How about creating a Virtualmidi device?
At the moment setting up a virtualMidi connection is kludgy and far from intuitive. To be honest the manual doesn't really tell you how to do it (though it gets you close enough to work it out if you're diligent).
Why not create a 4th device (keyboard, drum machine, fx & VM). Move all the settings to a page there and give us a few knobs, XY and sliders in pages that we can map to the 3rd party synth. Allowing us to save preset templates which could be loaded like we load patches would be icing.
Being able to stay in BM2 while I record melodies and tweak create some knob automation would be beyond fantastic.
To be honest in it's current form it's not as inspiring as it could be. The workflow, of going back and forth gets tedious real fast IMHO.
The proposed workflow
Create VM device
Select which background synth, drum machine, efx, etc to use, midi channels etc.
(if new synth) map knobs to the 3d party CCs that you want to control from BM2
save preset for later use.
Maybe it won't be the final workflow but in it's current state VM in BM2 has a lot of room to grow.
Why not create a 4th device (keyboard, drum machine, fx & VM). Move all the settings to a page there and give us a few knobs, XY and sliders in pages that we can map to the 3rd party synth. Allowing us to save preset templates which could be loaded like we load patches would be icing.
Being able to stay in BM2 while I record melodies and tweak create some knob automation would be beyond fantastic.
To be honest in it's current form it's not as inspiring as it could be. The workflow, of going back and forth gets tedious real fast IMHO.
The proposed workflow
Create VM device
Select which background synth, drum machine, efx, etc to use, midi channels etc.
(if new synth) map knobs to the 3d party CCs that you want to control from BM2
save preset for later use.
Maybe it won't be the final workflow but in it's current state VM in BM2 has a lot of room to grow.
Comments
I must not have been clear if you got a VST from that...
BM2 clearly doesn't have a plugin system like VST, AU, etc. VM is really just a midi router like MIDIyolk and the like.
I'm talking about a UI change really. At the moment all the settings for activating a VM Are scattered across BM2 and in a very odd places and it's difficult to setup.
At the moment you have to hit the
home button
The the I symbol
Then MIDI
You have to activate the synth (or other vm music app)
Activate midi out
Then create a piano track, cancel loading a sample (unless you want a layered sound)
Hit the little midi button under the piano and change the midi channel to the one the synth is listening on. (I use 16 with Sunrizer but I'm not sure how other synths work)
Then finally you get to use the VM
Aside from there being no way to figure all this out with out RMFL but there a lot of steps and stuff is everywhere in the UI. Not to mention you have a sampler loaded with a whole bunch of useless information on screen.
What I'm saying is you take the sampler UI remove everything that isn't relevant to the VM (sample zones, mode, filter, lfo, etc).
Under the configuration tab show a list of available VM synths, the midi channel the VM device is to send out of and the midi out button.
Assuming that since the piano knobs send CC messages to the sequencer then you should be able send those same CC messages via VM
Have a few a tabs with just knobs (and editable labels) and at least one tabs with common defaul CC parameters like Volume, ADSR, filter ETC. If we could change the CC assignments of the knobs then we could reassign a knob to control what ever we need it to be.
Finally once everything is configured the way we want it, save the settings in to a preset which can be quickly selected.
That way you want to use a VM device, you can just load up a preset and go. Instead going through the setup process every time. I'd create templates for specific types of sounds, so the "Sunrizer Bass" preset would have knobs that need for programming bass sounds and the "Sunrizer Pad" preset would have knobs better suited for programming pads.
Icould be wrong but it seems like they have a lot (if not all) of the code and UI elements already
Cheers,
Colin
I never had any doubt that Inuta is planning on addressing using VMs in BM2. I thought I'd throw some ideas out, maybe I might strike upon something you haven't thought of as of yet.
woodsdenis,
It sounds like your talking about something closer to a full fledged DAW. My bet is it's coming but we're probably still a couple of years off..
I'd be happy with a Rewire like protocol but that probably would have to come from Apple.
VE Pro is simply a host ( albiet a very advanced one) that will host AU/VST vi. It is used in fully fledged DAW to take the burden off the main program. Sometimes it runs on a slave and sometimes not. What I am suggesting is a much simpler ios hosting program like this that you would load all your ios modules into. Then any other sequencing/midi program could access this virtual rack if you like. The Virtual ios rack would store your setup/midi channels/programs etc for each song. All BM/Nanostudio or any other program would have to do would be to send midi to this rack and receive audio back from it. It surely simplifies all this playing in the background stuff which in the end is clunky and worst of all there is no way to really export what you hear in a composition without going to the most ridiculous lengths with in app recording <!-- s:o --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_surprised.gif" alt=":o" title="Surprised" /><!-- s:o -->
I know virtual racks/VST host, I used to use one with FX teleport when I needed 2 or 3 computers to run my synths. I could see how someone would find that useful on an IOS device. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) -->
Still, don't you think that is a total different app from BM2?
AU was just introduced a little while ago and hasn't gained traction as of yet. I'd bet BM2 and similar programs will implement AU and slowly by slowly developers will port their synths and devices over. Then you'll have a bunch of racks pop up.
In the meantime we also have some serious hardware limitations that keep this from being usable. We'll need higher speed multicore processors, more ram and faster flash memory before well start to see stable usable solutions.
Which is the elephant in the room. The ipad seems zippy because of flash ram. Loads app/web really quickly. When you think that Spectrasonics Omnisphere requires at least a 2.5 ghz intel chip to work, we are a long way from getting that kind of complexity in ios apps. For BM or any other app to work with outside ones, they need to come up with a protocol to stream audio into the main app, so at least you can bounce it down.