Resolume Avenue 4 has been announced today, with a beta version for Resolume owners due September 19. And it’s looking like a very nice upgrade, indeed. Having vastly improved stability, now functionality in Avenue is looking really mature, building on the almost Ableton-style audiovisual clip metaphor introduced in Avenue. I just played a short gig with version 3 and had a blast, and 4 could make this the tool to beat. Here’s what’s new:

Clip Transitions and Effect Clips are especially big news. You can trigger effects as if they’re clips, and clip transitions allows you to automatically fade between clips when you trigger them rather than have to manually blend/fade them with layers. That alone could be a revelation.

Improved MIDI Support and Mapping. MIDI output means you can light up devices like the APC40 or Launchpad or motorize gear like the BCF2000. An eight-dial dashboard maps better to … well, just about everything, since there’s loads of MIDI gear with knobs and faders in sets of eight. MIDI controller range lets you set range for MIDI inputs, also essential.

Compositing Order: They say this better than I could: “You can now change the order in which the effects, masks and transformations are rendered. This means that you can now for instance scale a clip without scalings the mask. Or apply an effect on a clip but not on the mask.”

Other standard features:

• Auto Pilot for playing clips in sequence or randomly – for unattended operation, or more sophisticated clip sequencing that frees you up to do other things.
• Global speed and direction to manipulate all layers at once (nice).
• Arrow key shortcuts – up/down for layers, left/right for clips.
• Random beat playback for slicing up audio and video clips.
• Play once then pause, stopping on the last frame.
• OSC and MIDI output, not just OSC input, for rigging together multiple machines on Resolume or any other OSC-compatible software you desire – or sending feedback to an OSC controller on a tablet or phone, etc. (Should also open up some interesting monome possibilities.)
• Clips reconnect if you lose the media.
• Faster desk switching.

Plenty of reasons to drool right there for day-to-day VJing. On the more advanced side…

Screen Warping, Video Mapping, Soft Edge. Via an Advanced Output window, you get new abilities to slice up compositions with transforms, which can be used for complex output textures or projection mapping against surfaces, even with advanced bezier transforms on curved screens. Soft Edge is intended largely for working with additional projectors seamlessly, up to 360-degree wraparound, though I could also see it being used to soften the effect of projecting with just one projector. The bad news: while I’d like this in the standard edition, you have to upgrade to the Media Server version to get these features. Since some of Resolume’s competitors (Modul8, for one) incorporate similar features in their standard version, that could put a little pressure on Avenue, even if the implementation is more sophisticated. (I have to test it to say that for sure.)

More Advanced Media Server features. If you do pony up for the advanced edition, you get those screen warping / video mapping / soft edge features, plus SMPTE timecode input and DMX input for control.

Note that if you don’t get the high-end version, you can still do projection mapping with their standard version 3 features like keystoning and masking. (CDM confirmed this with Resolume.)

The Media Server version is EUR699; Avenue 4 itself remains EUR299. That pricing seems largely reasonable to me; they mostly lose out in the US Dollar to Euro conversion, but I can’t really blame Resolume for that.

I really love the feature direction; the absence of these cool new mapping tools in the standard version is my only real gripe, though I understand it may make sense from a business perspective – and you still have options, via Syphon, to combine Resolume with a tool like MadMapper if you prefer that to their own Media Server. We’ve got plenty to evaluate here, so stay tuned.

http://resolume.com/software/whatsnew.php

We’ve been waiting for some time to learn what was next for Jitter, the 3D, matrix data, animation, and video side of Cycling ’74′s Max 6 graphical multimedia development environment. (Phew!) The wait is now at its conclusion: Cycling has released details of what’s changed, as well as an extended video sneak preview above worth a full watch.

Jitter users will see new workflow improvements, usability, and features that help you figure out what the heck object you need and what the heck it does. But there are substantial new tools for actually creating graphics, too – arguably beyond even what’s changed on the sound side. Highlights:

• Lots more eye candy: Image Effects, geometry, hierarchical rendering, lighting and cameras, materials.
• More scriptability: Script Jitter and OpenGL via Lua, the lovely scripting language now popular in gaming development (among other places).
• Get physical: An all-new built-in 3D physics engine means, for the first time, you have access to physics out of the box without having to build your own simulation.
• Vastly-expanded animation: Animation and “hierarchical motion” (basically, a series of nodes in a scene-graph-like arrangement in the patcher, making it easier to animate characters and complex scenes). This could radically change the ability to use Jitter in animation.

There are also new vector graphics options for the UI, styled after the way you work with the HTML5 Canvas (though not actually the Web Canvas, sadly).

Aside from this, it’s worth a look at everything else. I go over the changes to the tool’s usability, and the news for people working with sound and music, on our sister site:

Max 6 in Public Beta; For Home-brewing Music Tools Graphically, Perhaps the Biggest Single Update Yet

Go grab the public beta to try Jitter for yourself, and experienced Jitter users, we’d love to see your impressions (and your work) here on CDM, so do get in touch.

http://cycling74.com/downloads/max-6-public-beta/

Make all the hipster jokes you like. Fashionable film photography could be all that lies between us and the demise of film. With camera manufacturing and film stock going out of production, enthusiasts – both the inventors/merchandisers and users – are having to rebuild the film revolution from scratch. And while this site’s name has “digital” in the title, make no mistake: creative work with light and motion is dependent on maintaining traditional techniques for the full spectrum of choice.

That’s why it’s good news that today, Lomography has a motion camera. True to Lomo’s experimental roots in art student visual play, it’s not really a movie camera in the traditional sense. It’s a throwback to the beginnings of motion film, in many ways, down to the hand crank and jerky, slow-framerate capture. You could use it to do individual frames, timelapse style, or crank up to about 3-5 frames per second.

For visualists, it looks like brilliant, experimental fun, and I’m already thinking of ways to combine this “analog” workflow with digital tools that embody the same spirit. And Lomo seems to be going to digital hybrids, too, encouraging uploads to Vimeo. That’s good news – I can’t say I’ve absolutely loved Lomography’s own web photo sharing site, which can be clunky; seeing them embrace Vimeo seems very good, indeed. The design, which I hope to check out later today if I can grab one in Berlin, has some interesting features:

• Fixed focus 1m+; 0.6-1m macro mode
• Continuous aperture – a departure for the “sunny / cloudy” mode on Lomos. f/5.6 – f/11. (Amusingly, they still recommend switching between the extreme settings based on whether it’s sunny or cloudy.)
• A roughly 1/100 shutter, for cranking up to 3-5 fps. (This is where digital gets interesting to me – think about processing between frames.)
• Hot shoe and flash. Obviously, you want a flash that recharges quickly, but the flash could be the coolest feature here.
• Easy 35mm processing. Lomo suggests scanning with a flatbed. Time to hit eBay for a flatbed. Here, too, I could see some interesting DIY solutions and hacks.

http://microsites.lomography.com/lomokino/productionnotes

Best of all, while I anticipated some wildly-expensive product here, the LomoKino is EUR 65,00. And before you complain about that, come on – how much did you spend on your last lens? And your last Adobe CS upgrade? It comes with a book, too.

But why is this important in the bigger scheme? Even as film assortments and stocks dwindle, Lomography is getting into making their own film. And that expanding retail operation, that includes cameras in places like Urban Outfitters? It may make “serious” photographers cringe, but it could be the market that sustains any kind of usable scale in film manufacturing. (Remember how pricey it was to buy The Impossible Project’s clone of Polaroid film, and how inconsistent the results were initially, and how scarce it was? Plan for more of this – and, conversely, more successes when production ramps up.)

And let’s consider just how desperate the situation is becoming. The LomoKino is hardly a replacement, but the motion movie camera is meeting its untimely end.

Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a terrific, if terrifically depressing, story for Salon.com last month:
R.I.P., the movie camera: 1888-2011: Major manufacturers have ceased production of new motion picture film cameras; cinema as we once knew it is dead

The impetus for that story, in turn, was this sobering news, noted by Debra Kaufman at Creative Cow:

ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have all quietly ceased production of their film cameras to focus exclusively on the design and manufacture of digital cameras.

Film: Fading to black

Now, that may make the news of a 3-ish frame-per-second 35mm film camera from Lomo seem almost more depressing to some, but I think that misses the big picture. First, reacquainting yourself with low-fidelity makes you appreciate high-fidelity in new ways – and the vast spectrum of possibility that film offers. (And, in turn, that can lead to a new understanding of digital as a medium with personality of its own – not only as a blank canvas that you use to, cough, Hipstamatic, pretend the digital camera is something it’s not. I believe that kind of appreciation is essential to visualists.)

