Black Magic Drum Machine Beta testing finished

[Astralp]

Obviously still have the unusable knobs in Tracktion and another weird thing happening.
If I make a midi part with notes turning sections on and off and a few pitch changes on the higher keys, it plays back fine and each section is muted\umuted as expected, plays its sequence and\or responds to pitch.
However if I render this track to audio, the resulting wave file has everything playing back in 16th notes.. as if you were triggering that section constantly.
Once this happens, BM will continue to play 16th notes until re-loaded.
It's kind of hard to put into words but here are links to MP3s showing what I mean..first link was recorded by BM's internal recorder and sounds as intended, 2nd one was rendered in T3 and shows the issue I'm talking about:
(note there is a bit of silence at the beginning of the internal one so it may take a few secs to kick in)

Just to be clear, you were using BM in tracktion by playing the sequences via midi notes?

[Astralp]

jdt, hmmm I'll have a look at my code to see if I can spot any reason, it sounds like a note off signal isn't sent

[Chester Desmond]

Just to be clear, you were using BM in tracktion by playing the sequences via midi notes?

Yes. I placed notes to turn on various sections (in the C3-B3) range as well as a few notes in the higher ranges for pitch manipulation.

After reading jdt's comments it occurred to me that it makes more sense when using BM in this manner to treat it more like a synth; in other words: specify note durations and put BM in 'Normal' mode.

I had BM in 'sticky' mode.

Not sure if\why this would cause the '16th note' issue I was having upon rendering but I will test again tonight in Normal mode.

[Astralp]

Yes Chester I think normal is much better and more reliable than sticky mode, that is better for live jamming, though should still be ok as long as all notes off are received by the end of the sequence. It definitely shouldn't cause the half tempo though, can you look to see if the clock is set to half? (bottom right of the LCD screen)

[Astralp]

Right BM Lite beta 4

* Fixed missing samples and related crashes
* Now removed LFO and Mod Sequencer
* Popup screen only happens occasionally when loading, can be triggered manually from Upgrade info button
* Now stays animated for 10 seconds at a time

[Az're-ul]

BM Lite 4

Sorry Andy no time to test today apart from this:

Starts and works fine in:

Mini Host
Energy XT 1
Energy XT 2
Orion Platinum
Live 6
FL Studio 8
Renoise 2
Plogue Bidule
Audio Mulch
Usine

[Chester Desmond]

Yes Chester I think normal is much better and more reliable than sticky mode, that is better for live jamming, though should still be ok as long as all notes off are received by the end of the sequence. It definitely shouldn't cause the half tempo though, can you look to see if the clock is set to half? (bottom right of the LCD screen)

I'll have to check if I had a "note off" at the end of the midi clip.. which in this case would be another B3 note on.. That statement right there shows why sticky is a bad idea for this particular application!

I'm not sure what you mean by half tempo?

[Astralp]

Yes Chester I think normal is much better and more reliable than sticky mode, that is better for live jamming, though should still be ok as long as all notes off are received by the end of the sequence. It definitely shouldn't cause the half tempo though, can you look to see if the clock is set to half? (bottom right of the LCD screen)

I'll have to check if I had a "note off" at the end of the midi clip.. which in this case would be another B3 note on.. That statement right there shows why sticky is a bad idea for this particular application!

I'm not sure what you mean by half tempo?

Just at the bottom of the LCD Screen to the right there is a clock tempo setting which can be Full or Half, setting it to half would do what you describe

[Astralp]

BM Lite 4

Sorry Andy no time to test today apart from this:

Starts and works fine in:

Mini Host
Energy XT 1
Energy XT 2
Orion Platinum
Live 6
FL Studio 8
Renoise 2
Plogue Bidule
Audio Mulch
Usine

That's great Steve, I got all the problems I think, crashes being gone is the main thing, I'll publicly release it now as a beta for a few days and officially release it later in the week. thanks again fella

[damstraversaz]

hi andy
sorry for being late.

all works fine here, exept my stupid 2 instances bug with live. works perfectly with my others host on the same computer. no problem with 2 instances renamed.
As you ask, I don't have this problem with HG piano, orgone, bion and soundscaper.

the presets are very good now, and the velocity is perfect. the velocity global is a very nice idea.
I send to you some sounds, maybe they can be useful.

take care

damien

[Chester Desmond]

Further testing in Traction 3:

BM works entirely as expected with midi files and using in a live manner until you render the track at which point it basically turns into a metronome!
I tried a lot of different settings (both in the DAW and BM) and turned off and on any settings that seemed like they might relate to the problem. It happens with every kit and preset I tried. Sticky or normal doesn't matter.

