#22

Thanks Dan, I am a complete novice to crow atm (only had it a day) but have used m4l in the past and i am excited about the modular/m4l crossover. For updating the firmware am I right in thinking that I need to install homebrew + dfu-util tools to do the flash or can it all be done in m4l? Thanks for all your work on this, cheers

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#23

hey paul, happy to help!

that is correct. once you have those tools installed, updating crow’s firmware is as easy as activating the bootloader through druid, closing druid, and double-clicking the command (MacOS) or batch (Win) file in the unzipped update folder :slight_smile:

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#24

Thanks Dan :slight_smile:

#25

Thanks Dan!

I am hoping to get time to do this tomorrow, but today is all about grading midterms!

Best,

Ed

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#26

Awesome. Thanks Dan. I have it running and its wonderful.

One other crash to note: I had 2 instances of JF Vox going as well as JF synth, and JF crashed once i added a midi probability device mid sequence. I pulled up a new session and added the same devices/midi effects prior to playing and it seems to like that a lot more.

I just intentionally tried to break it by adding more midi devices. It was working fine but then I played a few notes and it infinitely sustained the last notes played. Hopefully this is helpful!

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#27

dope, really glad to hear it, nick. thanks for the follow-up and additional report!

I think this sorta gets into weirder territory.

my understanding of how Live handles serial data

Live prioritizes audio over data because it only has one scheduler (whereas Max has two). “data” here means the rapid-fire messages going through serial to crow. so when you’re loading a new device, depending on your machine, Live might bottleneck the packets its sending to crow to make sure that audio + midi are consistent – it’s the same reason why you may notice your screen doesn’t redraw / you get a beachball while a new device is loading or when you’re searching through the Browser. in short, because crow is super versatile and doesn’t project a single identity, Live doesn’t inherently know that crow is an important musical device – crow is likely being seen as some weird peripheral you’ve got hanging out of your USB port, like a dot matrix printer. so, between a killer drum break and a word doc, Live cares more about the audio :slight_smile:

so yeah, a good practice for heavy crow-i2c Sets (eg. all those JF devices sending to one crow and one JF, creating a good amount of single-destination i2c traffic) might be setting stuff up prior rather than adding midway. I think you can enable/disable instantiated devices without worry, though!

2 Likes
#28

Dan,

I’ve got Crow updated, and I’m running the M4L ^^dual OK. Can you confirm that each instance of ^^dual can only choose one set of outputs, and to get both sets of outputs working, I need to run two instances of ^^dual [edit: on two separate Live tracks]? I’m doing that now and it is working.

Also, for some reason, although I used to be able to run ^^jf_synth, it’s no longer working. I have not updated JF yet, so could that be the issue?

I note that the ^^jf_synth doc says that I should see the lights flash, but I do not. ^^jf_synth does indicate that JF is connected however, so I’m thinking the ii cables are in place as they were before.

Thanks!

#29

Dan,

Happy to report that I successfully updated Crow and JF.

Now ^^jf_synth works!

Next on to W/…

Oh, I was also able to get the clockdiv.lua to run, which was great fun for pinging all 4 inputs of Sisters, as the docs suggested…

Thanks as always for your great coaching :pray:t2:

1 Like
#30

I experienced several w/ synth freezes or more like note hangs. Whatever the envelope settings it gets sustained forever and no longer reacts to anything.
It happened around six times for me in a half an hour while playing it and it seems that parameters being automated in ableton kind of causes that. I fixed it several times by unplugging crow usb cable and upon hitting refresh on command center it get’s back to normal until it does it again.

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#31

Yes i have had this - it happens when automating parameters with another Ableton device. It happened a lot today when modulating 3 parameters. Every couple of minutes it would freeze. Some work better than others. I had less freezes using Hospital Food. I was using the Patches modulation and that was giving me a lot of trouble. I had to avoid modulating the FM stuff especially on the right side of the window. In the end I had to use a manual controller.

