handle multiple analogue In&/Outputs

[lotti]

Hey there,

I'm new to buzz and also new to making music in general. I've found buzz to be very nice. I like it's old fashioned style and it's modularity. It seems like there are over a million ways to work with it and thus I'm getting into it very slow. So I'm trying to read a lot, but without all the basics I don't understand half of it well, but I'm trying not to give up So I thought starting to communicate would be a good idea... So, what I've done is just creating a few pattern with various generators, putting random effekts in between and just do some experiments how it sounds. Very awesome until this point.

Now I'm sitting in my room with a few friends, I play a simple buzz loop, while he for example plays something on his guitar. So here comes my first question: I would like to continuesly play this loop to my speaker, while I would like to change some params which will only get routet to my headphones. How can I achive this? I guess I'll need an audio interface to have more than one audio output... For example I could clone a generator-effekt-chain so that the original would be untouched and I can try out to change the params of the effekt in the copied chain. Or I could load the bmx in a second instance of buzz. But how do I achieve that there are multiple outputs in my machine view? Since there is only one master-out I wonder if it would be helpfull to buy an audio interface. In my dreams connecting an audio interface to my pc would result in multiple Inputs and Outputs, which would be visible in buzz so that it would be possible to route sounds like I want them in the machine view. Is that possible?
As for now I don't own an audio interface, can I add some machine which represents my mic-IN?

My second question is similar: For example my friends have a guitar, a mic and a violin. Each instrument has it's own effekts and a loop station - all in the real analogue world Now it gets really hard to record multiple loops in different loop stations: They tend to have different lengths, don't start and end at the same time, so that the sound changes over the time. (Sometimes thats really interesting too, but I want to controll it). So I had the idea that it should be possible to use buzz as a loop station for multiple musicans: All analog instruments would be connected to my new audio interface, in machine view I would like to have each input connected to one output, so that independent of what I'm doing in the sequencer they can play theire instruments live. (Maybe I also would like to mix them directly in buzz and thus having only one Master out - it should be flexble) Additionally I would like to connect the instruments to a looper, so that i can record multiple tracks and play them synchronous through the sequencer view.

As you see, a lot of confusion and a lack of knowledge in my head... I hope I've made my aims clear. Any recommendations are very welcome! I try to make clear questions:

1. Is it possible to have the multiple Inputs and Outputs of an audio interface visible in the machine view?
2. Whats a/the best workflow to "prehear" changes while playing live?
3. What is a good machine for record and play loops?
4. Any recommendations for an audio interface? Besides the number of IN&/Outputs, what requires buzz to work with an audio interface? I have read about ASIO a bit, but I'm not yet getting into it...

Well that's it for the moment. Cheers,
lotti

[szaszhareen]

As for now I don't own an audio interface, can I add some machine which represents my mic-IN?



1. Is it possible to have the multiple Inputs and Outputs of an audio interface visible in the machine view?
2. Whats a/the best workflow to "prehear" changes while playing live?
3. What is a good machine for record and play loops?
4. Any recommendations for an audio interface? Besides the number of IN&/Outputs, what requires buzz to work with an audio interface? I have read about ASIO a bit, but I'm not yet getting into it...

Well that's it for the moment. Cheers,
lotti

welcome to the forum

you can use polac asio in for your mic input, and i think you can use it for multiple inputs if your interface supports it. right click polac asio in and mouse over attributes, you will see a list of available input channels. you can then select the input you want and route the output as you wish. i think you will also have to make sure that you are using the polac asio driver.

1. i think this is possible for the inputs. you would have to get an audio interface to test with. but i think buzz only has one output, and to try and change that would require some bizarre workaround using virtual cables or something. :/
2. i haven't tried this, thinking about it makes my head hurt a little XD, you could probably pull it off by using mixio and having a duplicate of each output, controlling the gain through a midi controller knob. but once again buzz only has one output, so this might not work the way you want it to.
3. in realtime, this is tough in buzz, though i'm pretty sure you can do it with btdsys audiotrack. if you are ok with recording takes and playing them back later this becomes easier, though it is easier still with a software like reaper that is designed for this, in which you can record multiple takes on the same track in real time and select the active take when you want.
4. any audio interface will do, though for what you're doing you should find something with at least 4 mono/2 stereo inputs. you may even want to further complicate things by having an 8 or 16 channel mixer before the 4 mono inputs.

