Digitakt livemix demonstration

Elektron Gear Digitakt
#22

I originally had solos on the green buttons… but found I never used them. SO, now they serve as “reset” points: Each resets a part of the audio effects chain: One resets the EQ, one resets the reverb, etc… Useful for fiddling things to crazy-town, then…bam… back to normal.

Also, the left-most five green buttons route the small keyboard to four channels of synth (when I use a PreenFM, it is four part multi-timbral), and the fifth goes to the DT’s auto-channel. This way I can either play a synth directly, or play an audio track on the DT, or play the synth via the DT, recording into a DT MIDI track.

3 Likes
#23

Yes! I will try to do this by saturday. not at home with the LCXL right now

#24

Hi mzero,
I am just curious, which program you run on raspberry pi? is it pd maybe? And do you use onboard audio interface? I am planning to install pd on rpi (yet to buy one) but I am worried for latency. TY

#25

i found this…

1 Like
#26

I’m running a RasberryPi 3, with the Pisound add-on audio card. The on-board audio interface is pretty “lo-fi”, where as the Pisound is excellent.

I run the stock Raspian Lite image as the OS. The main audio software is indeed Pd, with a mediumish patch I built for it.

The trick to making this work well is to run the patch at the sampling rate of the Pisound: 48kHz. With this I run 64 sample buffering size - and so get very low latency… low enough that I haven’t been tempted to measure it exactly yet… though I should, probably! I’m going to say it is < 4ms.

As for power, here’s a list of all the things running in the effects chain on the RPi:

  • Looper, beat sync’d
  • “stutter” LFO’d gate, geat sync’d
  • full-sweep LP & HP filters
  • three band parametric EQ
  • reverb (based on freeverb)
  • triple, beat sync’d, delay lines
  • gain controls at most stages
  • Ableton Link - with generated MIDI Clock to DT and synth
  • Keyboard routing - switchable between DT and synth
  • Control surface routing - giving control over all parameters of the audio effects, and routing some controls to the DT and synth. This is where the faders get sent to the DT to control the mix of the sample tracks.

All of this runs consuming ~11% of the RPi… so I’ve got plenty of room to grow.

8 Likes
#27

Yes, you have to plan how to switch to the next pattern and change the faders before. It’s a little bit of work.
I’m controlling the track level with the faders.
Unfortunately you can not define a cc range with this controller. :frowning:

1 Like
#28

wow, great info. ty!

#29

hey guys,
Pavl and I played a very cool technosession yesterday, Have fun!

1 Like
#30

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I use a Novation Launch Control XL with my Digitakt. A Kenton USB Midi Host connects the two without a computer. The setup is super reliable and a lot of fun to jam with. The Launch Control feels great, I really like the faders and knobs. You do get value jumps from pattern to pattern but I try to use the same type of sounds on each channel every time, which makes it more manageable. The Launch Control XL editor is well made and easy to use. I have a few different pages of controller mappings set up for the Digitakt. The faders always control track level, the buttons on the bottom are mute and temporary solo (like a momentary switch instead of a toggle). The solo function is a lot of fun to highlight a few parts really quick at the end of a sequence. User preset 1 has each track’s effects sends and filter cutoff mapped to the knobs then the other presets just control different things like the reverb and delay, the envelopes for certain tracks, and so on. In fact the only time I have ever hooked up the LCXL to a computer is to edit the midi mapping. I looked into getting the FaderFox UC44 but really wanted the Launch Control’s knobs and the ability to program 8 user presets.

As far as connecting the two the Kenton box works great, I just wish it had a power switch but you just unplug it to power it down. I picked up a Kenton 5 way midi splitter at the same time because I have a few synths with no midi thru. With Digitakt working as a midi brain I can have conditional trigs on everything! I also have a Hosa Midi to USB cable I use with my C&G Organelle but have not tried that with the Launch Control yet, don’t know if it would work as the Organelle is a midi host. I think you have to have a midi host for it to work with devices without going through a computer first. All in all I am glad I got the controller for my Digitakt, it has made the machine more fun to jam with. Once we have Overbridge and I can use the Digitakt as an interface this setup will be perfect for me.

