SAW Hooks

[soundtrack2life]

Bob, how long until SAC hooks into SAW? As for me that was only reason I wanted SAC . . . . Total Mix on steroids:cool:
Thanks,
Joe

[Iain Westland]

I think it will be about the last piece to be honest, the first priority is to the live useage, and when thats extremely stable and solid, then it will get the hooks.

i too am hear to get hooked:D

[Bob L]

I obviously must first stabilize the live engine... otherwise hooks to SAWStudio are meaningless anyway... those hooks cannot be properly designed until the engine revisions have stabilized.

You cannot build the 10th floor of the building until the foundation is solid.

Bob L

[Mountain Media]

I obviously must first stabilize the live engine... otherwise hooks to SAWStudio are meaningless anyway... those hooks cannot be properly designed until the engine revisions have stabilized.

You cannot build the 10th floor of the building until the foundation is solid.

Bob L

Unless you use 'Sky-hooks' - or in this case 'SAWStudio-hooks' :p

[soundtrack2life]

Unless you use 'Sky-hooks' - or in this case 'SAWStudio-hooks' :p

That was a good one:D

[Iain Westland]

You cannot build the 10th floor of the building until the foundation is solid.

Bob L

How are the foundations going sir?

[Bob L]

I'm working on the hooks now... it is an involved process to share common data buffers and variables between separate apps in XP... but it is coming along.

dll plugins run in the same address space... but two different apps are a different thing all together. :)

Bob L

[Iain Westland]

i can imagine!!! i cant work out how your gonna write a brand new audio interface to make saw n sac talk to each other without affecting the asio protocol that i will run sac on.

then again i cant work out how they found all those little people to live inside my tv set.

Iain

[AudioAstronomer]

i can imagine!!! i cant work out how your gonna write a brand new audio interface to make saw n sac talk to each other without affecting the asio protocol that i will run sac on.

then again i cant work out how they found all those little people to live inside my tv set.

Iain

That's not how it will likely work. Sharing data between two applications is very common. More complicated for near real-time processes, but still more common than you'd think ;)

[Iain Westland]

your taking all the magic away Robert! here i am wondering about spells, wands and computations and you go n tell me its simple high end programming!!:D

[mako]

your taking all the magic away Robert! here i am wondering about spells, wands and computations and you go n tell me its simple high end programming!!:D

:D:D:D:D - on with the spells

mako

[Bob L]

As often as data is shared between processes... things get quite tricky when trying to do live streaming multi-channel sharing between two processes... its quite a different ballgame than sharing a name and address lookup in a common database. :)

But... things are moving along.

Bob L

[Bud Johnson]

But... things are moving along.

Bob L
We are taking pictures of the D8b-Zsys-Aardsync-and outboard units galore in preparation to sell on ebay. That $ will go to converters, speaker upgrades, and room treatments. When clients ask about gear, we'll tell them it's all buried behind the wall for heat dispersion. ;)

Go Bob Go!..... Go Bob Go!..... Go Bob Go!.....Go Bob Go!....

[bassthumper]

Bob, I cannot wait till the hooks get brought in. I have been working for the past several nights on a setup I am going to do using SAC. I originally wanted to use SAW to feed SAC my audio tracks for a show I am doing Tomorrow (Sat. May 24, 2008). The cool thing is the whole show is 1 Mic, 1 Guitar, and the ability to play Cd or audio trax. Unfortunately for me because of a date conflict Greg and I will be going in 2 different directions and I won't be using the RME's. I am resorting to running it all on My M-Audio Firewire Solo with my laptop. I was trying to do a Spdif in and out loop between SAW and SAC but the M-Audio Solo is a pain in the BUTT to configure!!!!! I can't get both programs to assign to 2 different sets of outs and ins, so I just decided I will get out the trusty old Cd player and bring it with me. I am bringing an analog board as a backup but plan to run SAC for about 4 hours (so far in all my test setups I have had no failure). Will let you know how it goes. I have already been using SAC with this equipment running my bass guitar through it and using the effects and eq's basically as a preamp and it works great. This will be my first run at SAC being the primary main and monitor consoles. I am also going to test out a new Crown amp in the process and see just how hard I can make SAC push it.