Second, if you drive demand for film, you continue the possibility for future film cameras. That could include ongoing life for the maintenance and restoration of these cameras that are discontinued, and even new cameras yet to be designed that are at the higher-end. But film to the film camera is water: without it, everything else is moot. And it’s the scale of the film itself that is in most urgent need of protection.

In other words, sign me up for the Lomo revolution, and while digital is trying to kill film in the marketplace, digital for artists can help give film new life.

I’ll see you at the LomoKino launch party, and I’ll bring extra room in my bag.

By the way, Lomo friends: we’ve got createanalogmotion.com. So, I guess I’ll give up my usual rant about how film photography isn’t really “analog” in that it’s a chemical process th… oh, fine. You totally win.

To skip to the punchline: Final Cut Pro X appears to at last do multi-camera editing, and do it right, as seen in the video posted by our friend Nilay at The Verge.

To anyone who read deep conspiracy theories into the release of Final Cut Pro X, perhaps it’s time for a gentle reminder. When building massive, complex tools, sometimes developers get it wrong – even if they happen to be Apple. Final Cut Pro was desperately in need of a rebuild, constructed as it was on deprecated, 32-bit-only libraries. That rebuild, charitably, didn’t go as smoothly as some might have hoped. Final Cut Pro X was missing critical features and adopted a user interface paradigm for editing and file management that at best required adaptation and at worst left users looking for alternatives.

But I’ll go out on a limb here and say anyone who believes Apple wanted to alienate their pro market is simply off their rocker. Now, the effect may have been to do just that, but it was unintentional.

It was also clear from the release of Final Cut Pro X that some of those features were to be added back – made even clearer when Apple representatives publicly said as much explicitly in the days following X’s release.

To put it another way: Final Cut Pro X was bold, entirely new, and just plain unfinished. Some folks out there are using it, but in its initial release, Final Cut faced stiff competition not only from rivals like Premiere, but from Apple’s own, trusted Final Cut Pro 7.

With 10.0.3, we get a first look at what a finished version of Final Cut Pro X might be like. New in this version come both features that users found sorely missing, and some new ideas that we haven’t seen in desktop Mac editors before. In brief:

• More complete XML import/export
• Multi-camera editing, with up to 64 cameras and independent resolution, framerate, etc.
• Enhanced chroma-keying (especially nice, as you really don’t want to have to move over to Motion or another tool to do this)
• Sync via audio
• Import layered Photoshop graphics.
• Monitoring over Thunderbolt (this starts to get really, really cool – especially on those Mac laptops

Apple seems not to be content just to add back those missing features, but to do them better than competitors’ implementations. Let us know if you’re testing 10.0.3, and we hope to do the same.

But wait — there’s more.

Reconnect media and exchange files with third-party applications using a robust relink interface. Select media that has been moved or modified, or locate clips that have been transcoded, trimmed, or color graded by third-party tools. Then easily relink to your Final Cut Pro X project or Event.

Yes, by “robust,” this really means “now actually usable.” Media relink was for me the biggest deal-breaking issue in X, causing maddening file management headaches as Apple tried, apparently, to reinvent how locating files work. I’m eager to try this particular fix more than any other.

Also, crucially, Apple is now pointing to a third-party migration tool for FCP 7 users in the App Store:

7toX for Final Cut Pro brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects. The lightweight application is simple to use, with drag-and-drop support and progress information. 7toX translates important metadata from your Final Cut Pro 7 Project — including bins, clips and sequences — to a new Event in Final Cut Pro X with the highest fidelity of any translation application for Final Cut Pro. In addition, the application provides clear, detailed reporting after every transfer.

In a relatively rare move, Apple even has a page explaining what they’ve fixed improved:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/software-update.html

And check out the migration tool:
7toX for Final Cut Pro

It’s not just projection mapping on buildings as a cool gimmick any more. Live visuals increasingly means adapting to spaces, using multiple outputs and multiple projectors, tailoring your visuals to irregular surfaces and integrating them with environments. It’s projection, but it’s also dealing with LED walls. And flexible output isn’t just something expected of high-end shows and media servers: it’s something that increasingly is becoming something the lowly, laptop-in-a-backpack VJ does, too. It’s making your visual imagination look as good as possible when others see it.

All of this means it’s great news to see ArKaos, a long-time name in live visual and VJ software, move toward integrating mapping with their software. I got to spend some quality time with ArKaos at Pro Light + Sound, the companion event to Musikmesse, last week in Frankfurt. They showed us the new video mapping technology, available in public for the first time. (I got to discuss details of this technology in California in January with ArKaos at NAMM, but it wasn’t ready to show yet.)

We talk to ArKaos at top in our own video; below, here’s what their booth looked like with this software set up:

You’ve seen this kind of mapping convenience in software before, of course. The popular MadMapper tool, for one, offers similar features for taking live visual output and mapping it to three-dimensional surfaces. MadMapper works with any Syphon-compatible Mac application, too, whereas – for now, at least – ArKaos is only talking integration with their software.

But just as MadMapper’s approach has some advantages, ArKaos is bringing something new to the table. For one, Windows users aren’t left in the dark. ArKaos tells CDM that they’re using DirectX 9 extensions for high-performance routing between applications on non-fruit-related platforms. (Syphon is Mac-only, and uses OpenGL.)

ArKaos is also promising that by the end of the year, this functionality will be integrated directly with their software – not requiring, as MadMapper does, running a separate app. I also like ArKaos’ approach to output and masking: it’s a whole lot easier to see which surface is which and on which output, so multiple projectors (or LED walls) become convenient. Once integrated in something like GrandVJ, that could be even better.

As ArKaos describes it:

Designed for people on the run who need to setup mapping projects in very short times, the application can deform and project individual layers on the shapes of a mapped stage, allowing to easily make visuals flow around complex shapes in just a few clicks.

Right now, this is all an extension to MediaMaster, but if you can’t afford that high-end media server solution, it’s coming to GrandVJ, too.

ArKaos gives CDM the scoop on their planned timetable and release schedule. These are planned dates, not set-in-stone ship dates, but it gives you a good idea of what to expect:

May 1st

We release the mapper running with MediaMaster, the Video Mapper is V1.0 and MediaMaster is V 3.0 beta

MediaMaster 3.0 users needs the Pro license to have access to the Video Mapper

June 1st

We release the Video Mapper running with GrandVJ 2.0 beta

GrandVJ will cost 649 euros with Video Mapper (Pro), the upgrade for the mapper will cost 349 euros

July 1st

we release MediaMaster 3.0 final that can load mapping files and does not need the Video Mapper once the mapping is created.

August 1st

we release GrandVJ 2.0 final that can load mapping files and does not need the Video Mapper once the mapping is created.

Most of all, I’m glad to see the mapping field heat up. Competition can only be a good thing. I love the power of Syphon to route visual textures between apps, but having these features designer directly for a piece of software is also promising.

We’ll get our hands on this as soon as we can, natch:
http://www.arkaos.net/

Let us know if you have any questions for ArKaos.

Gallery

All images courtesy ArKaos, and since they naturally represent in-progress software, may not look exactly like the final product.

Resolume 4.1 New Features from Resolume on Vimeo.

Mapping is more than just “that thing you do with a big pile of boxes or the facade of a building as a gimmick.” It’s increasingly expected that you’re ready, as a live visualist, to produce output in shapes other than just the rectangle. It might be “projection mapping,” as in, with a projector, or it might be using other outputs. But just as you’d expect a live visual app to be able to mix or layer, you may soon expect it to be able to easily produce different output shapes, too.

We’ve seen inklings of that in different apps, but Resolume Arena 4.1 goes further. The Resolume crew are proud enough of their progress that they even manage a none-too-subtle dig at the way MadMapper works in their promo video. (See the video at top for everything new in 4.1.)

Unfortunately, with these features in-demand by some highly-paid shows, you do have to pay extra for that functionality – woe to the independent, cash-strapped VJ. Arena costs €699 versus €299 for Avenue. In fact, I think at the moment just one visual software developer includes built-in mapping in the standard version, the whole landscape will change. But the functionality looks well worth it, so maybe even that cash-strapped VJ will pick up the gig to pay for the extra cost.

There’s also some great new stuff in the “vanilla” version of Resolume, Avenue. What’s new:

• Arena: masking and cropping in the Advanced Output. (The implementation, while close enough to MadMapper that you could almost accuse it of copying, improves on that rival in some key ways; see the video.)
• Arena: Route layers directly to slices. (Note to all developers: every single app ought to work this way.)
• Layer Router (all versions): Create a clip that uses input from any layer below. (They suggest “picture in picture” effects, but I can imagine some creative applications for this.)
• Syphon everywhere! Syphon input and output is now native on the Mac – no plug-ins needed.

