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Feedback issues with my rather complex TouchOSC/Ableton Live rig

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  • Feedback issues with my rather complex TouchOSC/Ableton Live rig



    Hello Camille,

    I'm trying to build a custom interface for my guitar improv rig using an iPad with TouchOSC, OSCulator and Ableton Live

    It involves 5 crowded pages with some of the controllers appearing on 2 or more pages (and that's why it's very tricky !)

    I'll try to explain what I try to achieve as best as i can:


    Here' how my rig works:


    I play guitar and sample and loop it using 3 analog tape emulation vst pluggins in Ableton live. (I'm also using 2 "looper" ableton pluggins as you'll see in the pics but I won't talk about that or it will be really complicated)


    I made 5 pages on TouchOSC to control all this easily:

    *Page 1 is my "guitar effect board"

    *Page 2 is my mixer board + general settings (main reverb + the "beat divisor" (basically 6 toggles that allow me to chose the length of the delay in function of the BPM of the songs)

    *Page 3, 4 and 5 and full controllers for each of the 3 analog delay pluggins + their effects.


    It would only be a lot of work if there wasn't this tricky part:

    *I'm using 3 toggles to put the effect sends of the guitar input track into the 3 delay pluggins on and off (Let's say I'm pushing on toggle 1, it will fully open the rotary knob effect send that routes the guitar signal to delay pluggin 1in Ableton. If I push it one more time, it will turn that 1st effect send knob fully counter-clockwise, in other words, close it) and I need to have those 3 effect sends toggle on every 5 pages.

    Needless to say that it's very important for me to be able to see the actual state of the 3 effect sends knob in Ableton on EVERY pages of my TouchOSC interface on the iPad. For example, let's say I'm on the Mixer page, I'm pushing effect send toggle 2 to open that effect send knob in Ableton, If I go on another page (the guitar effect page for ex.), I need to see that toggle 2 is already pushed ...but it doesn't work. I'm having a lot of issues concerning the feedback from Ableton to the iPad


    Where I am now is I've managed to configure everything that when I push on an effect send toggle, it opens the corresponding effect send in Ableton and that from any page.

    I've managed to do it by give those effect send toggles the same name, and that on every pages (maybe it's not the right way, I'll come back on this later..)

    BUT if I move one of the effect send knob in Ableton with the mouse to the fully open or fully close position, it won't reflect in the corresponding effect send toggle in TouchOSC and that on none of the pages.


    And generally speaking, I'm having lots of troubles concerning feedback.

    For example, I'm moving the Reverb send of track 3 on the iPad, it turns the corresponding reverb send in Ableton (as it should) but it also moves the Pre-delay knob of the reverb on the iPad !

    I tried to turn the reverb send in Ableton with my mouse and of course, it moves both the corresponding reverb send on the iPad (normal) and the pre-delay knob on the iPad (not wanted)...

    I tried to understand why it does that and I noticed that both reverb send 3 and reverb pre-delay knob ORIGINALLY ( = when the "auto" name box is checked in TouchOSC) have the same name in TouchOSC !

    I don't know why TouchOSC gave them the same name but I renamed the Pre-delay knob so it's different from the reverb send 3 but it seems that OSCulator is still taking the "auto" name in account. In other words, for OSCulator both knobs still have the same name despite the fact that I manually gave a different name for the pre-delay knob.

    I have the same issue with the freeze toggle for the reverb and one of the toggle in the beat divisor section of analog delay pluggin n°3 for probably the same reason: same "auto" name, I changed the name of the beat divisor toggle but OSCulator is still considering them as the same...


    I'm only starting to configure OSCulator for this and I sense I'll have a lot more of these issues on the way if I go on like this and it will be impossible to sort them out, that's why I'm asking now:

    Why OSCulator seems to only consider the "auto" names of the controllers and not the manually named names ?

    How can I solve this and, if it means to stick only to the "auto" names how can I have several and differently named controllers to control only one parameters in Ableton Live and that if I move this parameter in Live with my mouse or use on of those controllers in TouchOSC, it will show on every controllers in TouchOSC linked to that parameter ??


    Maybe I should say that that whole rig I'm trying to set-up is the copy of what I built when I had a Lemur.. Maybe I'm "thinking it" wrong.. ?


    I hope all this won't be to hard to understand.. Here's some pics, maybe it'll help visualize what I'm trying to do..










    http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/LkB11TuLH-0RiCFH4mCmtg?feat=directlink


    Thanks


  • #2


    Hey koyl,


    Thanks for the details, this looks like an exciting project.


    First of all, I'd like to mention that there is no magic behind the bi-directional communications between OSCulator and TouchOSC. It works this way: when an incoming MIDI message is received, OSCulator looks up in the configuration table the matching OSC messages that have the same MIDI event, and for each of them, constructs OSC routings back to the origin.


    OSCulator doesn't know what is the "auto" name assigned to the controls in TouchOSC, so from what you explained, I understand there is a message name clash in the configuration (two controls sending the same message), or you have two controls sending the same MIDI CC.


    So it means that if something changes on either side (Live or TouchOSC), you need to reflect that change in OSCulator: it can't be tracked for you. If you think you face a "bi-directional configuration mess", just select all incoming /midi messages and let OSCulator re-create them for you.


    As a last advice, I would recommend you use the latest version (2.10), because a lot of details dealing with bi-directional communications have been worked out.


    Best,

    Cam

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