#101

i had been neglecting this module, thanks for the great idea!

this afternoon i built the simple scene you made and will test later tonight
(anybody with a grid + aleph can try this gmx.scn )

#102

reporting back just to say that the patch works (this module is so bonkers)

I need to spend time with it so that I understand what is happening but the control over routing fx is immediate and I’ve already harnessed some pretty crazy warps out of the patch matrix working blind

#103

Yep - I got most of it now, but it took me quite some time :slight_smile:
Then I like that with such a small patch you can do so much already. I am planning to expand it a lot though (could make many patches there in fact), but am waiting for a go from rick_monster, as each new version will break scene compatibility… I will do some in all cases, but just as tests - already great though!

1 Like
#104

what params do you usually map to the encoders?

I’m gonna be scheming things with this tonight and am open to suggestion . first priorities are sampling, karplus, and delay games (if I can figure them out)

#105

ummm yeah my efforts to revamp bees got really frustrating hitting multiple brick walls. Made progress adding new operators that allow better programmability for grid-oriented patches. Anyone that wants to can compile bees from my grid-refactor branch to have a play around with some new ops for going deeper with grid. But not going to release a binary of that - it’s too tedious & error-prone trying to do complex grid experiments when you can only delete the top operator off the stack.

I decided to take a break from bees & try to look into running picolisp on the aleph - it’s an interactive programming language that should be very fast & minimal. Still have some remaining bugs/niggles with my aleph port of this programming language but had to take a break again after bank holiday push.

Intensely frustrating I can’t work on this full-time for a month or 2 in forseeable future - kind of hoping the unofficial second run of aleph dev boards will actually go ahead so I set up a pcb-only aleph with jtag debugger attached & the faster avr32 flash cycle - scared to damage my main aleph de-assembling & soldering on jtag header…

2 Likes
#106

Back on grains as well… so no modification before some time, right? I’ll work on a scene then, that could help for future development. I have recorded great stuff today, really fine module you made here - although some of it is still a bit obscure, actually!

1 Like
#107

well feel free to field any specific questions on the obscure parts of the module - I have a very clear picture how it works/what it does but I found it very hard to explain and/or draw a diagram of the internal structure.

In particular the way turning scrubbing on/off changes the functionality of several other params is a bit nuts! But helps to create quite a few sonic possibilities and I think this ‘feature’ is actually explained ok in the readme…

Don’t hold your breath for updates to this module. I am fascinated and frustrated by the control side of things and feel I need some progress there before coming back to module dev. Haven’t made much progress in recent weeks I think some work on @zebra’s pforth app might be the way forward.

I also recently have been screwing around with icestick fpga, which runs a forth softcore! Could be an interesting direction. Think my next step with aleph should be try to shove my picolisp thing into old aleph repo - the encoder events seem broken in new framework, which sucks. If insane bugs with picolisp persist I will try to get pforth app working.

It’s very possible I can’t make much more progress on bees or picolisp without a jtag debugger - hoping @mattbrockuk’s aleph boards will actually happen so I can have a second aleph for screwing around with more low-level experiments like wiping out bootloader and trying to run hempl lisp machine rather than avr32lib…

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#108

Hello hello,

Just found out after recording a whole track with Grains that there was something strange in the high range. I recorded in 24 bit 96 kHz and analyzed the result, and here’s what I got:

First with spectrum analysis, you can see all the way through my recording (which is more than 20 minutes long) a peak around 16 kHz, with a symmetry there (meaning what is above and below 16 kHz looks exactly alike all the way).

Screen Shot 2016-05-05 at 09.31.21.png845×406 51 KB

And then on a sonagram, the symmetry is just even clearer and it happens precisely at 16 kHz, where there is a hole all the way: a perfect notch.

Screen Shot 2016-05-05 at 09.40.54.png1154×295 352 KB

Can you reproduce this, and if so any idea about what this could come from? I mean, it could come from some of my equipment around the Aleph (mainly my OTO Biscuit, I’d say) but as I can’t try it now I thought I should check with you first. If it is not coming from Grains, then well I’ll apologize and remove the post!

#109

Ha certainly haven’t been over the sound from my aleph with a fine-tooth comb. My unit is noticeably electrically noisy, especially with many lights on grid, noticeable both through cans and out the main outs. Kind of assumed that was a pcb layout issue not manufacturing defect in my particular device.