Other improvements: 14-bit MIDI (using pitch bend), drag-and-drop effects, the ability to see the amount of time remaining on a clip, improved Blackmagic support and performance, MIDI step mapping improvements, and lots of other little tweaks and fixes.

See the full details:
Resolume 4.1 Released!

HD Rabbit – Introduction from carrotvideo on Vimeo.

I keep waiting to write this headline and talk about something that’s shipping. But it might at last happen. We might finally be able to cover an HD mixer that lets you easily plug in two computers and mix as easily as you have done for years with analog inputs. It’s called the HD Rabbit, from upstart Carrot Video, designed by VJs for VJs – and yes, you might even be able to afford it.

You know what you want. You’ve known for a long time. You want a mixer that works in HD, one that handles multiple digital resolutions and multiple outputs, and lets you switch and mix at will. And you want it to work with computer inputs, and control computer software. Basically, you want to have the feeling you had when you used analog, standard-def mixers like Edirol’s classic V4, in something that works with computers running at modern resolutions.

Also, you want it to be something you can actually afford.

Carrot Video today gives us the first look at an HD mixer that might have you pinching yourself to see if you’re dreaming. First, let’s get the bad news out of the way first: this is a prototype, not a complete product, and Carrot tell CDM that they don’t want to suggest that they’re ready for mass production. They’re working on a small test batch. (I’m afraid I just unleashed a lot of requests from our readers to get into that batch. Sorry, guys. Well, you’ll have some good choices.)

But, then there’s the good news. It’s clear from the moment you see the design, with V4-style t-bar, a simple, VJ-friendly layout, and switching features. And then it just gets better from there:

• A mixer/scaler, a switcher, and a controller for your software.
• Built on the TvOne 1t-C2-750 scaler, it means you’re ready to handle any output resolution – even a strange one – at a moment’s notice, up to 2048×2048.
• Use LED walls, multiple projectors (via Triplehead2go, etc.), whatever.
• Mix (including “battle” mixing), key, color correct, add effects.
• Create custom controller “skins” for controlling software.
• Output OSC (OpenSoundControl, over UTP, and Artnet), DMX, and MIDI, plus RS-232.
• Input DMX and OSC.
• Freely-assignable control layout with 15 buttons, 3 knobs. (three user skins/presets, editable from your desktop computer)
• 2x DVI-I inputs, with RGBHV, RGBS, RGsB, and YPbPr support.
• Per-pixel or percentage scaling control, variable image zoom and shrink, dual picture-in-picture.
• Chromakey, lumakey.

Updated, based on reader feedback: It’s important to explain what it is and isn’t. You might think of the Carrot as a very elegant proof of concept, demonstrating that all-in-one mixing and control for video is possible. What it isn’t is a from-the-bottom-up mixer. It still uses a scaler inside – in fact, it’s closely related to the SPARK D-FUSER we covered in August. (Toby SPARK, creator of that hardware, just doesn’t sell you the scaler in the same box, and this includes an Edirol-style body and controller layout that the D-FUSE lacks.) You could, in fact, build your own MIDI controller and choose the layout and controls you want.

On the other hand, I think the effort to make something integrated is itself admirable, even if the results may not satisfy everyone. It also suggests the technology is ready for mass-marketed, all-in-one products, with this as an excellent prototype of what they might look like.

(We’ll look at DIY options later this week, and explain some of the underlying technology. And I’m sure Carrot will read your feedback.)

*$#&*, yes. A conventional mixer body, with HD brains. Images courtesy Carrot Video.

Weight: 2.5 kg, fit into a compact 28 cm by 23 cm by 9 cm aluminum metal frame.

What will it cost?

Pricing is not yet announced, but Carrot Video tells CDM readers should look at the pricing of the Edirol V-8. That means we’re somewhere in the viscinity of 2000 USD / EUR. It’s a magical price point that in the past allowed VJs and independent artists, not just big institutions, to first invest in mixing. If Carrot can hit their price target and ship in greater volumes, the design could start that revolution all over again for HD mixing.

What do you get?

Early production information seen by CDM shows the mixer including the scaler – so you don’t have to buy extra hardware. The all-in-one box includes, as well, an RS232 patch cable, and cable/adapters for DVI, VGA, and HDMI.

Who’s behind it?

It’ll come as little surprise that VJs designed this thing. And you may already know the VJs: visualists Merijn Meijers (KBK), Karl Klomp (Molta), and Joris de Jong (Hybrid Visuals) are founders and developers, with Marc Snip (Embed Engineering) doing the hardware work.

Official information (though we’ve already got extra details here exclusive on CDM you won’t find there, with more to come):
http://carrotvideo.com/info/

Got questions for the creators? Don’t be shy about asking them here, as we’ll be following up. And yes, we hope to test this in person as soon as possible.

But congrats to this team for getting to this prototype phase. We can’t wait to use the finished tool.

Gallery

For years, the Roland V-4 was the battle axe of the VJ and visual performance scene. Not owning one almost meant you weren’t serious about playing. And the ubiquity of these at community events meant more collaborative and back-to-back sets.

Then computers evolved past – and even dropped – composite/component analog video outs, and the V-4 was left behind. The V-8 was a step forward, but still couldn’t keep up with the shift in video ins and outs.

At last, we get the Roland V-4EX. Like the original V-4, it’s a four-channel mixer with effects. And it shares the V-4′s classic layout. It also has the feature set that lets it handle HDMI ins and outs, even if they have copy protection.

In fact, we were so eager to see Roland finally fill this gap, that we were thrown for a bit of a loop when Roland outed its V-40HD. (It didn’t help that one excited Roland Systems Group rep described it to me as a successor to the V-4.) The V-40HD is an impressive, HD mixer, but despite having “V-4″ embedded in its name, it clearly isn’t quite a V-4 in heritage. (I would still say it’s related, but perhaps “Cousin of V-4″ is a more fitting title than “Son of V-4,” or, uh, “Bride of V-4.”)

The V-4EX is what Roland apparently views as the real successor. It’s out next week at Europe’s ISE trade show (featuring a keynote from friend-of-the-site digital magician Marco Tempest). The appearance at ISE suggests a bit more of a broadcast/systems industry application, but the V-4EX, unlike the V-4, does have performance in its spirit.

The big question is, will VJs blood be pumping having waited for these features so long. Specifically, it appears that while the V-4EX can upscale to higher resolutions, its internal engine runs at just 480P/576P – hence, no V-4HD moniker, presumably.

On the other hand, I’d challenge you to find something self-contained and portable like this with this kind of accessibility for mixing, input, output, and effects. (In fact, it’s precisely because we couldn’t find that that we’ve awaited this product so eagerly!)

It’s too soon to judge until we hear pricing. For now, availability is expected Q2, Roland tells CDM, and we should know more on pricing and other details before then.

Specs and some commentary (speculative, of course!):

• Built-in effects derived from the V-4. (That’s what we like to hear. Well, for some of them, anyway!) 259 Transitions, 148 Effects.
• Dials for effects on each bus, plus the master output fade dial. (Nice!)
• Four-channel mixing.
• Inputs 1-3: BNC or HDMI.
• Input 4: HDMI, RGB/component, or S-video.
• Output: Scaled-up HDMI, RGB/component, SD composite.
• Aux output: HDMI output to a preview monitor.
• Stereo RCA audio input for embedded audio in the HDMI outputs and USB stream (ideal if you’re streaming or recording).
• USB video/audio class-compliant – connect to a computer, and you can record or stream over USB. (Roland has included their capture software for Windows, QuickTime Player – and many other apps – can handle this on the Mac.)
• Video switcher (I’m hoping this can maintain full HD resolution, as then I’ll definitely stop complaining. You don’t need everything to be HD, but you might like some things to be.)
• 4-frame delay compensation.
• Inputs 1-3 accept resolutions 480p/576p; input 4 up to 1080p. RGB up to 1920×1200.
• Output scaling up to 1080p or 1920 x 1200. (Again, I’m hoping you don’t have to up-scale when you switch, but only when you mix.)
• HDCP compliance.
• Multiviewer with touch controls, in a bit of a departure for the V-4 line.

http://www.roland.com/products/en/V-4EX/

We’ve gotten more details on Roland Systems’ Group’s V-4EX mixer. This really is an evolution of the V-4 – and Roland apparently still views “V-4″ to mean standard definition, meaning you’ll need to look elsewhere for internal HD mixing. But the V-4EX does deliver on connectivity, with functionality via things like HDMI, and all in the VJ-loved V-4 form factor.

We also know the price: US$1995.