[Bob L]

Well... the recording hooks are in and I have been testing for the last three days in a live recording session at the curch here in Vegas.

The results have been awesome so far... today was the most impressive... my full church SAC template running on a lowly P4 3 ghz machine... single cpu... FOH and 8 monitor console mixes... full eq and comps and verb... a mixture of in-ear feeds and front and rear floor wedges... session loads at 48***37;.

Last week, we tried using SAW on the same machine running the MME drivers while SAC used the ASIO drivers... the machine cpu flatlined at 100%... could barely move the mouse around... not a very realistic scenario.... today... with the hooks... SAW bypasses the entire Windows soundcard driver and connects directly to internal shared virtual buffers from SAC... recorded 19 tracks... mixture of mono and stereo... assignable directly from the SAC FOH mixer... the SAC load was not altered at all while feeding these record buffers over to SAW... SAW added an overall 3% load to the whole system while it happily churned along writing 19 tracks to disk in the background... the task manager showed a total of only 50% cpu.... SAW was almost completely transparent to the system.

The recordings came out glitch free... even though I was jumping all over the place with F-Keys and program switches between the two apps... by the way... the H/S switch is now also active on the SAW Record Remote and allows the remote to float ontop of SAC while it conveniently hides and shows SAW with one click of the switch.

After 5 hours of solid recording today... 16 songs laid down... SAC showed zero slipped buffers... yeeeessssss!!!

This looks extremely encouraging... now I am working on the return hooks to allow SAW to playback thru the SAC console.

Bob L

[UpTilDawn]

Well... the recording hooks are in and I have been testing for the last three days in a live recording session at the curch here in Vegas.

The results have been awesome so far...


Fantastic news Bob!!!!!!:D:)

[Mountain Media]

WOW!! Great news, Bob! :D

If these kinda load numbers continue, can you hook in a gaming interface, on the same machine, so we can play MahJongg while we do those LONG symphony sessions?? ;)

Congratulations! :)

[Himhui]

playing MahJongg?? :eek:

[Iain Westland]

:D:D

hats off sir!!! if it can be done then you the man:D:D

[AudioAstronomer]

YYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

I could really use this for next saturday :D 30 channels to be recorded, 8 performers and it'd be much nicer to do it via sac/saw than just through saw... otherwise I have to dupe the performer's iems to have room for the main :o

[Bob L]

I'll be trying for an update in the middle of the week... hopefully all goes well.

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

Way to go Bob!

[bcorkery]

Awesome news Bob! Thanks for all your hard work.

[Bruce Callaway]

Brilliant, thanks Bob......

[Bob L]

Well... the update is almost ready... but not quite yet... however... the playback hooks are now in and being tested and tightened up.... it's very cool... currently you can select SAWStudio Input Channels or Output Channels for any SAC FOH mixer channel.

Again... SAWStudio bypasses the soundcard driver... in fact you can create a special prefs if you like with all devices set to NONE... the link is a direct internal shared memory buffer that seems to be very efficient so far.

Bob L

[mako]

Spells seem to working well :) - great stuff Bob.

This is going to be a hell of an impressive duo.

cheers

mako

[UpTilDawn]

This is very cool news! I can hardly wait to give it a go! Too bad I'll have to wait on this Friday's gig though.:(

[AudioAstronomer]

Exciting :D


Will saw be able to SRP record with SAC running and have saw's output flow into SAC's inputs? That would solve a lot of my track and sample playback issues :o

[Bob L]

I'm working on that one now.

Bob L

[Chuck Mitchell]

I'm smelling a very unique solution here. I'm hoping to see this playback work as well for feeding loops, etc.

Chuck

[Carl G.]

I'm working on that one now.

Bob L

Brand new to this side of the forum.... and this thread caught my eye first.
(I only do in Studio stuff - hence - I use SawSTUDIO)

But now I'm forced to consider replacing my Mackie 32x8 analog mix monitor/console - While looking.... wow! Was I in for a big surprise!