The issue is 100% duplicatable when I do the following:

Load BM and create a midi file which triggers the various sections and their respective sequences .

Render the track to wav and there will be a hit recorded for each 16th count of the bar. If I reduce the BM clock tempo setting before rendering, the hits will be recorded at a slower count (ie 1/4 notes). Just imagine a metronome. It seems to globally put BM into this mode, by which I mean whether the midi file activates one section or all sections they all behave in this manner.

Now if I play BM it will also behave like this..sticky or normal..activating a section will play back in this metronomic way. If you watch the lights in the section area (where the buttons are to turn sections on and off etc) they blink as if counting the tempo.
So if I was to press A button, all the lights would blink steadily, counting along with the tempo.

Now if I change kit or preset, I lose all sound output from BM (If I load another vst it produces sound, so I know it's not the DAW output itself that is lost).
However now if I press the A button (or B3 etc), the lights in the section area begin to blink as if they were now following the sequences correctly, there is just no sound output! I tried rendering this just to see but the resulting wav was empty (which makes sense if the BM outputs are "off").

If I remove BM from the project and reload it, the exact same behaviour will occur ie works great until rendered.

Hope this explanation makes some sense!

[Az're-ul]

I'd still like to see a double Clock Tempo setting for more elaborate single bar loops, unless I'm missing something blindingly obvious apart from setting the host tempo at twice what you want the loop tempo to be.

OK I'll this, I removed it because at such high clock rates and high BPM it can become a bit unreliable, but we'll see how it goes

Thanks for putting the double clock speed back in Andy. It seems fairly stable to me, no crashes, drop-outs or anything. If you decide to keep it in, you'll need to shift the clock tempo section lettering across to the left slightly or change the word double to dbl as it writes outside of the LCD section.

Oh and the double clock speed is brilliant

Just been playing around with it for 2 hours. And the fruits of my labour amounts to.... one half-baked DNB style preset programmed at 90bpm - On Da Double

Slightly OT the upgrade info text on BM Lite looks really cheap as it doesn't really go with the rest of the GUI.

[Astralp]

Chester, can you check to see if the clock tempo has been set to half? I know I keep going on about it but it is the 1st thing to look at (far right along the bottom of the LCD screen). I don't have tracktion 3 to test it myself, but this behavior doesn't happen in the hosts I've tested.

Steve, glad the speed is working out OK I agree with the Lite, I've asked Andreas to do something better than my crappy effort, would be good to lose the Compressor and Humanize etc... as well. Are you still adding these presets to your bank?

[Chester Desmond]

Chester, can you check to see if the clock tempo has been set to half? I know I keep going on about it but it is the 1st thing to look at (far right along the bottom of the LCD screen). I don't have tracktion 3 to test it myself, but this behavior doesn't happen in the hosts I've tested.

Aye, I did that

If I reduce the BM clock tempo setting before rendering, the hits will be recorded at a slower count (ie 1/4 notes).

in other words when BMs clock tempo is set to half, the "metronome effect" is halved in speed.
It's the same problem as the 'echoey' mp3 I posted, but the "count" is slower.

fwiw, the T3 demo is small. It would be nice to at least ascertain if it's something in my setup or not since it seems like a really exclusive 'bug' at this point. Since I believe I am the only Tracktion user in the beta, I hope it's clear I'm not trying to be so insistent, just hoping to save you tech support down the road. I seem to be using BM in less-obvious ways and the internal recorder and\or your audio recorder plugin are both adequate 'workarounds'.

[Astralp]

hmmm ok thanks - sorry somehow missed that, puzzled by that one, may have to buy tracktion to get to the bottom of it, I don't think there is a demo having had a quick look.