Load SingleCycle Waves?

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niversen
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Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

John,

I just picked up the Galbanum Archicture 2010 (http://galbanum.com/products/architecturewaveforms2010) set of waves for use with Alchemy and Absynth. The Solaris plays historic wave tables.... is it possible to load up waves? The Galbanum stuff is available as 32bit waves, etc. I was wondering if there was a format that worked with Solaris and a way to put it on the CF card that made sense....

Nathanael
John Bowen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

Hey, these look pretty interesting! I've never heard of Galbanum or this guy Andrew Souter, so I'll have to investigate.
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

So, I downloaded the Demo files, and here's the thing - there are (mostly) single cycle waves in the 24- and 32-bit folders. These are WAV files, so they can be played directly by Solaris, but it's preferred that you convert these to .raw files, as the Solaris will play the header data in the .WAV files as part of the audio. You can use Bernard Wong's Sample Pooler App (for Mac OS only: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16100) to create the proper lists to play these waveforms, but SamplePooler requires samples to be in 16-bit format (I used Audacity to convert them). If you are using Windows, you will have to note the .WAV header data (start, stop, loop points, rate, etc.) and create a SamplePool file by hand.

The files as arranged for Alchemy (ALC?) are a bit different - they are not single cycle, and evolve over time. They already are in .raw format, but not really loopable (or, let me say, they don't make sense playing them as looped). Are these broken into separate files in Alchemy (so that they are like a Waldorf wavetable)?
jaykeel
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by jaykeel »

Hey John, can the Solaris play samples from my EXS-24 sample library. I sampled many Vintage synths into it over the years. Just curious...
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

jaykeel wrote:Hey John, can the Solaris play samples from my EXS-24 sample library. I sampled many Vintage synths into it over the years. Just curious...
You would need to convert them if they are in a proprietary format. I use Translator by Chicken Systems which also will create Solaris format SamplePool text files (required for the Solaris to know what to do with .raw files). If you like, you can send me a sample file for me to test at info@johnbowen.com.
niversen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

John,

Thanks for the reply, and my apologies for a late response. It has been a busy month and I forgot I posted this here. I will give that a try! A lot of the waves are simple enough that they should do fun stuff inside the Solaris!

Nathanael
niversen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

The thing that is interesting about these waves to me is that some of them add in particular harmonics, or other "additive" kinds of ideas. They are very useful inside Absynth where any wave can be used as a mod source for another. I think I'll order up the WAV version and give it a go... They are having a sale for $20 this weekend.
niversen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

John,

I picked one of the first waves in the set.... Originally called BinAdd Arth 00000001.wav I converted it using Audacity. SamplePooler made me a .txt of the same name. This gave me an error, which I assumed was due to the filename. I changed it to BinAdd.raw on the CF card and also edited the TXT file to match the new name. This gives me a different error. Any ideas?

The .raw is 4k in size. The contents of SamplePool-003.txt are below:

[Pool]
name = BinAdd

[Sample]
sampleindex = 1
filename = BinAdd.raw
samplerate = 44100
samplelength = 2048
loopstart = 2047
loopend = 0
rootkey = 60
finetune = 0
lowkey = 0
highkey = 127

Also, I assume that the Sample directory is flat (ie. I cannot create subdirectories within it)? I'll cherry pick some interesting waves and call my Solaris "expanded". :-)

There is also a pool001.map and pool002.map for the built-in samples. The harpsichord one looks like:

1;0,harpsichord.raw,64;

Do I need one of these map files as well? If so, can you explain the field structure?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Nathanael
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John Bowen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

Yes, the error is because the loop start and the loop end points look swapped. The loop start should always be at zero (or near the front of the sample at least), and the loop end point somewhere down the line (at the end I would guess in your case - which is the length of the sample -1). I thought Bernard had fixed this issue in his SamplePooler app, but apparently not!

In any case, there is an error right now in the OS for reading where the proper loop data is, so it may sound weird no matter what, especially since you are playing a very short wave file.