The bad news: there are some design glitches, like putting tap tempo on a touchscreen. And you are limited to SD mixing, even with those HDMI ins and outs; everything is upscaled. I could see that working in VJ environments; I just wish this had come sooner. I think it would have been hailed as incredible news a few years ago. Now, everyone may still await the coming of the HD V-4 – or something that can be its equivalent.

We have more pics from Roland if you want to take a look.

Roland Systems Group Introduces V-4EX Video Mixer

Amsterdam – ISE 2013 – Roland Systems Group today debuted the next-generation product in the V-4 and V-8 lineup of Roland live performance video mixers. The Roland V-4EX advances the industry-standard Roland V-4 four channel video mixer by incorporating HDMI inputs/outputs, USB streaming, HDCP support, built-in touch multi-viewer, and audio embedding. These features are added to the strong primary feature set including built-in effects and unique user interface that has made the V-4 one of the besting selling video mixers of all time.

The Roland V-4EX versatility and unique features make it suitable for many applications, including clubs, concerts, worship, events, meetings, trainings, weddings, education, and sporting events. The V-4EX’s sleek and compact design lends itself to portable applications as well as permanent installations when size and space are considerations.

In addition to a number of powerful video effects, the user interface incorporates dial controls for effects on each bus and master output dial. The innovative design incorporates a video switcher, audio embedding, preview monitor and streaming-ready USB output all in a single unit. Inputs one to three feature composite (BNC) or HDMI while input four accepts HDMI, RGB/Component or S-video. The output features scaled-up HDMI, RGB/component, or SD composite with an additional HDMI output for external preview monitor. The Roland V-4EX features a stereo RCA audio input allowing you to embed audio into the HDMI outputs and USB stream, which are especially useful for web streaming and recording applications. As a USB Video/Audio class device, web streaming is effortless by simply connecting to a computer running a live streaming service. You can also record the output using Roland’s free Video Capture for Windows software or by using Quicktime on a Mac.

Designed to be a live production switcher and web streaming device, the Roland V-4EX features audio embedding, built-in audio mixer with up to 4 frames delay to “lipsync” your video source. It supports HDCP video allowing you to mix copyright protected material such as game consoles and Blu-ray content in your live production. HDMI inputs one to three accept video resolutions up to 480p/576p and HDMI input four accepts resolutions up to 1080p and RGB up to WUXGA (1920×1200). Although internal processing is SD-based, the output can be scaled up to 1080p or 1920×1200.

The Roland V-4EX will debut at ISE Stand #70-H180 and is expected to be released March 2013. For more information visit: www.rolandsystemsgroup.com/v4ex

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world of mapping. Mapping as a technique can be accomplished in any tool, and its use predated specific end-user tools by a number of years. But 2013 seems the year that the ubiquitous MadMapper will see some serious competition as other tools specifically move in on its turf, with specialized facilities for creating custom geometries in projection and lighting.

And so, we see in screenshots a better look at how ArKaos’ offering will look. Works for me: competition is healthy, and each of the visual software vendors has its own cadre of devoted artists. New in this version:

• new circle primitive
• more control on the cropping area
• “a new and elegant way of combining multiple outputs with soft edge” (have to find out details there, but that’s better than inelegant ways of combining outputs, I guess)
• first support for DMX control of surfaces and cropping (now we’re talking!)

At the same time that mapping is going mainstream, the VJ app is going pro, more than ever before.

ArKaos has already confirmed to CDM that they intend to bring the technology to the independent artist and VJ, to the experimental visual performers who helped build this technique. So, don’t feel abandoned yet, if you’re an indie artist. But you should also expect ArKaos and others in this field to look at those with deeper pockets first.

ArKaos’ debut of their video mapping product will, accordingly, come with the announcement that they’re starting a “Pro” division just to cater to those bigger customers, and rolling out a media server dubbed “Stadium.” (Hello, Super Bowl.) Next month, as Frankfurt, Germany plays host to the massive Musikmesse, it’s also the scene of the biggest live event and lighting show in Europe, Prosound + Light. ArKaos will then “serve the large-scale, professional level show and lighting projects which now dominate much of the ArKaos client base.”

While it probably doesn’t look at that way at first glance, I actually think this move could be good for the indie artist on a couple of levels, though. First, part of the reason that those projects “dominate” the user base of someone like ArKaos is that the underground VJs playing for a couple of gin and tonics in basements are now very, very often the ones working the bigger shows. And while it’s not always an ideal market for artists, to say the least, the rising popularity of cutting-edge techniques like mapping and generative live visuals, among others, means that very often these big venues will need to look to the experimental scenes that developed the techniques to get the best results.

The simple pragmatic reality is, the “stadium” gigs are likely to help fund the future of independent developers like ArKaos; “trick down economics” of visual apps may work well – especially if artists snap up those bigger gigs. And that should provide ongoing incentive for a company like ArKaos to be smart and offer its toolset to those paying for less-expensive licenses. Today’s art student could be tomorrow’s art director on the World Cup.

With that in mind, let’s look at the mapping features. I’ve asked for specifics on what this will look like in GrandVJ, outside the media server, but ArKaos for their part has said in the past that the two will look more or less the same. That means we now know more about “what” the mapping tools will look like, and can await the question of “when.”

I’ll be in Frankfurt for Prolight + Sound. I discovered too late last year that the visual booths have far less noise (away from musical instruments), fewer people (away from … uh, musicians), and more free drinks. Yeah, remember what I said again about the maturing of the market into bigger-industry clients being a good thing? See you there.

http://www.arkaos.net

Mapping: it’s kind of everything. It’s the projected image mapped to the surface. It’s pixels mapped to lights. It’s the control layout you use on your iPad and your fader box mapped to parameters in visual output. It’s the translation of music to lights. It’s the range of color on the filter. You’re constantly mapping one thing to another.

And of course, the community of people who read this site are generally somehow undertaking the difficult task of mapping across media, as you map visual performance to music.

So, it’s fitting that “mapping” at Mapping Festival is about more than projection mapping, as the Geneva, Switzerland audiovisual happening kicks off this week.

“Visual audio” and “deviant electronics” are the theme. That ranges from dynamic club music from the likes of Answer Code Request, Jon Hopkins, and Clark, to Onionlab’s architectural audiovisual experimentation and CENC’s fusion of dance with visuals.

I want to talk a bit about musical mapping. For a panel I’m leading at Mapping on Saturday May 11, I’ve pulled together a few of the artists at the festival who deal with that issue of musical translation and image. Each of these artists works at that touch point of sound and picture.

Sougwen Chung has done so with her collaborations with Ghostly International, but in Geneva turns her work to an installation that responds to sound from the space, transforming a room into a responsive, fluid architecture fed by ambient noise. See image at top.

Wraetlic, by Alex Smoke and Arch Project.

Alex Smoke‘s Wraetlic works with live performance, Jitter-powered visuals by Japan’s Arch Project made to respond to and accompany his music. I saw Alex playing the work live at Berlin’s Berghain, which means – ah, I have no images. Instead, we can see what it looked like in Montreal. Electric geometries flailing to the beat in the background is nothing new, but having that added dimension for me added to the ability to go into trance to Alex’s deeply emotional live music. (And yes, I could largely dance and watch, happily, aided by Berghain’s massively-powerful sound system. What that setup lacked was good projection to match the sound, so I can’t wait for Switzerland.)

See some informal performance documentation, a music video, and an interview with Alex Smoke.

DIGITALIS: Alex Smoke presents Wraetlic from MUTEK on Vimeo.

ATOM™ (Uwe Schmidt).

ATOM™, aka Uwe Schmidt, perhaps needs little introduction. He is an icon of the electronic music scene for going into a fourth decade now, and represents the masterfully-focused taste machine that is Raster-Noton. Aesthetic sense and sensibility permeates everything they do visually and sonically, from the sound of the tracks to the look of the packaging. HD is his latest audiovisual solo work, in for its European premiere. And… well, that’s all I can say about it, as I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll have the chance before we have our public conversation. And it’s worth hearing Uwe’s thoughts on visual and musical connections any day.

These teasers give you a sense of the sound, if a limited sense of the visuals.

Full description from the panel below I think should give some idea of how I think about these things. And I’ll talk a bit about my own work and the way we might approach bigger issues.

I hope we’ll have more to bring you after Mapping. If you’re in Geneva, say hi. And if you have thoughts on this topic – artists or otherwise – please do be in contact.

Musical Mapping: Lecture and Discussion

I. LECTURE
At the Meeting Point of Image, Space, Interface, and Sound

Mapping music to visual form has been a metaphysical challenge that has enchanted designers, architects, and composers alike. Audiovisual artist and journalist Peter Kirn traces some moments in the translation of music into image, in architectures of “frozen music” and notated scores reimagined as interactive visual media. He then looks at how tools can merge visual and musical media into a single, integrated interface, including a series of examples from his own work in the free tools Processing and Pd. These suggest the possibilities of expanding audiovisual performance, and “unfrozen,” fluid scores and architectural transformations of music.

