Norns and ES-8

Reinert_Wasserman · 2020-07-30T05:00:38.481Z

Ok I’m trying to get this going with my ES-9 so I can use its I/O for cv, gates and triggers. by the looks of it I’ll have to use it as my main out as well which is fine.

At the moment I’m connected via SSH and making my way to norns-image/config/ it’s the only place I see a “norns-jack.service” file but if I edit it nothing changes.

I’m assuming my HW id should be ES9, what did you google to find this information. also am I even working in the right file?

Thanks!

zebra · 2020-07-30T05:27:26.932Z

Reinert_Wasserman:

also am I even working in the right file?

no, it’s installed at /etc/systemd/system/norns-jack.service

(NB: this can and probably will be overwritten by norns update scripts)

moogah · 2020-07-30T06:02:53.567Z

Also, the startup command for jack is in no way guaranteed to accept ES9 as a parameter, and I really wish I knew more about how to research this, but sadly I’ve not found the time in all these months.

moogah:

/usr/bin/jackd -R -P 95 -d alsa -d hw:ES8,0 -r 48000 -n 3 -p 128 -S -s

zebra · 2020-07-30T06:23:06.386Z

oh right

this stackexhange answer covers everything i know about device names as understood by jack / alsa. in summary:

aplay -l and arecord -l will list “cards” and “devices” supporting output and input respectively. these are the “raw” indices used in the syntax like hw:1,0
however, the “raw” indices (scare quotes because i just made it up) are brittle, and can be reordered if you’re using multiple plug/play devices.
so, card indices also have aliases like “USB” or “PCH”. these can be discovered using cat /proc/asound/cards. (at the moment i am not sure what happens with, say, multiple USB cards.)

any further insights appreciated

moogah · 2020-07-31T21:12:37.214Z

That’s very encouraging, if it’s just an alias for the device ID then ES9 may just work, and if it does’t we can discover the right alias easily

… one real important caveat @Reinert_Wasserman! While I was doing this with the ES-8, if unplugged the USB cable while norns was running, it would lock up norns such that the only fix was to wait for the battery to die, then on next startup very quickly edit the unit files… so this isn’t exactly stable …

I briefly scanned syslog looking for some process that went haywire, but didn’t see a smoking gun. Needs more experimentation.

csboling · 2020-07-31T21:30:47.589Z

moogah:

it would lock up norns such that the only fix was to wait for the battery to die

Whoa! Like you can’t even connect via serial or get the white button to work (?!?)? This is most likely either hitting 100% CPU usage or a kernel panic, in the 100% CPU case I would expect you to still get a screen session eventually. Might want to work on this kind of thing with an SSH or serial connection open running journalctl -f or dmesg | tail -f to keep an eye on system logs. If you are in fact getting a kernel panic I expect the panic to dump logs to the serial TTY no matter what else is running, though it’s possible that an SSH session would die.

Reinert_Wasserman · 2020-08-01T01:02:52.222Z

Thanks @moogah @zebra
As I was reading your replies I thought I had given up because the purpose of this exercise is to use the audio ins to clock a René like sequencer.

I went ahead experimenting with the inputs on my Norns Shield and I found no success but, the Norns is probably AC coupled so the ES-9 might just work

moogah · 2020-08-20T05:55:42.734Z

Sadly I haven’t had time to investigate this, partly because I’m less interested in solving what I consider a symptom of a larger issue, which is figuring out how to start up the norns services correctly depending on which device is present.

Posting this here, mostly for my own memory when I get a moment to return to this effort (currently don’t have an es-8 ). Seems like systemd has tools for sorting it out, maybe?

superuser.com

How can I start a systemd service when a given USB device (ethernet dongle) is plugged in?

usb, ethernet, arch-linux, systemd

asked by SoniEx2 on 01:17AM - 07 Oct 18 UTC

luisilloguerra · 2020-08-23T16:39:56.256Z

do 2 crows REALLY replace 1 ES8???
I want to use max/msp and my eurorack, i was TOTALLY INTO the ES8 still am, but i saw the crow and really caught my attention, still trying to figure it out… SO CONFUSED

csboling · 2020-08-23T18:14:52.608Z

crow is not a DC coupled audio interface. There are ways to communicate CV between crow and a computer but you cannot stream audio from your PC to crow or vice versa, it’s not designed for that – all USB communication with crow is basically done as text, and at a lower speed than is used by USB audio.

I have not used an ES-8 but my impression is that it has basically a fixed function, namely acting as an analog/digital interface for directly passing signals through. By contrast crow’s functionality is completely user-defined: you can have crow generate LFOs, sequences, envelopes, etc. on its own, or quantize incoming voltages, or perform any number of unique CV processing functions. Since crow is scriptable it can serve many different use cases and can be a powerful way to experiment with live coding that’s well integrated in a modular system. There are also a lot of Max and M4L options for interacting with crow as a CV interface and this is one of the main areas of crow development, I’m not well versed in Max but you can find some details here. I would say they are devices with fairly different design goals / supported signals / interaction schemes.