There is no need to create a pool map - the Solaris does this automatically the first time it 'sees' a new Sample Pool text file.
niversen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

Thanks John! Appreciate the clarity.

I still can't get it to work. I changed the loopstart to "0" and the loop end to "2047" and it gives the same error.

I deleted the map file per your suggestion.

Any other suggestions?
niversen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

John,

These waves from Galbanum are wonderful in Alchemy. They way they are constructed and organized is so useful! Because each set progressively adds harmonics, I can easily control the harmonic richness at the oscillator and do many very subtle things that make filters seem like a coarse brush. Because many of the folders are laid out according to the harmonic series, it makes for much more educated "guessing where to start" than any waveset that I've had in a synth (like the VS waves for example). While working in Alchemy, I was wishing for the Solaris's flexible mixing and routing architecture. Alchemy is great, but the Solaris has a better architecture for signal flow!

If the wave bugs are fixed, it would be well worth making the navigation compatible with folders to be able to incorporate this full set of waves into the instrument. They do not take up much space. At $30-40 it is one of the best investments anyone could make to expand their Solaris. In Alchemy and in Absynth, the waves can also be used for LFO's, and they are again, extremely useful in that context. Having them available for LFO's in Solaris? Icing on the cake!

Best,

Nathanael
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

Yes, I wanted to add folders for the WAV Osc type, as I have also encountered the problems of organizing as you mention. This will be one of the items to be fixed.
We also want to have a multisample .WAV object. It's not clear to me if we need a new Osc Type or if we can stay within the .WAV type. I have to talk to Klaus again to clarify.

Are these Galbanum files all single cycles, or are they more like Waldorf wavetables, with an index sweeping through 64 waveshapes?

Which format did you purchase?
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

From the Galbanum Website description for the Architecture 2010 series:

"The Galbanum Architecture Waveforms 2010 collection is offered in 6 different fomats: 64bit-FP Wav, 32bit-FP Wav, 24bit Wav, Native Instruments Absynth GLY, Camel Audio Alchemy OSC/LFO, and U&I Software MetaSynth Wave. ABS, ALC, and MS formats are proprietary to these respective hosts and fully tested and tightly integerated with the host to maxmize ease of use. The three Wav formats are designed to be universal and work with any synth or sampler that supports Wav import. When using the Wav format, maximum benefit is derived by using these with a wavetable synthesis engine such as Cakewalk Rapture or similar which is properly designed to process single-cycle waveforms and transpose them over large keyboard ranges using various anti-aliasing techniques."
niversen
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by niversen »

John,

For Alchemy and Absynth, I have the formats that are native for those synths. They provide separate folders for the OSC waves and the LFO waves. I have not investigated the difference, but can if it is important to you.

On their holiday sale, I bought the 32-bit WAV version for $20 to see if I could use them in Solaris. These are 32bit, 96kHz single-cycle waves, or at least that is how they show up inside Audacity. So far, I used Audacity to convert one "by hand" to 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. If I can get one working, then I'll use some batch process to convert some that I've found especially useful. Converting the whole set would definitely be a batch job as there are many folders, each with many waves. It is a near limitless assortment. What I especially like is that they progress in each folder from lowest harmonic content to highest - it saves a lot of time.

With just a flat directory and scrolling through the whole list, I'll be fairly selective in what I take, based on what I've found to be especially useful so far.

Is there anything else I can try to load this wave? Or am I hitting known bugs? I'm not sure what would be different between the two included sample sets that work inside the unit?
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Re: Load SingleCycle Waves?

Post by John Bowen »

niversen wrote:John,

I picked one of the first waves in the set.... Originally called BinAdd Arth 00000001.wav I converted it using Audacity.
What values did you use for the conversion? What did you convert it to?

I downloaded the Architecture Waveforms 2010 Demo files and tried converting some of the Wav32 files, but I never found the right Export options to .raw in Audacity. However, I WAS able to convert the files to work in Solaris using Translator 6. (Unfortunately, the loop point error prevents it from sounding quite right, but at least it did load into the Solaris without any errors showing as you are seeing.)

John
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