How would you suggest? Need equivalent analog in/out with good mic pres.

[Bob L]

Consider any SAC system setup that meets your needs... SAC itself is becoming a great mixing board replacement... always ON... SAWStudio can be stopped and started without interference of the input signals... by the time I'm done with the hooks... it should do everything the live/mode and Tape-Style Monitoring modes do in SAWStudio directly.

Bob L

[soundtrack2life]

This is Freakin Awesome news:cool:!! This is the reason I really purchased SAC. I can not wait:D
Thanks Bob!
Joe

[Chuck Mitchell]

This is so out of the box (I guess there really is no box, right?). I just purchased 48 ch of pre's and digifaces for a venue to record with that would also really do well with this same system for monitoring. Now I am glad I put so many turn-arounds in their floor boxes !;)

Will the hooks go both ways? For instance, can a 2nd SS session run show control INTO SAC while the other records? Sorry. I'm getting completely out of hand here. That just needs to be another machine.

I need to go to bed.

Thanks,
Chuck

[mako]

Brand new to this side of the forum.... and this thread caught my eye first.
(I only do in Studio stuff - hence - I use SawSTUDIO)

But now I'm forced to consider replacing my Mackie 32x8 analog mix monitor/console - While looking.... wow! Was I in for a big surprise!

How would you suggest? Need equivalent analog in/out with good mic pres.

G'day Carl - If you're handy with a soldering iron I'd suggest going for some racks of Joe Malone's "Baby Animal" pre's (BA4) or dual BA4's

Quality clean sound.(BA4)
Haven't heard the dual BA4 but more drive and probably more saturation.
Around US$800 for full kit + post (BA4)

http://www.jlmaudio.com/Baby_Animal_Mic_Pre.htm

If you need more attitude and smoke, the dual 99V's are hot.

http://www.jlmaudio.com/JLM99v.htm

cheers

mako

[BillyK]

Carl:

This thread has me ready to load up on Lynx Aurora's! Let me know if you start thinking of going that route!

Bill K

[Iain Westland]

green pres if you want clean, cheap and fairly easy

[mako]

Hello Bob - how goes it with the SAC/SAW hooks?

Thanks

mako

[soundtrack2life]

I have a session next week that it sure could come handy in:D Until then there is always RME Total Mix. I will gladly wait until it is ready because when it is I know it will be awesome.
Joe

[Bob L]

The hooks are in... I am finishing up some other details and will hopefully get the update out soon. I will try to make it before next week so you can use it for your session... we'll see what happens.

Bob L

[soundtrack2life]

That would be great!
Joe

[mako]

Great news - thanks Bob

mako

[Bud Johnson]

Thanks Bob,
As you may have noticed I have a mild interest in the hooks.:rolleyes:

[Iain Westland]

may i join your interest Bud? cant wait for the either, but then again this isnt windows or steinberg so we will have to wait till its correct rather than get a program that offers the world but crashes on opening.:D:D

Iain

[Bruce Callaway]

After my experience using SAC and SAW together, I can see this becoming a standard way of working for me in all situations. Great work Bob....

[BillyK]

Bruce:

How is it that you are using SS & SAC "together"? I thought at this point until the new hooks are available the two programs work separately but not "together". Am I missing something? (Other than possibly Y inputs?)

[Bud Johnson]

Billy K,
If you run SAC you can mix while SS records the dry source input simultaneously. Some run one set of drivers for SAC and a second set of drivers for SS. Personally that doesn't work as well on my setup. I simply run Asio for both.
This only works for recording, not for overdubs as there is now current way to have SAC play SS tracks.

[Bob L]

The record and play hooks appear to be stable at the moment.

I have a few more things I am trying to include in this update and am hoping to get everything finished this weekend.

Bob L

[Bruce Callaway]

Billy K, I second everything that Bud said. I bought SAC to do live mixing with SAW recording in the background but when I used them together, I was very impressed and it dawned on me that that this could be a whole new way of working.