II. ROUND TABLE
Rhythms of the Visible, Image of the Unseen: Audiovisual Technique and Musical Design

Following this introduction into some of the ideas behind audiovisual art, Kirn will moderate a lively discussion of artists from a number of different backgrounds who are presenting their work at Mapping.

Alex Smoke will talk about his live AV show at the festival, and integrating the performance of images and music. Sougwen Chung works across media ranging from interactive installation to traditional, non-digital illustration. She has collaborated with Sepalcure (Travis Stewart/Praveen Sharma) and the label Ghostly International to design visual interpretations of music, both hand-drawn and in live digital performance. Producer ATOM TM brings a musical perspective from a label that has consistently interwoven design and music, and as an artist works across a range of visual interfaces for music, and will talk about his HD project getting its European premiere at the festival.

We will talk about how design, illustration, and performance can realize musical ideas in imagery, and what visual metaphors in art and interface mean for our conception of music.

Peter Kirn (US/DE)
Alex Smoke (UK)
Sougwen Chung (CA/US)
Atom TM (Raster Noton, DE)

http://www.mappingfestival.com/2013/en/program/conference/bac/musical-mapping

Sorry, weird to quote myself, but that’s the way I’m describing the event. Stay tuned – next week is one I definitely anticipate, getting to hang out with some of the people who inspire me.

http://www.mappingfestival.com/

The new, svelte-looking Kinect. It’s not that it looks better, though, that matters: it’s that it sees better. Courtesy Microsoft.

It’s a new world for media artists, one in which we look to the latest game console news because it impacts our art-making tools.

And so it is that, along with a new Xbox, Microsoft has a new Kinect.

The new Kinect uses standard infrared tracking (ideal for in-the-dark footage and accurate tracking), but also returns RGB imagery. It’s 1080p, 30-60 fps (it seems tracking is at 30 fps and video at 60, but I’m reading conflicting reports). Hands-on reports say latency is reduced. If the finished product is consistent with rumors, that could be owing to more in-hardware tracking analysis; once you get to trying to do the analysis on the computer (or console), you encounter additional bottlenecks. Now, musical readers have much greater expectations of low latency than gamers, though, so it’ll be interesting to see this in practice.

The big news is tracking that gets closer to your body, breaking analysis into smaller bits. Wired, granted exclusive early access, goes into some detail about the way the tracking tech has changed. Instead of a straight depth map created by producing a 3D picture of two separate infrared-based camera images, the new tech uses “modulated” IR light. Given that this is new technology, I’m not yet clear on the specifics of that, and would love some reader feedback. (Ahem.)

The original sensor mapped people in a room using “structured light”: It would send out infrared light, then measure deformities in the room’s surfaces to generate a 3-D depth map. However, that depth map was lo-res to the degree that clothing and couch cushions were often indistinguishable. The new model sends out a modulated beam of infrared light, then measures the time it takes for each photon to return. It’s called time-of-flight technology, and it’s essentially like turning each pixel of the custom-designed CMOS sensor into a radar gun, which allows for unprecedented responsiveness—even in a completely dark room.

Xbox One Revealed [Wired.com]

Say what? Well, the basic idea is that, by using a modulated beam of light, you can determine the depth of an object by measuring the phase shift between the emitted and received light. In fact, this is very similar to the way a single IR or (with sound) ultrasonic sensor works, only using a pixel array instead of just one emitter. You can read a paper on the subject, or follow a forum discussion on the B3D board. (Thanks to Sam Tuke for posting this. Now – specifics, still, could be interesting.)

The upshot to all of this is better tracking:

• More discrete people can be tracked independently, without having to add more Kinects (as some hackers did) – up to six, says Microsoft. And that includes tracking people if they cross one another – a major breakthrough.
• It’s easier to distinguish between people and objects (like your couch).
• Individual gestures can be tracked – facial gestures, or finger-by-finger tracking (as touted by other systems like Leap).

What’s missing so far: any word of how hackable the new system will be. The last time, it took hackers to get access to camera images and tracking data, even as Microsoft themselves lagged in providing an SDK for Windows. I’d like to see more openness this time, especially given how much of the hype about Kinect has been generated by hackers – and knowing that Microsoft would like more inventive independent game design (or even art) with their tool on the Xbox platform.

MIT Technology Review is evidently waiting, too:

What Will Hackers Do with the New Kinect?

That article is largely speculative, as is mine. But I can tell you, even if you aren’t planning to use individual finger gestures and the like, anything that provides more precise tracking or reduces latency will help applications and art, generally.

And that makes this look very good indeed. Here’s a hands-on video from The Verge, for a quickie:

WIRED goes into more detail:

We’ll be watching – particularly on the hacker info. If you know anything about the development picture or can make sense of this modulated IR business, please do get in touch!

So, without a line of code, you want to make something new, visually. You’ve got Max, you’ve got Pd, you’ve got vvvv. But for quickly cooking up generative visuals, dynamic interaction, live animation, and more from a clean slate, the other option had been Apple’s Quartz Composer, a tool that has lost a lot of steam (and acquired quite a few bugs) lately.

Somehow, many people want some fresh blood on this scene. And that’s where Vuo comes in. From the creators of the Kineme plug-ins, it’s a chance to start anew.

We’ve been eyeing Vuo with interest for a while. The nodal environment promises faster creation and new magical visual powers, a chance to see a from-the-ground-up modern tool amidst a scene mostly dominated by architectures created years and years ago. It could be the visual programming option that feels most modern.

And now, Vuo has finally reached a proper beta. Early reactions are overwhelmingly positive – this is something people really do anticipate.

That’s doubly impressive partly because the Vuo beta doesn’t do a lot of things you’d expect. A big deal-killer for many: there’s no video in/out. No audio, no OSC, no Syphon, no math expressions. Did I mention no video?

These things are coming; you can check it out on the roadmap. But that has meant, in the meanwhile, what Vuo can do is already enough to whet some appetites – and early adopters are even pulling out their wallets to fund the effort. It’s something this community really hasn’t seen like this before.

Years in creation, the Vuo beta – available with a paid subscription – includes enough goodness that you can likely get some value right away. And, as covered today, there’s even Leap Motion integration for easy gestural input. The developers say Vuo means “flow” in Finnish. So, what will get into your flow:

• Fluid timing: compositions can run at framerate, or respond only to mouse clicks, MIDI notes, etc.
• Automatic use of multiple cores for different parts of the composition. (This is still a bit dodgy in tools like Max and Pd.)
• 2D + 3D OpenGL.
• 3D primitives.
• 3D object loading via Open Asset import library.
• Images, image blending.
• MIDI, mouse I/O.
• Basic data flow, logic and math, event control.
• Make multiple output windows with one composition.
• Built-in debugging: drag and drop nodes, monitor data flowing through them, and see what isn’t running.
• A subscription with video tutorials, community Q&A, and more. Subscribers also see the source code first; others get it on a lag.
• OS X now; iOS with 1.0, later Windows and Linux.

Also, for developers, creating your own nodes is especially accessible. You write in C, as in other environments, but here with the ease of working with Qt and example projects. (It’s arguably easier, in other words, than making a Max or Pd external.)

Vuo compositions run natively on the processor. (Vuo’s developers here claim that “other multimedia environments” use “a virtual machine.” To be fair, vvvv, Max, and Pd also use native-executed code, even in the dataflow environment; I’m not sure what they’re talking about. But yes, this is an architecture that makes sense; that’s why the other dataflow tools do this this way.)

So, those are the technical features. But perhaps what’s more telling is the reaction from the visual community.

Finnish artist Matti Niinimäki goes into some detail. It’s worth reading his whole post:
VUO 0.5.0 – PUBLIC BETA

First, even with other tools, he wants something fast – which had been Quartz Composer (until Vuo):

For the past 5+ years, I’ve made my living mainly by making art, interaction design, installations, animations, real-time graphics, performances, custom tools and other various things using Quartz Composer. I use openFrameworks, Pure Data, Max, Processing and other tools also, but I will pretty much always choose to work in QC if it’s possible to create the project at hand using it. For me, it’s the environment where I work the fastest.

Even with all the current limitations, he’s happy to get to use Vuo as a comfortable, modern replacement. You can check out his own custom nodes (many of them already useful) on GitHub:
https://github.com/Mnstri/MnstriVuoExamples

He is as kind to Vuo as he is unkind to Apple (even as he hopes for an update to Quartz Composer):

Sadly, QC is made by Apple and it has been quite obvious for a few years that Apple doesn’t really give a shit about the people working with Quartz Composer. It’s not aimed for the corporate executives creating their slideshows, funny posters and generic GarageBand songs on their MacBook Airs at the airport while waiting for their connecting flight.

