randy's Recent Posts

@simonkennedy I've just sent a reply to your email.

There's a question just above where @felipetellezost asks about Vienna Ensemble.

Hi, you can search the whole site by going to the Resources menu / Support. There is a search bar there.

Hey we've talked about it a little bit. No plans but who knows...

Site search will search forums, news, etc. —it is up under resources / support.

if they know that what they have received is a free program plus another program, side by side, their rights will be clear.

That's encouraging! Thanks for digging it up.

Amazing stuff.

Thank you for the kind words!

If I can be of any help resolving that, would be happy to. Can't wait for an update...

Hang in there, I'm working to get an update out ASAP.

Where are the Sumu partials stored?

~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials.

Vienna Ensemble can't load the interface and the plugin has induced kernel panics in my machine.

I will try Vienna Ensemble, hopefully this is fixed already.

I haven't seen any kernel panics here. If you are able to get a crash report of any kind, please send it to me via support@madronalabs.com .

This is proving to be frustrating. A document with an instance of Sumu that is generating sound is saved and closed. On reopening the document, Sumu no longer generates sound.

Sorry to hear. This is my first report of this. I test in Live Suite 12 all the time.

When Sumu is triggered with midi no sound comes out.

What if you switch to a patch that generates sound on its own? (Sumu machines / autoroute)

Do the red lights in the input module flash when there's MIDI input?

Does the sound cut off for the entire Live project, or just Sumu?

I'm trying to understand at what point the system is failing.

Resize on Macbook M2 laptop in Logic isn't working here and it's larger than my screen.

Fixed for the next update.

Re Vutu integration:

Thanks for the feedback. The more tightly I integrate Vutu with Sumu, the closer I'm afraid I get to violating the spirit of the GPL that Loris was offered under. So this is a direction I will probably want to avoid.

Amazing work.

Thank you so much!

One thing I get sometimes is the modulator oscillator seems to return back to or get stuck on a default pitch.

Fixed for the next release.

The update release is coming along well. I can hold off on shipping a thing for years while I design it, but if people have bought it and it's not working for them that's very motivating for me!

Bought the bundle yesterday and have been playing with Sumu since.

Thank you for the detailed feedback! I'm very glad you are enjoying it.

Each of Sumu's 64 playback oscillators is a 2-op FM (or AM) pair with noise. A single sine + noise goes (or can go) toward reproducing the sound as analyzed. Then the pair can do a lot more, with the partials file as a jumping off point for new sounds.

Any chance of you adding paypal as a payment method?

please write us at support@madronalabs.com and one of us will take care of it.

Unfortunately a display-related bug snuck into the Early Access 1 release that is crashing a bunch of DAWs on Windows.

I figured out where this problem lies and it will be fixed for the next update. We are aiming for Jun 3 for the next release.

Hello! I´m loving Sumu! So inspiring instrument!

Thank you very much!

But I can not find my custom folder in the drop down menu in Sumu. Am I doing something wrong?

Sorry it's not well documented yet. For now, I have this explanation:

When you import a partials folder, it imports the whole directory tree underneath the one you pick, including any folders that contain .utu files.

So if I have on my disk
~/VutuFiles/Strings/cello.utu
~/VutuFiles/Strings/viol.utu
~/VutuFiles/Noises/tinkle.utu
~/VutuFiles/Noises/harsh/blender.utu

and then bring up the import dialog (partials/...) and select the folder ~/VutuFiles to import,

the files
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Strings/cello.sumu
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Strings/cello.sumu
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Noises/tinkle.sumu
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Noises/harsh/blender.sumu

will be created, along with the directories on the way.

Importing again will (for now) overwrite these files.

The intention is to "sync" your entire partials development folder at once.

I have two non-working features. [...]

All the grayed out controls are not yet implemented.

The info about the settings menu was not correct in the manual, apologies.

Thank you Randy, I did note that this issue was resolved with Sumu.

Glad to hear!

I think it's okay to have the two finger gesture, but I'd really like it if there was an arrow or something that let you see the list just by clicking regularly.

Heard! Thanks for the feedback.

And a random recommendation - set the polyphony to 4 for all presets, and let the user add as needed.

