of the new one. You'll want to have input monitoring enabled on the paulxstretch track so it runs the plugin, or even put paulxstretch on a bus and use that as the source for recording on the new track. I don't have access to cakewalk to test this...

I will probably add the offline Render feature to the plugin as well (why not).. but it's not as flexible because you can't do parameter twiddling or automation that way.

I will also add an output recording feature to the standalone version so you can record live twiddling there too.

[kperry]

Cool - I'll feed back when I've done some more testing.

[CinningBao]

Yes, I'm referring to the most recent (last release) standalone version preview12. The standalone fits into my workflow much better than the plugin. I was a bit disappointed when Xenakios reported that he would only be working on the plugin version, but extremely thankful for the time he put into the rehash of the old non-working code; he kept potentially vintage code which could easily have just disappeared

Aaah, yes I see now the Ratios Tab in the newer version. Great implementation!

Regarding the FFT size and Prebuffer size relationship; yes, it's seems to be working a bit better at longer buffer sizes than Xenakios' version. (I was idiotically changing the 'Capture Buffer Length' parameter thinking it had been named differently)

Now all that's been sorted, I hope you can take a look at my numerical value readouts request and re-scaling. It's difficult to get a feel of a change of value when time values are measured in samples

Space bar stop-and-start would be great if it isn't too much of a faff.

[kperry]

Cool - I'll feed back when I've done some more testing.

It's a bit messy and non-intuitive.

1 - If you want to playback an effected sample (however you get it into XStretch) then you either need a (muted) sample of at least the length of the effected audio on the track in question, or on another track (obviously doesn't need to be muted) *or* you need to have "Stop at project end" unticked.

2 - To render the effected audio back to the track, you can't Freeze the track or bounce a clip on a track (see the first option in 1 above), but you need to run the Bounce to Tracks process (and select the correct track source and destination) and have at least one event on a track (not necessarily the XStretch track): I put a dummy volume envelope node in the project...doesn't seem to matter where it is.

[CinningBao]

I have one more FR, but it is more engine-focused than the others.

Are you able to provide a smaller minimum for the FFT size? Current minimum is 128 samples, but powers from 16 or 32 (or lower if you can) would be delicious for sound design.

thanks!

[essejlc]

I have one more FR, but it is more engine-focused than the others.

Are you able to provide a smaller minimum for the FFT size? Current minimum is 128 samples, but powers from 16 or 32 (or lower if you can) would be delicious for sound design.

thanks!

That’s certainly an easy one, I guess there are no rules for sound design purposes, where the more mangling, the better

[kperry]

FR from me (if I'm again not missing something): the ability to set where the captures are stored (rather than living in AppData\Roaming\PaulXStretch3\Captures on Windows anyway). Yes, I can use a junction/symbolic link but not everyone is happy with that.

[essejlc]

FR from me (if I'm again not missing something): the ability to set where the captures are stored (rather than living in AppData\Roaming\PaulXStretch3\Captures on Windows anyway). Yes, I can use a junction/symbolic link but not everyone is happy with that.

Yes, I was going to add a setting for that too... (which will probably mean making the settings a real panel of its own instead of a popup menu).

[kperry]

Nice - thanks.

[Michael L]

Is anyone able to open VST3 in Mac?
I can't even in a bare-bones host like Blue Cat Patchwork.

[XComposer]

Is anyone able to open VST3 in Mac?
I can't even in a bare-bones host like Blue Cat Patchwork.

It opens in Reaper, here (Mac OS X 10.14.6).

[essejlc]

Is anyone able to open VST3 in Mac?
I can't even in a bare-bones host like Blue Cat Patchwork.

What hardware and macOS version?