I shall have to see the impact of the SAW hooks on overdubbing but if that can be managed, I can get rid of my external mixing desk and use SAW/SAW everywhere in the same fashion. My rig is mobile now and I think this combination will give me a great benefit.

[BillyK]

I guess I am not following how Bud is using ASIO on both programs at the same time and this is why I thought they would not work together until Bob "hooks" them together. I am using a LynxTWO with the LS-ADAT option. I can only assign the sound card (using ASIO) to SS or SAC but not to both at the same time. Could someone please explain how to record on SS while using SAC to mix. IF I missed a thread explaining this procedure I apologize.

[jazzboxmaker]

Billy,
I'm sure others here will chime in but I believe the Asio driver has to be multi-client to pull this off. RME's drivers are and I can run 2 different apps with them.

[BillyK]

Jazzbox:

Thanks for the info. I thought I had the latest drivers & firmware, but just in case I just downloaded from Lynx and will try an update next time I am at the studio. Hope that will do the trick.

Bill

[jazzboxmaker]

Good luck with it Bill- But from Bob's reply it will be a non-issue very shortly:)

[Bud Johnson]

What Vinny said, but I don't know that a driver gives all cards the same abilities. Nor do I know they don't.
For more on what I don't know, never mind we don't have time.

[Bob L]

It is driver dependent whether you can work with 2 or more apps at the same time.

With the hooks... it no longer matters, plus it drops the load drastically because SAW no longer even addresses the driver... all audio handling is direct between SAC and SAW and SAC is the only app that deals with the soundcard.

Bob L

[Iain Westland]

i'm all a quiver waiting for these:D

[mako]

:rolleyes: - just wondering

mako :)

[Bob L]

The update is out... check the announcements forum.

Bob L

[mako]

Fantastic - thank you Bob - my, you have been a busy little beaver.

Thanks again

mako

[KurtS]

Are the hooks going to be available in SawStudio Basic as well? I see that the SawStudio release notes only reference Lite and Full with the hooks.

-Kurt

[Bob L]

At the moment the hooks have not been written in to Basic.... they are completely different source codes and will require me to manually insert all the hooks from the Lite/Full source... lots and lots of code and variable additions... lots more debug time... not sure what I will do there...

Basic as an introductory product to Lite and Full may remain without that feature... we'll see.

Bob L

[mOjO Fet]

How long is the pre-release sale promotion going to last?

I would love to jump on board. Also now after so many people seem to be really exited about SAC. The possibilities seem fascinating!

On the other hand as a Basic user without the integration of SAC I am hesitating....


I think Basic and SAC with the hooks would be a very powerful combination.....

Michael

[Bob L]

The Pre-Release will probably hold till mid or end of July... I am behind schedule... I was hoping to have everything finished by now... mid-June... but probably another month.

Bob L

[Ollie]

RME Digiface
Ada 80000
Desktop system

I was goofing with this a bit today. I set my inputs in SAC to mono inputs. Made a template and started to go live. Then I opened up SawStudio, got it to hook to SAC by Activating SAC Link and then getting the Sac Link Option you wantImport Mix Data from Sac . Everything is working fine. Data being recorded to SawStudio. Great.

Now I go into SawStudio and choose Export Mix Data to Sac. By necessity that has to change in Sac where the data is coming from so you can hear the tracks. Say I want to get back into my live session ASAP, Bob what do you recommend is the quickest way to do that and return my inputs for live PA?

Thanks.

[Bob L]

What you will want to do now is keep the live session setup and run one more SAC input from the SS Output Track 1... that will be your playback... exactly as we have all done it since the beginning with a physical console.

The export is for a one to one mixdown arrangement... not for a tracking arrangement... unless you want that much onitor control while tracking vocals or something.

I am also working on a live Tape Style switching playback feature that will do what you want while the Record Meters are present... but it is not ready yet.

Or... if you want to switch between the two completely different setups... just create a scene for each setup and then just switch scenes to get back to your recording setup.

Bob L

[Ollie]

Got it. Thanks.