I’m not certain that’s fair, personally. Part of what happened at Apple is simply that very bright, very creative people moved onto other challenges. (Unfortunately, two lead developers went on to found photo service Everpix, which has met an untimely end.)

But it is true that it may take a dedicated community focused on the needs of visualists to pull off the Next Big Thing. And that endeavor is very likely to require money and investment – not even the most hardened free software advocate would argue otherwise. What’s striking is the outpouring of support from the community, as well as the clever ways the developers continue to encourage that feedback loop, from t-shirts to referral programs to unique subscriber benefits.

Building on the reputation of Kineme and all it has done to aid artists’ work, the response is overwhelming.

Sample Tweet, sent in a Vuo update (by @danielmkarlsson): “Oh my glob! Under the Run tab is Show Events. I’m throwing kisses at the wind for you @vuoflow That is so smart!”

More on what Vuo can do, which will look very familiar to Quartz Composer users.

Displaying 3D:

Vuo Tutorial — Displaying 3D Objects from Vuo on Vimeo.

Displaying images:

Vuo Tutorial — Displaying Images from Vuo on Vimeo.

A first live performance:

Project Ruori @ electro-music 2013 from Steve Mokris on Vimeo.

And more useful resources:
Video tutorials (more than what’s on Vimeo)
0.5.1 Manual [PDF]
Frequent Q&A
Subscription plans, explained
Roadmap
http://vuo.org/

With so much to talk about in recent days about Prince’s legacy, it’s possible to overlook just what a deep impact he had on production and sound design. Working with Roger Linn’s classic boxes, the LinnDrum and LM-1, the artist left an indelible mark on the sound of pop. And you don’t have to slavishly copy those contributions: by learning how they’re put together, you can understand what went into them and follow your own sound.

Just that sort of education in sound design – something for fans and students – is embodied in a free download for Ableton Live users this week. Francis Preve is both a sound designer by trade and a teacher, so teaching is part of his stated goal for releasing these. And at a point when everyone is doing cover songs, here’s another way to respond – by honoring the impact Prince has had on sound.

Fran writes:

From “1999” to “Sign ‘O’ The Times”, Prince incorporated these drum machines, with specific sounds – like the Rimshot and Clap – wildly detuned to create giant clacks and booms. From there, he added compression and when feeling extra freaky, a flanger pedal, on the drum machine’s output. The resulting grooves became a hallmark of the “Minneapolis Sound”, utilized by The Time and Apollonia 6, as well as hits like “Oh Sheila” by Ready For The World. Prince’s approach to drum machines was just as unique as Hendrix’s revolutionary guitar work – and just as versatile an ingredient in other artists’ work.

PurpleDrums is available on Symplesound, the sound boutique I profiled recently. In this pack, you get a custom Drum Rack for Ableton Live with ten samples from the LM-1 and LinnDrum, tailored to Prince’s distinctive “Minneapolis Sound” via integrated effects and macros. There’s also an interactive menu that walks through Prince’s drum production techniques.

I think it’s a great idea; I’ve seen many calls on social media not just to mourn lost heroes, but to turn that inspiration into something creative. For anyone working in production – and judging by my friends, many, many of you are in production partly because of Prince – this is a great way to do that.

And the sounds already sound lovely:

Francis hasn’t just started honoring Prince this way after the artist’s death; he says he’s done it in every sound bank he can. And he also notes that he’ll be “deconstructing and explaining the “Let’s Go Crazy” Oberheim sound in the July issue of Keyboard Magazine.” Finally, if you’re a user of the Serum plug-in, you’ll find a reinterpretation of that very sound called, fittingly, “Let’s Get Nutz.”

Get the free pack here (you’ll need Live 9.5 or later):

http://www.symplesound.com/shop/purpledrums

And Fran explains his motivations in a blog post:

A Tribute: PurpleDrums [symplesound]

LM-1 photo: Linn Electronics, 1980. Scanned and Photoshopped by Eric Mattei with permission from Bruce Forat; CC-BY-SA.

The post Get a free pack that recreates Prince’s signature drum sounds appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

If a DJ mixer could be anything you wanted, what would it be?

That question isn’t actually that easy to answer. DJ mixers have a fairly defined set of functions, and not a lot of obvious room for variation. They have become more or less a commodity product as a result. And even as we’ve seen high-end mixers, those have tended to be simply a spendier version of the same commodity.

So, maybe the news that Richie Hawtin was working on a new mixer, teased out over the past few months, didn’t interest you at first. But, having had a look at it, it should.

And one reason is that Andy Rigby-Jones is part of the project. Apart from having the most English name this side of a P.G. Wodehose character, Mr. Rigby-Jones is essentially the Dave Smith of DJ mixer engineers. He’s been at Allen & Heath since the early 90s, and designed the legendary Xone set of mixers – one of the only designs, indeed, able to make something new happen in the DJ booth in this generation.

Andy isn’t working on Allen & Heath-branded mixers any more – and now we find out what he’s been up to. This.

I got a hands-on yesterday with Richie Hawtin, and I’m already liking the design direction.

The PLAYdifferently mixer is a high-end mixer, make no mistake – made in initially limited qualities in the UK. (Price: 2500 GBP before tax, so over 3000 EUR / USD.) It’s all analog, and Richie Hawtin tells CDM that the focus is absolutely on quality, for those who can tell the difference. (Rich mused that as clubs have invested in expensive PAs, the mixer often hasn’t kept up – whereas the speakers were once the weak link, now the mixer is.)

But what’s most significantly new about the PLAYdifferently MODEL 1 is that it’s really designed as a performance instrument. The name promised to do that, but the architecture actually delivers.

Photo courtesy PLAYdifferently.

Sound quality

So, okay, the basic architecture: 6 stereo channels, 2 stereo sends, 2 stereo returns, and 3 phono pre’s. Nothing new there, though you do get an all-analog signal path. Andy was directly involved in that in collaboration with Rich, but so, too, was Richie Hawtin’s father, a robotics engineer with a background at GM who also collaborated on the last Hawtin/Allen&Heath project.

“All-analog” is not terribly interesting on its own; engineers, though, should take note that the power rail in the entire mixer is 12V throughout. Rich also tells CDM that a considerable amount of work went into the RIAA equalization circuitry for the phono pre’s.

But if this were just a sort of audiophile DJ mixer, I think it’d be a bit dull. Where the MODEL 1 gets interesting is what it adds in the “shaping” department.

Here’s the bit where things get interesting. You have to give up the usual EQ you’re used to – but in its place is something potentially more creative.

Performance and shaping

This is where I get interested. The MODEL 1 doesn’t have conventional fixed-frequency EQs on each channel, for instance. Instead, you get a complement of features intended to encourage you to re-shape the sound with filters and sends.

Contour and sculpt. Each channel has a low-pass and high-pass filter dubbed “Contour,” with a fixed, low Q – so these cut sound gently, without boosting the signal. I couldn’t really yet hear the sound of the MODEL 1 without a connected PA, but I could hear the filters, and they’re incredibly smooth. They’re also being mapped so that you can sweep quickly to the 12-o’-clock position for an immediate impact on the sound, then get more nuanced control as you turn past that point.

“Sculpt” lets you sweep through a seven-octave range, then cut or boost a particular frequency with a high Q. Found a problematic frequency you want to notch out of a record? Want to creatively boost a particular frequency? This is where you’d do that.

And interestingly, that’s it – no conventional EQ on the channel strip itself. So the channel strip is more about “fixing” sound or creatively re-shaping it as part of a performance. This of course is naturally suited to Richie Hawtin’s playing style, in using minimal elements but then reworking the record dynamically as it’s played, but I can imagine other people might also perform with it to other unexpected effects.

Master EQ. If you do want a three-band EQ, that’s there on the master. You can then enable/disable that EQ on any particular channel you want.

Analog drive. Now we’re out of just audiophile pissing contests and have something that adds some dirt, too. The “drive” control adds harmonic distortion to a signal. It’s controlled by a very small, LED-lit knob (think the ones on the KORG volca series), but it’s terrifically fun. Now, crucially, this isn’t just the same as clipping your signal at the fader; it’s a feedback circuit in the pre-amp. So “trim” and “drive” operate independently on the channel strip. That lets you dirty up a signal independent of adjusting its level on the trims, which is critical on the channel strip.

There’s also a feedback Drive circuit on the sends, though that works differently – there, gain and “drive” are linked.