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#32

correct! in order to have two sets of outputs sending v/8 + envelopes from two different sequences / sources, then you’ll want to instantiate two unique ^^dual devices, each on its own track, and just set one to 1+2 and the other to 3+4.

thanks for the repro notes @pluralbeing + @mlogger! neither the w/2.0 firmware or the w_synth device is considered “release ready,” so trouble is to be expected. we’ll have to wait for the final w/2.0 firmware before the cause of the issues you’re describing can be confirmed – it’s either w/2.0’s handling of simultaneous i2c messages (3 parameters being modulated at audio rate [Live handles modulation as audio] while also receiving note data, all over i2c) or i’ll need to sample the modulation from Live into data (as I did with the improved ^^outs).

time will tell, but I will keep these repro notes as release tests! thanks so much for engaging with the tools :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#33

These are crazy cool fun tools and I love them so first off great job on these @dan_derks et al!

I did encounter a weird issue today when running both jf_geode and w_synth. It was making some nice sounds (that I wasn’t quite sure how to control but that’s another issue) and then just nothing. Clock was still running, m4l devices still looked fine, but no sound at all from jf or w/. Restarted modular and refreshed crow command and a loud drone started happening, it would stop when I removed the audio out of w/ but the sound would drastically change when I changed anything on JF physical panel. Anyway, had to nuke everything and start new Live set, etc and got it back but haven’t re-added w_synth. Thought it was weird and that I should say something in case someone else experiences it or I was not doing something right. Thanks!

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#34

thanks for the kind words!

i think we can assume that any weird encounters with w/synth will be expected until the firmware is officially released, though v much appreciate the report and am sorry to hear about the trouble :revolving_hearts:

just to confirm i’m reading this right – when you hit this drone from w/ after rebooting your system, changing knobs on jf’s physical panel affected w/? if so, that is wild and maybe a good data point for @Galapagoose. also, if so, what does your i2c bus look like?

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#35

Exactly, and yes so weird! I will make a vid if it happens again, and good point about w/v2 being in beta mode. My chain is TT > crow > w/ > JF. Thanks @dan_derks!

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#36

lil thing with the updated jf m4l patches. working wonderfully.
I was getting some crow and jf crashes pretty consistently (both would freeze up requiring me to power cycle the synth and reconnect the m4l patches) but removing the 16n from my i2c bus seems to fix that up.

I made some slight mods that may interest others. particularly i have hardcoded jf addresses into the geode, synth, and vox patches for jf so that i don’t have to worry about the address of the second jf on my bus to getting set back to 1 (a problem ran into a lot during the beta phase, sorry for not mentioning this sooner). it would probably be more useful if this was assignable from a number box, similarly to how the multi crow works now, but my max fu is weak and I’m not sure when i would devote time to this.

the other mod replaces the play_note and play_voice messages with pitch for the jf patches. this enable the ability to sequence note values from ableton, then gates or trigs in the hardware. its freaking fun. also this would probably function better with a ui switch instead of a a modded patch but this is as far as i got

let me know if anyone would like to try these out!

also i was just dreaming of a device that could map jf knob values to those ableton parameter map buttons. turning jf into a i2c controller on top of everything else. would this be too much for the serial data flow in and out of m4l?

4 Likes
#37

can the knob values be polled from jf ? (just curious)

((the internet says yes [QUESTION REDACTED]))

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#38

Heres some Geode triggering high, low and centre on 3 Sisters formant mode. I’m modulating the Div, Rep and Volts of jf_geode. Freq / pitch on 3 Sisters is some random CV.

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#39

would love to try these out :slight_smile:

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#40

Would it be possible to trigger the Just Friends internal voices using Geode mode and play the pitches of those triggers with the Maxforlive device. A sort of Geode Vox mode?

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#41

I would definitely be interested in this - I think this is what I was asking in my previous post

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