5 Likes
#31

I see… is this something can it be fixed with a (future) firmware update ?

#32

The reset point makes a lot of sense. Is it like a “reset to initial value” function you programmed or it’s simpler than that ? :slight_smile: Cheers !

#33

I’m super interested in this, although I’m a total outsider to RPi and Pisound… how hard is it to get into it?
if I undestand correctly, you’re running all that stuff as standalone… I would love to do this with my Octatrack <3
if I could have a compressor, LPF/HPF and a looper for example, I could use all 8 tracks on the OT (I’m currently using T8 as master track and T7 for resampling)
and of course, the fx (delay and reverb) would be more than welcome (same with ableton Link, since I own an iPad)

#34

@falconetti - I programmed them myself: I have reset buttons for each section (reverb, delay, filter sweeps, etc…) that just go to a fixed “good” setting. And I have a “reset all the things” button that does them all at once. This way, when I’ve tweaked everything to insanity I’m just a button press back to “home”. This was a technique learned from Skinnerbox at Loop.

@depuratumba - Yup, all standalone. It isn’t too hard: You should be comfortable around Linux and patching with Pd (which is very similar to Max). Other than that, just a healthy tolerance and resilience in the face of you’re putting together a custom rig from bits-n-bobs, and there’s no “one step installer”. The Pisound part of this is easy - their HW and SW is very well engineered and “just works”.

Compressor, LFP/HPF, and looper would be very easy on the CPU, Pd would have no trouble with this.

If you want to go the very easy route, though I haven’t tried it, there is a MODEP disc image that makes the Pisound into a straightforward patchable pedal board that you can patch visually when you connect in.

4 Likes
#35

hehe well tbh I’m not comfortable around any of those things… but there’s a good excuse to dive into it :stuck_out_tongue:
I might consider it for the future - maybe doing a course or taking some classes with some friends who might have good puredata skills and an idea of what I’m after…

I live in Argentina wich makes it impossible to order Pisound (customs are a pain in the ass), but I’ll probably visit Europe later this year (July) so I could order RPi and Pisound and give it a shot

#36

oh and btw… do you have any live videos where I can see your set in action? I’m super curious about the Pisound implementation and the quality/sound of the fx, looper, etc!

#37

Mr @mzero do you mind me asking how do you actually do the reset functionality?

I’ve been planning to control my DT thru ableton but found it a little complicated and thought maybe I’ll just wait for overbridge and I can take things from there.

But the reset thing seems very interesting, would like to know. I would even implement that on the A4 and be able to just bring back everything home with 1 button instead of 2 fingers on the No+kit and the other 4 to bring back DT tracks from mute.

#38

The quality is excellent: Burr-Brown chips, and very well engineered: There is no digital noise bleed through from the Pi itself.

Here’s a spot in an one hour live streamed set, where almost everything is in play: the Pi’s reverb, filters and beat-sync’d delay lines, though it is all on subtly:

We have several live-stream videos up: If you look at my fader box controller, if the 8 left most (my right most) faders are in play, then I’m using the effects on the Pi. Though even when the effects are “off”, all the sound is going in and out of the Pi, and the Eq filters are gain staging are always in the path.

3 Likes
#39

In Pd the reset is pretty simple: I match a specific MIDI Note On message on my controller’s channel (13), and in response send a bunch of CC messages on several channels, which reset to some nice known values. In the case of the effects in the Pi, it just sets the values in the Pd patch via send/receive pairs.

In Ableton, you could have what’s called a “dummy” clip with automation to set the CCs as you want, and then you can map a MIDI note to that specific clip - so hitting the note plays the clip. (Be sure to set launch quantization on that clip itself to none.) In Ableton, you’ll need one clip per MIDI channel, but I think you could trigger them all from the same MIDI note.

1 Like
#40

Got it… thanks :slight_smile:

#41

I haven’t seen all of it, but unfortunately the other guy’s volume is much louder than you so I can’t hear you so well - do have any video on your own by any chance?