i think you'll find that for what you're attempting, some DAW with more of an emphasis on recording would be a better fit, though i know you want to use the buzz effects machines and the cool straightforward modularity of buzz. i use reaper for recording. i'm having a hard time visualizing what you would use to do what you're thinking of since i've not tried it. i haven't seen anyone else do this with buzz yet. it sounds like you'd like to use buzz as a live, real time effects processor and recorder for multiple analogue channels. though i'm sure this is possible, it is going to be kind of wierd and i hope someone else will chime in with some ideas.

i think it really comes down to experimenting and being ready to try workarounds. the first thing you need to do is get your mic input working with polac asio in, and try recording and manipulating some audio that one of your friends is playing. if you can get that to work in a way that feels right, then you should grab a multi channel audio interface and try it with 2 people playing at once and see what happens. i think once you get to that point your questions will become more specific and easier to answer.

[nikmis]

1. Is it possible to have the multiple Inputs and Outputs of an audio interface visible in the machine view?

It is, using multiple instances of Polac ASIO in, for inputs. and Polac ASIO out for outputs. You don't use the 'master' machine in this case. There is that little dialog you can click on to select which soundcard channel. Polac ASIO out is the same thing. It really depends on your audio interface more than buzz.

In this example here, you would hear Qsamo dry signal in one audio interface output. Then through reverb mixed with three inputs (which could be guitars, synths, vocals) in the other output

4. Any recommendations for an audio interface? Besides the number of IN&/Outputs, what requires buzz to work with an audio interface? I have read about ASIO a bit, but I'm not yet getting into it...

I bought a used MOTU ultralite mk3. It works great and has 8 in, 10 outs. Its overkill except for use with analog synths. But with Polac ASIO in and out, I can have 10 different control voltages generated by VSTs going out of separate buzz machines, and have up to 8 inputs coming directly into buzz.


then your only problem would be latency issues

[szaszhareen]

thanks nikmis, i learned something new today

how's the latency with the motu?

are you recording tracks straight into buzz using btdsys audiotrack?

[mute]

Those machines are just called Polac Out and Polac In nowadays btw. When you add the machine it automatically names itself according to which driver you are using. In this case, Polac ASIO. Been using multi in/outputs for like 10 years now in easy cake fashion thanks to Polac.

[mute]

Those machines are just called Polac Out and Polac In nowadays btw. When you add the machine it automatically names itself according to which driver you are using. In this case, Polac ASIO. Been using multi in/outputs for like 10 years now in easy cake fashion thanks to Polac.

[Joachip]

how's the latency with the motu?

I'm getting pretty good latency with my Motu card.

Motu also does another cool trick: You can connect an output straight from the Motu into the control voltage inputs of an analog synth and do CV/Gate that way. (The outputs are DC coupled.)

[szaszhareen]

cool. pretty good as in unnoticeable by the human ear?

i'm guessing the motu driver provides some sort of latency compensation thingy to get things playable.

[lotti]

Hey,

Thanks a lot for your responses. The Polac Out and In do the job quite well. And with your screenshots it was easy to understand. I've got a Steinberg UR-44 audio device now - don't know if it was the best choice, but it seems to work until now.

For my second problem (how to prehear) I've so far only one solution: Clone the gen/fx and connect it to one Polac Out which is configured to my Mix2 where my headphones are connected to. Then I can create a new pattern or manipulate the orginal until I'm satisfied. Finally I can copy that pattern back to the gen/fx which is playing to the Master Mix. This also works so far to my satisfaction (The only important thing is to remember to write current parameter with ctrl + T into the pattern so that they won't get lost)

So the last step for this stage is to imitate a loop station. As you wrote I tried to use btdsys audiotrack. Although I didn't find a lot of documentation (btdsys page and audiotrack_record_setup.avi), it wasn't hard to record a take. But I'm a bit stuck in using it as a loop station...

So, what I need is to record a take and after that while playing that take record a new take. Just as a loop station which adds new takes to the whole loop. So at the end the loop should contain multiple takes, which can be handled (e.g. muted) individually

As I've noticed that in one pattern only one take can be active at the same time, I've tried to use multiple pattern. Now with only one instance of btdsys audiotrack and multiple patterns - how do I specify in which pattern I want to record next? The "arm" button seems to work for the whole machine. Now when I start recording for the second time in my second pattern, it creates a new take, but it will stay empty. In the same time the new record is stored as a new take in the first pattern.

