[UPDATES FROM MARK] Where is the sound output setup?

mark

I have just created an experimental build that would reinstate the previous functionality on MacOS. It works as it did (I never throw code away) but now we'll have to investigate if it could lead to crashes with the threaded engine, etc. But a revision that goes back to using MacOS specific features for the MacOS version seems possible.

I will keep you updated.

Best Wishes, Mark

Woland

@woland said:

you should not expect the advanced audio support features to return for at least a few weeks

@Juriaan

Well Mark's on the scent so it shouldn't be that long now I guess. Keep your eyes peeled for an experimental build.

jhoepffner

@Juriaan @mark

I made some extensive try with sound between Mac, Windows, Dante etc. here my momental results:

– Its possible to play multi tracks sound (with or without video) on V3 on MacOs. The technic is to make a multitrack wave file with "SoundFilesMerger" (free, only macos), then make a .mov file with quicktime and to play it as movie in Isadora. With a multitrack output in sound and midi config (I tried with Dante VSC and with real Motu sound card), each track go to a discrete output, as in 2.6.1

- Its not possible on Windows. I tried all the combinations between wave, .mov, M-Audio souncard, Dante, at best I have a stereo output, at worst no output at all.

I think on windows its necessary to look at ASIO implementation, it is the de facto standard on Windows, not so cool as coreAudio on macOs concerning mixed frenquecy, bit deepness and sharing of output but when you are careful, it work well and with Dante Via (unfortunately paying application) its really easy to route everything. If you play in theater equipped with Dante sound mixer its really easy to manage.

Concerning SoLoud, I made only a quick research so I cannot be so affirmative but I doesn't read anything concerning multitrack management. One of the main demand from people around me concerning Isadora is around sound routing and I think that for many situations its important to be able to route each single track to single output, be real output or software input in Ableton or Max for filtering or analyzing.

Sincerely,

Jacques

mark

@jhoepffner said:

Its not possible on Windows. I tried all the combinations between wave, .mov, M-Audio souncard, Dante, at best I have a stereo output, at worst no output at all.

This goes in opposition to findings by @Fred that he posted some time ago -- though it was for Isadora 2.6.1. Did you try the techniques he described in that post? If the movies don't do multi channel output on Windows, it's a bug and we'll fix it.

Now, with regard to AIFF and WAVE audio files played by the movie player -- the experimental build solves the problem for Mac. I will have to see if it's possible to add a way to route the audio with SoLoud under Windows. I will research that in over the next few days as well.

Best Wishes,

Mark

Fred

@mark and @jhoepffner I will re-check this media with the 7.1 audio today and let you know if it still works. I cannot imagine anything changed.

mark

@fred

Did you discover anything you want to report?

Thanks,
Mark

mark

Dear All,

Here's a further update: I've reinstated the old MacOS sound behavior in the 3.0.2b1 verison which all beta testers will have right now. If you urgently need this feature, contact us by opening a ticket and we can get it to you.

But in the long run, I have a much better solution: by making a small modification in the SoLoud source code, I can route the sound to any channel on the multisound output device. ( @jhoepffner -- this is another advantage of SoLoud: I have all the source code and can improve/change it.)

So what I propose to do is to add a field to the Sound Player to allow you to specify the channel routing in the actor itself. This would be a text field so that you could enter things like

1-3, 5, 9

to route the sound to channels 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9.

You could then use this input change the routing interactively if you wanted.

I have tested this and it works well for stereo sounds. What I have not yet tested is, for example, a four channel sound and a routing like the above, though I think it will work OK. I'll do that teest in the coming week.

This would give us a very flexible, cross-platform solution to routing sound.

Comments?

Best Wishes,
Mark

Fred

@mark of course things got out of hand and I can actually test tomorrow. I have a few other tests I want to do with video playback as well. The proposed changes to soloud giving routable audio sound pretty great (but I'm assuming this is only for audio files not for the audio from a movie player?).

Sorry things are getting pushed before the summer break. I have a little list for Isadora for checking to reproduce some errors I found (unless they are just for me).

mark

@fred said:

(but I'm assuming this is only for audio files not for the audio from a movie player?).