This bit. By providing a separate, feedback-based Drive circuit, you can adjust Trim and Drive separately for just a little extra punch or a lot more dirt, as you like. (Apologies for the actual dirt/lint in this photo. Let’s assume it’s metaphorical.)

I think the combination of drive, the effects sends, and the filters mean that the MODEL 1 could be just as appealing in the studio as on the road. And given that it’s a significant investment, that helps justify the purchase – you’re potentially getting a creative stage and studio mixer all once.

So, to be sure, I’ll be testing both roles when we get one for CDM to test.

Pulling all this together, there are quick enable/disable switches for each of these. The intention is to make this fast, which Rich showed me in action – turn on a filter, make a quick sweep, and so on.

Gig friendly

The MODEL 1 have done a number of things to make this friendlier to the gigging DJ:

1. You can swap turntables.
2. You get loads of headroom – 28dB.
3. There’s a booth EQ – HF and LF – so you can assist your monitoring levels at those moments the sound tech has disappeared.
4. There are dual headphone cue outs. That’s advertised for two DJs playing together, but Richie noted he sometimes used the second cue out as an additional send for effects (see below and D-SUB).
5. The power supply is external.
6. There’s “zero crossing” circuitry throughout. Remember those kill switches for the filters? To eliminate pops and clicks, they’re constantly waiting for a zero signal.
7. Redundancy: apart from having extra ins so you get a backup record player, there’s a redundant power supply connection. Hey, even if we aren’t all Richie Hawtin, it’s nice to have a DJ mixer that has the amount of redundancy that you’d require if you’re Richie Hawtin.

It’s fairly easily luggable, too – pretty much like the previous Xone series, only in my opinion, more interesting.

Those D-SUB connectors make balanced I/O to the computer and even back again easy. That’s Richie Hawtin, celebrity hand model to CDM.

Computer connectivity

The other big feature on the MODEL 1 is D-SUB (TASCAM DB25) connectivity to a laptop, which provides 8 simultaneous balanced connections on a single cable. That could I imagine again justify laptop DJ performance onstage as well as make the MODEL 1 more indispensable when you get back to the studio.

In either context, D-SUB gives you multi-channel connectivity to a computer both in and out – so it’s powerful both playing and getting your returns.

It does mean I need to consult my spec sheets and remember which audio interfaces have DB25 on them, because they just got more useful.

Oh, and there were two extra pins, since the D-SUB is eight channels and the mixer is six. That means you can use channels 7 and 8 as a third effects send using the cue B phones and level.

You can also link two mixers together, but unless we’re all going on tour with Dubfire and Chris and Rich and Ellen and so on, let’s dream of the one MODEL 1 at a time first.

Finally, sticker shock time: the MODEL 1 comes in at 2500 GBP. There’s no question this is a high-end box, though it’s still shy of some boutique mixers (including a recent unveiling from Funktion One).

On the other hand, I do hope this isn’t just a tool for rich DJs. I think for DJs a couple of tiers down, who are investing more in synthesizers and gear and then differentiating themselves for higher fees, could use this creatively. In fact, I’m going to skip entirely over the celebrity endorsements for the MODEL 1, even though they’re people I generally like – I’m far more interested in what some unknown DJs will do with this.

With that audience in mind, we’ll get our hands on a model for review soon, and give it a workout both as a studio tool and connected to a proper PA.

To get some indication of that, we’ll be at Arena in Berlin tonight for the product unveiling later today. You can tune in on Boiler Room (not so much for audio quality, but at least to see how this DJ lineup uses it).

It’s another chapter in the new generation of analog. On the other hand, it also makes a computer more useful. And it’s not only that the MODEL 1 is analog that’s significant. It is significantly more focused – it’s not just a bundle of everything you might do, but rather the realization of the greatest capacity of what the designers believe you want to do most. That seems very much the present zeitgeist, so I look forward to testing it.

http://playdifferently.org/

This isn’t an Allen & Heath mixer, but it will be available via Allen & Heath distribution from the 30 of June. That initial run I think will sell out quickly, but more units are planned.

And see you on Boiler Room at 8pm Berlin time.

The post This is the new DJ mixer from Xone creator and Richie Hawtin appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Movement is here – and it’s a little scary. The folks at Output have some weird way of dialing directly into the zeitgeist of what we want from production these days, and delivering it in an easy form. They did that with reversed samples (REV), with vocals (EXHALE), and now they’re doing it in an atypically musical multi-effect with loads of rhythmic and side-chaining features. This isn’t just another delay or something like that. It’s an entire effects toolbox built around rhythm and modulation, in a way that’s unusually accessible.

A teaser video explains what it’s about. The basic idea: add your sources, be they ambient or keys or guitar playing or even whole sets, and then make something happen.

Add delays, rhythms, modulation, the lot.

And here’s a walkthrough explaining exactly how they do that in the interface.

We’ll do a full review soon, but here’s a rough sense of why this is a big deal.

The engine gives you a lot of ways of producing rhythms. Sidechains, semi-modular modulation routing, and step sequencers give you various means to define how you want rhythms to sound, either synced or from other signals.

This video shows how you side-chain inside Ableton Live:

It’s also a multi-effect processor loaded with tools. They’ve also added filters and EQ and delay and distortion and compression and reverb (whew), modeling analog equivalents. (which you can do now – thanks, modern CPU!) And my first impression is that these have a defined personality to them. So it’s not just a bunch of stuff stuck in here (which could be overwhelming), but a common set of tools that create a particular character, whether you’re calling up presets or defining your own sounds.

And you can drag-and-drop modulation. This is what to me defines a more modern sound – irrespective of genre, the sense that there’s modulation everywhere. (That might be achieved even with a Eurorack or a computer, but it’s very different than sounds that come from setting knobs in a particular place and leaving them.) And it’s presented here in a really easy to approach way.

Plus other performance features. There’s also an X/Y pad for “performing” these features plus what the developers call “Flux” and Randomizer to get at still more variations. Happy accidents remain one of my favorite things, so great – especially with something this deep.

And, yeah, so holy s***. You could assemble these yourself with custom effects chains. But this crew from California have just pieced it all together for you.

Since I don’t play things that require your fingers to touch strings (ewww) I’m asking my studio neighbor to do that in our review, and I’m going to give this a go using keys and found sounds. Let’s see what happens.

Got questions for us or the developers? Let us know.

Let’s have a look at that lovely interface, too.

The main screen. Here you see the four rhythm engines and effects chains – yes, you can layer a lot in this one tool. There’s also an X/Y puck for navigating sounds (reminiscent of tools like Apple’s Sculpture and of course the KORG KAOSS line).

There’s a full-featured step sequencer built into Movement for rhythmic effects synced to your song.

Sidechaining is also a big part of Movement — for using another signal to transform effects.

I’m particularly eager to see how this holds up as a live performance tool, since it’s advertised as such. (That is definitely not so true of a lots of software effect plug-ins, for various performance or usability reasons.)

Check out Movement:
http://output.com/products/movement/

Price:
$149 USD
$134 USD for current Output customers through June 9th

The post Movement is a do-everything, musical rhythmic effect appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

It’s been a few years since the original development and management team behind Sibelius found themselves unemployed at the company they started, following a restructuring by owner Avid. Since then, Sibelius has continued to progress, but in a way that’s best described as incremental. It’s now a subscription product with an emphasis on the cloud, like other Avid tools, and updates have focused on features like pen support and small notation details. If you’re happy with Sibelius, that’s not a bad thing: it’s the recipient of a steady stream of updates.

But what if there were to be something new in music notation software?

Much of the team behind Sibelius migrated to a new home – and a new patron. Steinberg, makers of Cubase and Nuendo, set up an R&D center in London, aiming in their words “to develop next-generation professional scoring software for composers, arrangers, engravers, copyists and educators.” Dan Spreadbury, who many of us knew from his Sibelius days, took on a Steinberg title and started blogging the new effort.

“Next-generation” suggests something more than just incremental. But while Dan’s blog has been very particular about details (more on that below), it’s been pretty vague on the big picture – until now.

Today, Steinberg is at last announcing what the team has been working on. It’s called “Dorico.” And it’s coming in the fourth quarter of this year.

So, what’s “next-generation” about Dorico? We get some clues in the initial announcement.

It’s important to remember that the original version of Sibelius was revolutionary – even if today there are several equivalent products with very similar feature sets. First available for the little-known Acorn workstation platform, Sibelius was ground-breaking in that it could instantly reflow enormous scores when changed. Entry was for the first time as quick as touch-typing, thanks to a clever set of keyboard shortcuts organized around the numeric keypad (something you can now ape in Finale). And its scores, while not quite up to the level of some dedicated engraving tools, also looked really good.