As far as I understand, I would like to use one instance of btdsys audiotrack for one instrument connected through individual Polac Ins. Then I would have a multiple track loop station. Okay. But additionally each track should consist of multiple takes which can be played at the same time to achive multiple voices of one instrument. (youtube example for one track with multiple takes)

Any hints and suggestions?

I hope it's okay that I write a lot of text to ask one question. As the whole music thing is new to me it seems very important to me to use the correct vocabulary. So may be I'm going too much in detail for most of you, but when I'm searching in this forum I can't really follow half of it...

[thepr0f]

Hi, good work getting that far!

To my knowledge I don't think you can use audiotrack as a multi-tracker or like a loop pedal. As you point out it only allows one active take/path in a pattern. To play multiple audiotrack takes you'd need multiple audiotrack machines.

Also, rather than looping over and over on one pattern, you'd need to extend your song and record all the layers linearly. After recording you'd be able to assemble/overlay the different takes, but it's not really a live performance thing.

I recently bought a Focusrite 6i6 interface (a slight upgrade from my Edirol UA-25). So far I'm pretty happy with it and I'm keen to play with it a bit more so I might tinker with this puzzle over the weekend.

[lotti]

Well some time has gone and as my research goes on I want to share my experiences.

As btdsys audiotrack wasn't quite the machine to play multiple tracks at once I searched on and found Mobius Looper.

MobiusWired.PNG (193.93 KiB) Viewed 11962 times

It works as a standalone but also comes with a dll for vst integration - perfect. So now I have 4 of polacs asio In, each connected through a cheapo amp (and optionally fx-chains) to the mobius looper vst effect. You can define different In- and Output ports, so I can have 3 inputs routed to the PA (Master out) while e.g. the guitarre (on input 3) is routed to an Amp (Asio Out 2) where it sounds greater. Because the monitor option in mobius only allows one input to be heared through, I've put wires from each input cheapo to one cheapo (through) which leads directly to the master, so I've switched the monitor option in mobius off (needed to do this for the guitarre separatly - cheapo 5). When the guitar player picks his acoustic guitar he switches off his amp and I deactivate the mute of cheapo 6, so he can play through the PA as well.

So far we are very satisfied with this solution. First my friends wondered a bit about the latency. But after I've played a bit with the settings of my audio device it seems good enough for them to play live through my multiple track band loopstation build in buzz

Now comes the tricky part: Each player needed to controll several functions (record, overdub, reset, mute) of mobius on theire own. As we didn't want to build too much from scratch I've got a cheap and used alesis trigger io (trigger 2 midi interface) on ebay. Then we bought the cheapest sustain footpedals we could get for ~10€. As they all send the same CC numbers, they needed to be assigned to different midi channels. Luckily there is quite a lot of docs and forum entries on the mobius page. With that help I was relativly easily able to build a script which calls the functions in the scope of a given track. Nice! Mobius is extremly flexible and allows a lot of customizing through scripts. Go and have it a try! that guy has built a complex loop pedal

First we only synchronized all loops to the first loop. Next I discovered that you can easily sync them to buzz as well.

Next step will be to have a metronum tick out of buzz to (at least) the drummers headphones (yeah, also our drums now have mics and go into the looper as well) to optimize that everyone plays together in time.

Also my friends very soon asked me if they can use multiple loops/tracks, so we'll need more than one footpedal per player. Then things will get really cool, when they can record a loop, overdub it a few times, switch to another track and record there and switch the loop on the first track on and off

[bozz]

Those machines are just called Polac Out and Polac In nowadays btw. When you add the machine it automatically names itself according to which driver you are using. In this case, Polac ASIO. Been using multi in/outputs for like 10 years now in easy cake fashion thanks to Polac.

How many outputs can you have at max in ASIO? Then you could route so many outs, e.g. to Reaper and record everything there, as multi-channel audio in separate tracks, while manipulating things live in buzz. If comparing to Ableton Live, Buzz would be your session view and Reaper the arrangement view, where you record your performance.

[bozz]

Tried to use polac out, polac asio stereo out all without any success, using buzz 1.2 in wine. Not sure what is the problem. I can not route out any sound through wineasio. Any suggestions?