This should also be possible under Windows; I saw some stuff in the API for Media Foundation that seemed to allow this with relative ease, but I have to find that again and refresh my memory. In AVFoundation, it is a much bigger job: Apple engineers told me some time ago that "we will never support the sound routing capabilities of QuickTime in AVFoundation." (Thanks Apple!) What's required is to build an entire Audio Units graph that intercepts the sound coming from the movie and then routes it to the proper channels using an AUMatrixMixer. Not a small task I'm afraid.

Still, I'm listening to all of you about the importance of audio. Let's keep talking and we can see what's possible to get on the roadmap for the 3.1 release we plan for the August Werkstatt.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Fred

@mark ok thats tough. I'll get some tests done tomorrow.

jfg

Dear Mark,

it sounds very good. Is also then a possibility to record sound as a sound file and reimport in Isadora as it is possible for video it would be great.

Thanks for all

best

Jean-François

Woland

@jfg said:

it sounds very good. Is also then a possibility to record sound as a sound file and reimport in Isadora as it is possible for video it would be great.

Right now it's possible to create sound-only movie files with a setup like this (if that's of any interest to you):

jfg

@Woland

I know but it is not possible to use directly the AU actors on the movie files. It is only possible over soundflower and I am not sure how many ressources more it is using.

e.g.

mark

@jfg

Soundflower is pretty lightweight I think. It's pretty much moving as much data around as an AU module would.

Best,
M

Fred

@jhoepffner @mark I can confirm my hap AVI files with 8 channels of audio play back properly with Isadora 3.01, that is the 8 discreet tracks are sent out 8 different outputs of my sound card. This does require that you configure your windows audio output to be 7.1 (so you need a sound card with at least 8 outputs. Windows does not give you much control over this, but I use an RME interface and from there I can re-route outputs wherever I like. I cannot mix channel mappings on the fly unless I use the RME control software and use midi or OSC to trigger snapshots, (you can even do real time mixing) so I can kind of solve these problems easily, but it does require creating the multichannel files first. I did this with virtual dub. I took a 7.1 wav file and muxed it (not recompressing video) with the exported video files. It was super fast, just really a data copy.

@Juriaan This wokrs fine on mac as well (with proress files and mulitchannel audio). It may be a fast fix for your 48k wav problem as the files I play and my audio system clock are locked to 48k (even slaving via workdclock if need be). It takes a bit of planning but muxing to a very small (like 64 px * 64 px) video file is fast and an easy way to get solid multichannel control. Definately far from these functions being native in Isadora.

Fred

mark

Dear @Fred

Thank you for verifying that the multichannel sound output worked as you expected.

@DusX – take note of the fact that it seems to require 8 channels of output, and that a four-channel device may not work. I see that the Windows setup allows for stereo, 5.1 and 7.1. Will investigate more when I have the four channel device you suggested.

Best Wishes,
Mark

DusX

Just an update to record, that I have multi-channel audio output working on my 4 channel Roland Rubix 24.
I have to set the device (configure) to Quadraphonic, and prepare the Video media in 5.1, where channels 5+6 are the rear channels that get mapped to 3+4 in the Roland (due to: L,R,C,Sub,SL,SR ordering of the channels)
Windows speaker test, however; plays Center and Sub to the 3+4 outputs. So the assignment of these channels is key.

mark

@dusx said:

Just an update to record, that I have multi-channel audio output working on my 4 channel Roland Rubix 24.

Gotta throw out some kudos to @DusX for expanding what @Fred has offered us. It's great to know that we can route multi-channel movie audio on Windows even if the output device does not support eight channels. I also want to give a shout out to my awesome fiancé @enibrandner (who is an Adobe Premiere expert) because she gave Ryan a crucial tip about how to set up Premiere to output the multi-channel audio.

Eni, could you create a new topic on the forum and give a simple explanation (with a screenshot or two if possible) to help everyone in the forum with the sequence setup thing? But for everyone here, the key point she made to Ryan was this: you must set up the multichannel audio layout when you create the sequence. You cannot add multichannel audio to the sequence later. It must be done at the moment of creation.

Thanks everyone!

Mark

Fred

@mark This is driver dependant, it depends on what the manufactures have written support for. With VB audio cable via the manage audio devices settings I see a quadrophonic output.