As far as interacting with norns, crow can be incorporated into norns scripts as a CV input or output interface, and a lot of norns scripts support some kind of crow interaction modes (or if not it can be easy to add one). To my knowledge no one is actually using ES-8 with norns currently (?) – norns expects to use its own sound I/O, JACK is not really designed for using multiple audio devices concurrently, this thread discusses what would be involved in configuring ES-8 as an alternative audio device.

moogah · 2020-08-24T03:06:45.010Z

+1 to this, crow and es-8 don’t really overlap if you’re actually using crow to it’s full potential. The real attraction of the es-8 is really that it has 4 inputs, which map very nicely to the 4 softcut channels available. The 8 outputs become more of an afterthought, but obviously do provide some strong utility for sending signals correlated to the softcut buffers, ie having a gate/trigger and phasor output per softcut channel seems really interesting to me, and seems to fully replace and extend both the Instro Lubdah and Arbhar given a bit of programming, which is what I’m really after here.

luisilloguerra · 2020-10-14T04:38:10.158Z

csboling:

here

Thanks you so much for the info! Ordered the ES8, but sure still have crow in my wishlist.

ampism · 2021-12-13T14:35:22.346Z

Total noob question; I’m thinking of getting an ES-9, so that I can use, for example CV Tools and sequencers on my ipad to communicate with Rings in my modular rig.
What I would also really love to do, is to use Colorwheel on my shield to do the same thing. Is this a fantasy? Or is that conceivable? I don’t really get the whole crow thing. Do I need a crow to interact between Rings and Norns? Or could an ES-9 fit that bill? thanks in advance!

glia · 2021-12-13T14:53:15.657Z

ampism:

I don’t really get the whole crow thing. Do I need a crow to interact between Rings and Norns?

yes you’d need crow (connected to norns) to act as a bridge between Colorwheel and Rings

a bit of confusion is understandable
the main thing that might confuse you is that crow can be reprogrammed so it’s functions and usage span many things

the one thing you need it to do is sequencing notes from norns…and it is fully capable of the task

dani_derks · 2021-12-13T15:07:11.619Z

super good points, j!

glia:

the one thing you need it to do is sequencing notes from norns…and it is fully capable of the task

just a quick piggy-back that this is true if the script has an affordance for notes to be sent via crow. since a crow + norns connection can do so much more than MIDI-to-v/8 (and since scripts can do so many different things), there’s no “default” behavior where crow provides this limited-scope functionality until it’s told otherwise – it’s really up to the script to let crow know what to do, so if it doesn’t specify then crow will not perform any script-specific tasks.

thankfully, it’s very straightforward to add crow v/8 and trigger pulses to a script’s ‘note out’ functions – if you’re using specific scripts which seem like they could benefit from this addition, it should take an author only a few minutes to add based on the crow + norns studies (and i’m totally happy to help provide any help if needed!).

(an aside: i should just add some quick ‘basic function’ recipes to the reference docs)

ampism · 2021-12-13T15:13:02.172Z

Great! Thanks @glia
Admittedly not the answer I was hoping for, ha! But thanks so much for clarifying.

Guess I need to look more closely at what crow actually is. On the monome home page it says it “connects norns and computers running max…”. Is it accurate (or partially accurate) to say that they (es-9 and crow) serve a similar function? But that crow is essential to bridge the gap between norns ecosystem and modular?

dani_derks · 2021-12-13T15:20:36.441Z

ampism:

Is it accurate (or partially accurate) to say that they (es-9 and crow) serve a similar function?

i think @csboling has the best summary of the differences upthread: Norns and ES-8 - #23 by csboling

ampism:

But that crow is essential to bridge the gap between norns ecosystem and modular?

primarily, crow is designed to be incredibly friendly to the rest of the monome/mannequins ecosystem, whereas the es-8/es-9 are audio interfaces which would require a bit of ‘hacking’ norns to register (norns doesn’t have any external audio interface compatibility baked into the main software experience) and then, further, ‘hacking’ scripts to build any note-to-v/8 functionality yourself. tons of scripts already offer crow connectivity (both v/8 and i2c) in a plug + play fashion, which makes it a really compelling candidate to get special integration between a modular system and norns. some norns scripts also have really imaginative uses for crow – Crow_talk, Wobblewobble, Caliper, Just-play, etc.

with this in mind, i’d say a standard MIDI/CV converter covers similar usability territory to crow’s basic ‘notes from a norns script sent as v/8 + pulses’ more than the es-8/es-9.

hope that helps + didn’t make things more vague / unclear – thank you for the great questions!

ampism · 2021-12-13T16:50:26.122Z

Awesome, thanks @dani_derks!
Yes, that all makes sense.
Seems like I want both a crow and an ES-9 then, for different things.

Any UK crow owners able to give me a rough idea how much the shipping and additional customs charges are likely to be? I have a pal heading to the U.S in April, so I might just get him to bring me one back…

glia · 2021-12-13T18:39:58.019Z

Sorry about that btw

I was fully aware that your real question was about es9 and I got distracted for a few hours before coming back with the other answer

Basically, es9 has way more i/o and much better suited for what you’d like to do involving the ipad. If less i/o is not a major concern then, as dan stated above, crow and es8/9 could be used in similar fashion with norns/ableton/maxmsp. The main differences? Crow integrates more easily with norns…es9 is a full scale audio interface.

ampism · 2021-12-13T20:40:04.384Z

Absolutely no need to apologise - I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Thanks again