Control Track Idea #2: Sawstudio "synth"

[AudioAstronomer]

I had a fantastic idea to make sawstudio into it's own extremely powerful synthesizer. 61 regions stretched across 12-36 tracks. Each region is a wave at a specified frequency, say region 1 is a Middle C. Set the control track to cue to region 1, and begin playback when the midi-note corresponding to middle C is sent. Seems like this would be pretty cool to setup, and the possibilities endless with sawstudios routing and editing.

Or even expanding on this idea, using sawstudio as a sampling workstation. Same method. Would easily rival some of the 3000-4000$ sampling workstations out there I think!

Only issue I may see is latency, maybe Bob L can elaborate on this and other possible problems? If all seems clear I may dedicate some spare time to making this a reality and possibly project files to sawstudio users? :)

[ghowardjr]

Nah, this idea doesn't really work. Unless you're interested in a high latency monophonic sample trigger engine...

Gary

[matt]

I think this is very innovative thinking on your part. I will try it.

[Carey Langille]

I actually did this with sawplus32/sawpro, and sawstudio Many yrs ago, where i used midi to trigger preset waveforms that were output from saw to a set of laser scanners to playback Patterns as midair beam effects.. You can only trigger one at a time, and there is Latency, for a synth this may not work, but for our laser displays it was fine..

[AudioAstronomer]

Perhaps at a high sample rate, with low latency setup it will be negligable latency for performance. Or would the higher sample rate increase preload?

Also, being monophonic is certainly not a problem :) Some of the best synthesizers out there are! For the sampling workstation idea, this may present a problem. Possible workaraound available?

[Bob L]

You should be able to eliminate the preload latency pretty much by using the Region Caching option and just have a lot of RAM. :)

However, it is still monophonoic.

Very clever thinking though... I like the way your mind works Robert. ;)

Bob L

[ghowardjr]

What i do like about this idea is using SS as an Ableton live type product. That is, for shows where you need various cues to be quickly called up, you could use the MIDI mapping to Control Track to trigger regions of audio on the press of a keyboard. A cool way to trigger efx on demand.

Is anybody having success using SAW for this kind of stuff...

Gary

[Bob L]

Live show capabilities of SAWStudio's engine can be quite exciting...

I just setup two new SAWStudioLite machines locked in a Host/Slave configuration to run the entire show at the Tropicana Hotel here in Vegas. They have been using the older SAW engine for the last 8 years. The new rigs are built with Matrox Parhelia cards outputting live video to projection machines perfectly synced to the audio.

For sound effects, try using small sample VSTi synth plugs to do Fx triggering on the fly... setup something as simple as LoopaZoid on a track for sound effects... you can load 48 sounds into one plug instance... these effects can be 5 min songs or short sound effects like explosions and phones ringing and such for book shows, or live act triggering that is never timed the same way from performance to performance.

The neat thing is that while the main MT Timeline can be playing back show production music, live sound effects can be triggered by a mouse or a midi keyboard... it is completely multitimberal along with background music and video, as well as Ctrl-Track midi commands for lighting changes and fog machines and whatnot...

In many large production shows I have also dedicated a track for spot calls... I record the person calling the spot commands onto his own track and route that track into the stage crew headsets... the spots are called perfect every night after that.

The possibilities are awesome... and it can stay completely within the power of one SAWStudioLite on a laptop.

Bob L

[ghowardjr]

Great idea for the Loopazoid plug-in. I've been using Ableton Live running side by side with SAW for the reasons you described, a static sound track running with cues that need to be cued visually (efx, etc.) I hadn't seen the capabilities of this type of plug-in to be used to accommodate the "on-demand" cues along with the rest of the tracks... VERY NICE to keep it all within Saw....

Gary

[AudioAstronomer]

You should be able to eliminate the preload latency pretty much by using the Region Caching option and just have a lot of RAM. :)

However, it is still monophonoic.

Very clever thinking though... I like the way your mind works Robert. ;)

Bob L


I have quite a few more ideas Ive been working on. This is entirely the most powerful software on earth! And yet so fast and easy to use... mmmm. Everything works just how, where, when I want it to. And it never poofs, crashes, whines (sorry cant do this, click ok! what if i dont want to click ok? WHAT THEN BITCH!) or talks back to me. Makes me ever so happy and so excited to try new ideas :)

[AudioAstronomer]

Live show capabilities of SAWStudio's engine can be quite exciting...

I just setup two new SAWStudioLite machines locked in a Host/Slave configuration to run the entire show at the Tropicana Hotel here in Vegas. They have been using the older SAW engine for the last 8 years. The new rigs are built with Matrox Parhelia cards outputting live video to projection machines perfectly synced to the audio.

For sound effects, try using small sample VSTi synth plugs to do Fx triggering on the fly... setup something as simple as LoopaZoid on a track for sound effects... you can load 48 sounds into one plug instance... these effects can be 5 min songs or short sound effects like explosions and phones ringing and such for book shows, or live act triggering that is never timed the same way from performance to performance.

The neat thing is that while the main MT Timeline can be playing back show production music, live sound effects can be triggered by a mouse or a midi keyboard... it is completely multitimberal along with background music and video, as well as Ctrl-Track midi commands for lighting changes and fog machines and whatnot...

In many large production shows I have also dedicated a track for spot calls... I record the person calling the spot commands onto his own track and route that track into the stage crew headsets... the spots are called perfect every night after that.

The possibilities are awesome... and it can stay completely within the power of one SAWStudioLite on a laptop.

Bob L
Hah! Ive already been doing this :) This is where Word spread round to the st pete times forum. Setup a cue track for local jazz band into their headsets containing set lists, tempo based cues, a click track (so they can do overdubs later in my studio) and Ive recently been experimenting with using the control track to control the clubs lights. Just my laptop, desktop and an interface. This is stuff I spent nearly 9000$ in software alone to acheive within the last year (and sold thinking id never do it again!), let alone that hardware. IVe quite happily expanded out of my now all digital studio into live sound/recording, which is amazingly fun with sawstudio :)

Just to think, not even a year ago, I was about 1 click from buying saw but decided to try other softwares instead. BAH! First instincts always right :)