So ignoring that for a sec, there are some weird hacks used to squeeze the naiive processing for grains onto blackfin at single-sample latency - wouldn’t be at all surprised if my hack DSP introduces this kind of craziness -80dB down (0dB == full-scale i assume?). Did you check sonogram from any other sound generated by the aleph? Also quick enough for me to hook up aleph to jaaa audio analyser see if I also see that weird hollowed-out sideband artefact at 16k coming off my aleph…

#110

Let’s see if you have anything as well. Then I’ll narrow it down by tomorrow, as I’ll be in my studio then. By the way I never noticed that with Waves before, for instance, and have widely ignored Lines because of some of its limitations, as I have an arsenal already with delay lines and such (mostly Kurzweil synths and effects). But yes, the Aleph is noisy as such and even with a 5V external supply it rings when the grid is widely lit… but this is something else.

#111

ok, I tried with Lines and can confirm: it only happens in Grains, and it happens without any extra processing. For instance with a guitar plugged in input 4, I can simply use aux1_i3 and aux2_i3 with values of 0.0000 and record the result. All the rest is off, and I already have a very clear bump at 16 kHz, with a parallel rise both before and after 16 kHz, plus a perfect notch precisely at 16 kHz.

So it is not the Aleph, which is great: it means Grains can sound even better !

1 Like
#112

ok I am checking a long Grains track I should have posted long ago. Should be ready by tomorrow, just wanted to say I would love to contribute to its development… Such a great module, it is hard to believe what one can do with it!

#113

Are you still have problems with noise?

#114

Oh how I would love to have enough time to dedicate to debugging grains! Noticed the CV on that module is also somewhat borked…

My priorities outside of full-time work for now:

  1. go hiking & canoeing (probably necessary atm for my sanity)
  2. build a working setup for making music (requires beaglebone/linux ‘serial-hub’ to glue together aleph, my looping sequencer & boomerang pedal - now underway once more)
  3. finish bees enhancements
  4. (ummm maybe get round to making music again in 3 years at this rate…)

Unfortunately enhancing grains just isn’t ever going to pop back to the top of my stack - already way too many possibilities with that module, waves & lines. I haven’t even scratched the surface of music-making possibilities due to the sheer unbridled horror of wasting all these precious alive moments holding down a pretty straight job.

Ah well think I narrowly missed some kind of nervous breakdown after all the late-night hackathons that gave birth to grains, picolisp on aleph & unfinished business with bees, partially hence the hiatus last few weeks spending all my spare time in nature, away from screens…

2 Likes
#115

Ah well I can certainly understand that! @analogue01 the noise issue is still there, yes, but as you’ll hear once I post it it doesn’t matter that much in the end. Good luck with the canoeing, and let me know if I can help with the Bees enhancements!

#116

the thing that would help with bees dev would be to get any bugs with arbitrary op deletion / insertion characterised, so I can pin down malfunctioning code in gdb/linux environment…

I suspect there are still some glitches with preset system under certain corner cases. If someone could come up with repeatable test case for any outstanding bugs on my grid-refactor.merge.net-use-malloc branch on github (pretty sure that’s the right branch), might stand a fighting chance to get things all straightened out…

Btw other goodies in there, such as bfin module flash over serial, ping bees net from a computer over serial, repatch bees over serial, arbitrary op deletion/insertion, more flexible grid-oriented ops. Many potentially awesome things are cooking in there but I need to develop host software (aka beaglebone glue code) in tandem to realize the integration into a working setup…

1 Like
#117

I’m intrigued… is this a way to connect a single grid to multiple devices or a multiple devices to an Aleph?

#118

Well here it is, maybe I should post it somewhere else though?
The long-time promised track I made with Grains. Basically one guitar, one Aleph+grid, one distortion unit and one reverb/delay, all recorded live at my studio. This just to show how amazing this module is, and how much can be done with it, and to thank @rick_monster for his amazing contribution to the Aleph community!

Hope you like it.

1 Like
#119

Ah well, the upload didn’t function so here it is, sorry!
Yann Coppier - Grain Rain

5 Likes
#120

Amazing, I really enjoyed that.