But that was a long time ago.

The new Dorico would seem to carry some of the philosophy of the original Sibelius, but re-conceived.

So, Steinberg promises high performance, smooth workflow, and an easy one-window interface.

Steinberg aren’t releasing any full screenshots today of this in-progress product, but we’ve gotten a rough view from the R&D blog.

But there’s something different, too. You can now work, at last, in open meters or freely rebar existing music. That’s something die-hard engravers have had in tools like the (non-GUI) SCORE, but not in mainstream tools.

What the heck am I saying? Well, think about the ability to work with notes as easily as you can with characters in a word processor. Insert music within an existing passage – without having to move everything around by bar and make space first. Change the durations of existing notes.

Steinberg also promises the ability to make different score layouts with independent page and staff size.

These are the things that muck up most notation tools. Changing layout, changing duration, or changing musical ideas often involves manual labor. (Sorry, uh – for the London R&D team, without manual labour.)

Sibelius also was the first major tool to push playback as a central feature and a leader in bundling instruments. True to that idea, and pairing with their new friends at Steinberg, Dorico ships out of the box with a bunch of VSTs, including HALion Sonic SE and the HALion Symphonic Orchestra library.

That’s a big deal, too – these days, you’re often expected to demo playback before you get to rent an orchestra to play, especially if you’re working in film and TV.

We’ll of course need to see the full notation product to make a good evaluation. But some of the specs are at least suggestive; I’ll just quote directly here. New engraving output alone is something we’ll have to see, but interesting. (Generally, that involves both typeface design and an underlying engine to treat that, which is one of the many reasons notation software is hard to do well.)

• Next-generation 64-bit scoring software for OS X and Windows, designed by musicians for musicians
• Beautiful engraved output with unrivaled attention to detail
• Flexible note input and powerful editing, including ability to insert and change duration of existing notes

This is promising too:

• Superior note spacing with optical kerning of adjacent elements, with tighter default spacing and no rhythmic distortion

Apart from the ability to freely treat rhythm, Dorico finally promises to solve the clumsy ways different sections and parts and so on are handled:

• Powerful score management features to handle multiple independent pieces of music within the same project
• Unlimited number of staves and movements, sections, or pieces within the same project
• Easily create layouts for full scores and instrumental parts with independent page size, staff size and system layout

This part should give you some Sibelius flashbacks:

• Streamlined, single-window interface puts every tool at your fingertips
• Use your computer keyboard or MIDI keyboard to input music quickly and efficiently
• Import and export in MusicXML, MIDI and graphics formats

And this bit should both give you Sibelius flashbacks and a reminder that this is now a Steinberg product:

• Award-winning 32-bit floating-point Steinberg audio engine with flexible routing for virtual instrument and effect playback
• Compatible with VST 3 virtual instruments and effects processors
• Outstanding virtual instruments with more than 1,500 sounds, including HALion Sonic SE 2 workstation and complete HALion Symphonic Orchestra library
• Suite of high-end VST effect processors, including channel strip modules (compressor, EQ, limiter) and convolution reverb

We’ve also been able to get some great news from Dan’s blog.

First, anyone who’s ever used any computation notation software is going to love these next two images and “get” them without any explanation. That’s Dorico on the top.

Dorico fixes the way glissandi works (including the annoyances in Sibelius).

Finally, dynamics are fixed, too. I could probably have gotten a second degree in the time I spend nudging dynamics around, or … at least would have had more of a life in composition school. Then again, I might not have wound up fleeing to electronic music production, so you wouldn’t have gotten CDM. I’m joking. Nearly. Maybe.

New dynamics editing, up close.

Sibelius was an early proponent of floating properties (rather than digging through dialogs); here you see the “next-gen” take on that idea.

List for Dorico isn’t cheap. It’s 579€ including VAT, though I expect almost no one will pay that – education pricing is 349€ and there’s a limited-time crossgrade for 299€. I expect the whole audience for this product is either in education or has a copy of Finale or Sibelius lying around, so problem solved. Subtract VAT and calculate to whatever the dollar is worth versus the Euro by the end of the year, and this is a pretty standard price.

We don’t get to see what this looks like, though I’ll try to twist Steinberg’s arm on that as soon as possible. You can read Dan go into a long an interesting Wikipedia-style rabbit hole on history explaining how Dorico was named, which I find fascinating – and it also reveals just how lofty the team’s goals are.

Check out more:

https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/dorico.html

“Making Notes” blog, by Daniel Spreadbury

The post This is the next-gen notation tool from original Sibelius team appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

It looks like a small remote control for a game system, but it’s a musical instrument. The OP-Z caught our imagination earlier this year at NAMM with a host of bizarre and wonderful functions, from sequenced instruments and drums to live visual animation accompaniment (seriously).

Now, Cuckoo Music catches up with Teenage Engineering in his ongoing video series. That means a chance to see how the pocket music gizmo has progressed, as well as what’s happening with live visuals. Teenage Engineer David Mollerstedt joins:

Meanwhile, TE’s instruments see other lovely action. Mikael Jorgensen writes CDM to tell us about his new project Rancho Electro, a kind of visual music label featuring performance in the open air. As he describes it to us, it’s “electronic music, performed, filmed and recorded live and in a natural setting.”

Love that idea. If Mikael’s name is familiar, it might be from other band projects – one of them being keyboardist for Wilco. We’ll have to go more in-depth with this soon, but let’s immediately enjoy some lovely, jangling music out in nature.

Apart from the OP-1, you’ll spot a KORG volca beats and a Pocket Piano in there.

The post A video glimpse of Teenage Engineering’s OP-Z in action appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Software drum machines aren’t kingmakers the way hardware is. So Bram Bos of Eindhoven is not a household name the way, say, certain hardware makers are. But back in the 90s, Bram’s HammerHead Rhythm Station was one of the first pieces of software that showed what a drum machine in software could be.

Flash forward to 2016. Bram is here with an iOS app that’s all drum synth – no samples. And while that puts it in a category with some other apps, it takes a slightly different approach.

First, Bram advertises it as “the most hands-on” option for iOS. The UI is designed like hardware – and that means literally. Bram was already prototyping hardware with a Raspberry Pi as the guts. So what you get in the iOS design is something that is, on screen, laid out and sized in the same way as hardware would be. That makes it very much unlike a plug-in to use, because you don’t just use the touchscreen as a window to a bunch of software parameters.

Second, though, it is really a plug-in. While there are other great instruments on iOS, like Elastic Drums (also a drum synth), Ruismaker operates as an AU plug-in. So that means you can drop it into software DAWs like Steinberg’s Cubasis or Apple’s GarageBand (each now pretty powerful options). I really hope Bram uses AU cross-compatibility and makes a desktop version, too, as I really like the idea of projects being portable between mobile and desktop. (Like the iPad as I do, sorry, the laptop is where stuff gets finished.)

Third, and actually the reason to use it, Bram has taken a very particular approach to sound. There’s a separate synth model for each instrument type, modeling the analog circuitry you would expect out of a drum machine. So you get a combination of models that’s particular to Bram’s own vision of how such an instrument should sound – and that’s good.

All of this comes together in a vision that’s really playable. Bram says he’s made it very efficient, so you can run lots of plug-in instances on your iPad, and still get low-latency audio.

If you’re curious about that hardware project and where it went (plus where it’s going), that’s covered in an elaborate blog post that I think will be interesting to developers.

Ruismaker — What’s happening [Medium @brambos]

But right now, this is another excellent choice for the iPad. And it’s just US$4.99.

http://ruismaker.com

The post Ruismaker is an iOS drum synth that feels like hardware, works like a plug-in appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Behringer continues to leak out teaser videos about its upcoming analog synth – and with the rest of the industry out on summer vacation, they’ve got pretty much everyone’s full attention. There’s a few things you can learn from their latest video – not least that I was dead wrong, and this is a polysynth, not a monosynth. (Oops.)

There’s an arpeggiator.

It’s got at least four voices – you can see them lighting up. In fact, those voices are lighting up a bit like it’s swapping voices from an arpeggiator, like KORG’s Mono/Poly.

There are separate LFOs (at least as evidenced by the differing LFO rates mentioned in the video.) You can see clearly marked LFO 1 + LFO 2.

You can use it in unison mode with a poly unison detune (see that big fader).

The previous video set this one up, but didn’t show quite as much (though some more on the LFOs, oscillator settings…)

I’m going to just go around now saying …

” … Peaceful … ”

Correction: he’s saying “beautiful,” evidently. I felt peaceful, though, so maybe I was projecting.

Here’s our previous still grab of the full synth (it flashes for just a moment in the first video):

The post So Behringer’s analog synth is a poly, and other revelations appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.