Thanks, that's the idea. I just missed a few when I was getting Early Access out.

So where is the '...' in the tuning module? The one for settings like midi channels?

The manual has this wrong, sorry. It didn't get implemented for the first release.

I haven't updated Aalto or Kaivo to fix this issue. Now that Sumu is released I will devote some attention to the other instruments again.

Hi Simon did you not get my reply to your support email? I replied a few days ago. I'll copy it here:

The drop down menus for presets and partials maps are not available to me. I have to control click (Mac) to see the menus.

This is what's intended: that you have to control-click, (or two-finger click on your trackpad) and then they appear. Does that not seem right?

(Since my original reply, other people have been confused also, so I'm pretty certain I will change the menus to come up with a single click in the future)

I cannot find any reference to how presets / waveforms are selected in the manual. Am I missing something obvious?
The manual needs some work, but we thought some manual at this point was better than none.

When you import a partials folder, it imports the whole directory tree underneath the one you pick, including any folders that contain .utu files.

So if I have on my disk
~/VutuFiles/Strings/cello.utu
~/VutuFiles/Strings/viol.utu
~/VutuFiles/Noises/tinkle.utu
~/VutuFiles/Noises/harsh/blender.utu

and then bring up the import dialog (partials/...) and select the folder ~/VutuFiles to import,

the files
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Strings/cello.sumu
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Strings/cello.sumu
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Noises/tinkle.sumu
~/Music/Madrona Labs/Sumu/Partials/Noises/harsh/blender.sumu

will be created, along with the directories on the way.

Importing again will (for now) overwrite these files.

The intention is to "sync" your entire partials development folder at once.

-Randy

Trying to import partials, and the mythical "..." in the "upper right corner" of the VST is missing on the windows version.

In this case it's in the upper right corner of the partials module you need. There's a [...] there that brings up a popup menu with one choice in it: "import folder..."

Sorry if the manual had it wrong.

Is Sumu feature-complete at this point?

Almost - anything you see grayed out will get completed. I might sneak in something else but not a big change like another envelope.

Note that with the "hi scale" and lo / all / hi outputs on the envelope, you effectivaly get two different envelopes, the same shape but at different time scales, and then the blend of 64 envelopes in between.

I hope you publish some videos at some point as a complement to the manual.

There will be videos!

Thanks for the feedback.

it seem that there is a lot of bug in your work, before buy Sumu i thought it was demo restrictions, but it's not.
Allow me to say that I'm a little disappointed.

Sorry to disappoint, we have said this is an Early Access release and some things are not implemented until 1.0.

You are mentioning the following issues:

  • global "..." not implemented as in the Draft manual
  • tuning table unimplemented
  • unison unimplemented
  • "..." in input module unimplemented

These are all things planned for 1.0 and not implemented in Early Access.

What I'm learning from your feedback is that we should have had a list of these things, possibly on the Sumu Early Access page. Sorry these things were surprising! We said there were features unimplemented but did not say exactly what.

It seems to skip around everytime i try to make adjustments, and i dont think ill get used to it :)

You can click on places outside the "track" area, like directly on the number, this will start dragging at the current location.

All in all seems to be very badly optimized for this setup :D

Yes, it's very badly optimized, thanks for your patience, this is Early Access software.

A few patches probably blow up because they are trying to run 16 voices. You can turn the number of voices down to 1 on any patch to minimize CPU use then turn it up to however many you can run or want.

I didn't think I'd see something greedier than the NI granular VSTs like Straylight, but kudos ;). One voice clocks in at about 21% CPU, one voice sounds . . . like many other VSTs I have, even with the baked-in Ableton engines like Collision, I can reproduce something close to your output. Mind you, it's not as fun to use.

I think once you dive in you'll find sounds you can make with Sumu that would not be accessible with other tools.

And certainly I'm going to optimize CPU a lot.

Thanks for your feedback and support! I don't spend as much time with other VSTs as I should, so I appreciate the perspective.

Sorry for the dodgy report and good luck with the bug squishing!

No worries, this is also feedback that probably my UI can be improved. Enjoy the sounds...