Expert Sleepers Silent Way ES-4 Controller v1.7.
Copyright © 2012 Expert Sleepers. All rights reserved. This manual, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under licence and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such licence. The content of this manual is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by Expert Sleepers. Expert Sleepers assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this document.
Contents Introduction 6 Current Limitations 7 A note on MIDI channels 7 Gate Expander outputs 7 Plug-in variants 7 Installation 8 Mac OS X, Audio Unit (AU)! Mac OS X, VST! Windows (VST)! 8 8 8 System Requirements 8 Mac OS X! Windows! 8 8 Using Silent Way 9 Using the controls 9 Knobs! Dropdown menus! Value edit boxes! Name/value display! The ES-4 Controller Controls 9 9 9 9 10 MIDI/CV 1/2 10 Channel! Min & Max! Gate! Vel! Priority! 10 10 10 10 10 Outputs 11 Gates 11
Triggers/Accents Triggers! Accents! MIDI Out Channel! Channelise! Output! Clock! Swing! Offset! 11 11 12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 Misc 13 Output Indicators 13 Inputs 14 Thru! 1-5! 14 14 Input Modes 15 Panic Button 15 Preferences OSC Base Port! Eye candy! Constant redraw! Floating tooltip! OSC Control Reference MIDI & OSC Scripting 16 16 16 16 16 17 17 17 Reference 17 Script locations 17 Version History 18 Contact 19 Acknowledgements 20
Lua 20 oscpack 20 glew 21 FreeType 22 FTGL 22 libpng 22 zlib 22
Introduction The Silent Way ES-4 Controller plug-in is a special element of the Silent Way plug-in suite, dedicated to controlling the Expert Sleepers ES-4 module. Unlike the rest of the Silent Way plug-ins, the ES-4 Controller does not time out, allowing unrestricted use without a Silent Way licence. However, some advanced features of the ES-4 Controller are only available to owners of a active licence.
Current Limitations The current release of the ES-4 Controller is an early version of the software, released to support the first customers of the ES-4 modules. It is anticipated that the software will mature quickly in response to customer feedback. Also, there are a number of features that are definitely required that have not yet been implemented: • • • • The MIDI/CV channels need a trigger output, as well as a gate output. The MIDI/CV channels don’t have a generic MIDI CC response (e.g.
Installation Mac OS X, Audio Unit (AU) The plug-in files have the extension “.component”. Simply copy the files to the folder: Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components Mac OS X, VST The plug-in files have the extension “.vst”. Simply copy the files to the folder: Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST Windows (VST) The plug-in files have the extension “.dll”. Simply copy the files to your VST plug-ins folder. System Requirements Mac OS X Silent Way requires at least Mac OS X version 10.4.11.
Using Silent Way Using the controls Knobs Basic use of the knobs is to click on them and drag the mouse up and down. However you can obtain different results by holding keys as follows: • • • Shift : Values change more slowly as you move the mouse. Command1 (Mac OS X)/Alt (Windows) : The knob assumes its default position. Option 2 (Mac OS X)/Control (Windows): The knob assumes integer values only. Dropdown menus Clicking on the menu displays the list of options.
The ES-4 Controller Controls MIDI/CV 1/2 These two groups of controls provide functionality similar to that of a traditional standalone MIDI/CV converter, for each of the ES4’s pitch CV outputs (outputs 1 & 2). Channel Specifies the MIDI channel that the converter responds to, or ‘Off’ to disable the converter completely. Min & Max Specify the range of MIDI notes that the converter responds to. This lets you set up a keyboard split, using the two converters on the same MIDI channel.
Outputs These controls let you directly set the output levels of the ES-4’s 5 outputs. The values range from 0 to 255 (an 8 bit value). These can be particularly useful when combined with MIDI controller mapping in your DAW to, say, map a synth mod wheel to a CV output for filter cutoff. Via OSC or MIDI, you have the possibility to control the ES-4 and/or the Gate Expanders down to the individual bit (i.e. gate).
Accents The ‘Accents’ controls allow each even numbered gate output to be used as a velocity-switched ‘accent’ output for the gate output immediately below it. This is typically useful with drum synths which have both a trigger input and an accent input e.g. the TipTop Audio 808 range of modules. When a gate output is enabled as an accent, it will be activated by the note for the gate below when the note’s velocity is at or above 64 (mid-range).
Output Selects the Gate Expander output that will carry the MIDI signal. Clock If enabled, causes the plug-in to send MIDI timing clock messages, synced to the DAW’s transport. When Clock is enabled, MIDI clock is generated when the host DAW’s transport is running. The MIDI clock generation always begins at the start of a bar; if the host transport is started in the middle of a bar, the plug-in waits for the next bar before starting the MIDI clock.
Inputs This section controls the routing of other signals into the plug-in and on to the ES4. The plug-in has 8 inputs, organised as 4 stereo pairs. Quite how this is handled by the DAW will vary considerably from DAW to DAW. Some DAWs are very flexible (e.g. Ableton Live) while some make it very hard to route audio into such a plug-in (e.g. Logic Pro).
Input Modes These menus work in conjunction with the input 1-5 options above, and define how the incoming audio/ CV stream is mapped onto the ES-4’s output range. ‘Unipolar’ means that positive inputs from 0.0 to 1.0 will be mapped to the ES-4’s output range (0 to 255). Negative inputs will be clamped at zero. ‘Bipolar’ means that inputs from -1.0 to 1.0 will be mapped to the ES-4’s output range, with 0.0 being mapped to a mid-scale output on the ES-4 (128).
Preferences Pressing the ‘Prefs’ button brings up a dialog where various preferences are set. These settings are shared by all instances of Silent Way, and are not stored with presets. The top section shows the product version. The central section will show your serial number once you’ve bought a registration. OSC Base Port Sets the base port number for OSC. See the section on OSC, below. Eye candy Enables the pretty graphics.
OSC Control Silent Way plug-ins can be controlled via the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol. If you’re new to OSC, start by visiting opensoundcontrol.org. Two settings control what port the plug-in uses to listen on for OSC commands. One is the base OSC port, set in the preferences. The second is the OSC Port Offset control. If the port offset is set to something other than ‘Off’, then the two numbers are added together and the result used as the port number. E.g.
Version History 1.7.2 7/3/12 • Added ‘Accent’ controls. 1.7.1 20/12/11 • • • Added Panic button. Fixed MIDI clock output when the host DAW’s transport is in cycle mode. First non-beta release. 1.7.0 24/11/11 • • • Fixed the plug-in’s response to MIDI channels (previously it would respond to messages on any and all MIDI channels) and added a ‘Channelise’ capability to the MIDI Out section. Removed the DIN sync generator, which is now available (and extended) in the separate Silent Way Sync plug-in.
Contact The Expert Sleepers website is here: http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/ Or you can email info@expertsleepers.co.uk Or you can use the Expert Sleepers forum, which is here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=85 Or you can use the dedicated Silent Way forum, which is here: http://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewforum.
Acknowledgements The software described in this manual makes use of the following open source projects. The author is greatly indebted to them for their efforts and generosity. Below are reproduced the various copyright notices and disclaimers that accompany these software projects, in accordance with their terms of use. Lua Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio.
glew The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library Copyright (C) 2002-2007, Milan Ikits Copyright (C) 2002-2007, Marcelo E. Magallon Copyright (C) 2002, Lev Povalahev All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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