Elk-herd 3.0 beta: Project Import at last!

mzero · November 6, 2019, 6:41pm

Thanks to a bug filed by @flux-us, I’ve found a small issue:

If you reorder or compress sample slots, and sample slots 1 ~ 8 move or change…
Then send that project to the Digitakt…
And later fetch that project back from the Digitakt…
You may find that all your empty patterns have become phantoms. That is, they’ll be called “Untitled” and be shown in grey:

Your other patterns will all be fine. These phantoms can be removed by simply selecting them, and deleting (the × icon in the right of the Patterns title bar), and they’ll restored to empty patterns.

Will be fixed before final release.

martibs · November 6, 2019, 9:47pm

Sorry for going off topic with this one, it seems to actually be a bug in Ubuntu 19.10, which now installs Chromium via Snap. So if anyone else is having problems with Elk-herd running on Ubuntu 19.10, check this bug tracker:

HiGrade1 · November 15, 2019, 9:20pm

Is there a projected date for a final release? Not to rush you kind sir, please take as much time as you need… I know this is not a simple thing you are doing. Please know that all your efforts in creating this massively helpful utility are greatly appreciated.

mzero · November 18, 2019, 4:18pm

I gave a recent performance in Phoenix, and so things got away from me these last two weeks…

I’m planning on releasing 3.0 this week.

There will be two things left out, slated for 3.1:

Some way to work around the issues on Linux w/Chrome.
Better support for sounds where LFO modulates Sample Slot

HiGrade1 · November 19, 2019, 1:03am

Thanks for the update!

barba-ex-machina · November 19, 2019, 10:18am

I solved connection & transfer problems on Linux / Chrome by increasing the MIDI I/O buffer sizes from 4k to 64k. The default is apparently too low.

Run the following script as root, after connecting the DT:

#!/bin/bash

dir=/sys/module/snd_seq_midi

if [ -d $dir ]; then
  echo 65536 > $dir/parameters/input_buffer_size
  echo 65536 > $dir/parameters/output_buffer_size
  grep ^ $dir/parameters/*
else
  echo Module snd_seq_midi not loaded
fi

martibs · November 22, 2019, 2:15pm

I’m having an issue with some samples ending up distorted after I transfer them onto the Digitakt using elk-herd. The issue has been present on both combinations of Linux/Chromium/elk-herd2 and Linux/Chrome/elk-herd3.

Some artifacts are added to some, but not all of the samples after I do a mass transfer of samples. This is an example of a sample with such a distortion:
Original sample on disk:

Sampled transfered to and played back from Digitakt:

I’ve never had this issue using Elektron Transfer. As nobody else are having this problem, I’m suspecting it might be due to the settings on my Digitakt, but I’m not sure exactly what they should be set to. I have “turbo speed” disabled, and “input from” set to USB. Anything else I should look for?

mzero · November 22, 2019, 4:22pm

There is definitely some sample corruption there, but because it is a recording of the output from the DT, I can’t see it directly (only the result of it post audio chain). Can you use Transfer to copy the sample back from the Digitakt to you computer and give me that? I can then see the nature of the corruption, which will help me diagnose the problem.

martibs · November 22, 2019, 5:16pm

I deleted the corrupted sample, so I did another transfer, this time using Windows/Chrome/elk-herd3. Here there were also a couple of file corruptions:
Original: https://www.elektronauts.com/uploads/default/original/3X/b/8/b8df21c49ffd9663124504aecb67bb01393f5104.wav

Copy: https://www.elektronauts.com/uploads/default/original/3X/3/1/31fb35b8c26e624b395496695f1e492b575c947a.wav

It seems to be consistent that there is a click in the beginning of the waveform on all the corrupted samples, but I’m not 100% sure.

mattp · November 25, 2019, 1:20pm

Hi I’m just trying elk-herd for the first time and I really like it. Thank you

Would it be possible to add project management as well please ? So you can rename project etc

mzero · November 27, 2019, 9:39pm

I’d love to… but I haven’t found a way to get the Digitakt to give me that information. I am in contact with Elektron, and they know about the need to make those APIs available in the future.

mzero · November 27, 2019, 10:42pm

Release Candidate 1 is now up. Barring any other issues this will be 3.0

Bug fixes:

Don’t modify empty patterns when rearranging the sample pool. This keeps empty patterns pristine. Broaden the test for empty to include previously “shuffled” empty patterns that this bug created.
Don’t get stuck when loop-back ports are selected (like IAC Bus). Now just give a clever warning.

Minor improvements:

Cleaner handling of non-sysex messages
Individual help topics can now be linked to
Improved editing of pattern and sound names, keeping the cursor from jumping in more cases.

I still haven’t found a reliable set up for Linux… sigh…

HiGrade1 · November 27, 2019, 11:37pm

MZERO for the win!

trashbin · November 28, 2019, 3:43am

Hello mzero, you made brilliantly what I was requesting Elektron at last month. Congrats!
it’s possible to use it offline? Most of the users nowadays aren’t much concern by sharing data as they should be, but this is important to me, and that’s why I’m on hold on this topic. Does it work with other devices or just DT?
best

mzero · November 28, 2019, 3:53am

The on-line version sends only a small amount of anonymized stats data to my servers¹. You can opt out of this on the first screen, or later by choosing the [App Settings] command button.
You can download the web files from my server, already packaged up in this tarball: elk-herd-live.tgz. Just unpack it and open index.html in your local Chrome browser. This version will still try to send data back if you opt-in, but it won’t complain a wit if you are disconnected from the Net.
+Drive sample management works with Digitakt, Analog Rytm, and Model:Samples. Project and Pattern management is Digitakt only at present.

¹ — It sends the name of the browsers, the version of elk-herd, the name and OS version of the synth, the names of the MIDI ports used, how full the +Drive is, and periodically, counts of how often each command was used. All of this is identified with a random number (UUIDv4) - and no personal information is collected, asked for, stored, or transmitted. — I spent several years working in the area of web security research. This stuff matters to me, too!

Jack_69 · December 5, 2019, 4:14pm

Hello, fisrt of all thank you for your awesome Software.
I am reorganizing my projects and cleaning up my Digitakt after 2,5 Years of composing on that thing.
By doing this i experienced some difficulties when fetching the project, deleting unused samples, reorganising them and sending it back. Most of the times the patterns get all messed up. If i fetch the organiyed project back and send it again it works, but not always.
And when trying to get more projects together, the samples get not mangeled together on the digitakt.

Im runing osx Catalina with a 2018 MBP Touchbar and on Chrome. I also Made sure on the Takt to send and recieve Midi via USB and MIDI.

Am i doing something wrong?

Greetings and thanks agasin for your big work

mzero · December 5, 2019, 5:08pm

I’m sorry you’re having problems. I would suggest DT settings of just MIDI via USB:

Settings > MIDI Config > Port Config > Input From = USB
Settings > MIDI Config > Port Config > Output to = USB

Setting them to “MIDI + USB” will make all the transfers unbearably slow, though shouldn’t result in errors.

Remember that these settings are stored with each project, so if you load a project to work with it, you’ll have to go check again that these are set back to USB only.

If after setting to USB you still have the problems, I’d love to take a look at your project files. In particular, could you:

Fetch a project, save it to a file called “Fetched Project”
Delete the unused samples and reogranize as you like, then save it to a file again before sending, called “Reorganized Project”
Send the file to the Digitakt, then Fetch it again, and finally save that to a file called “Transferred Project”.
Then DM me all those files (or DM me for an e-mail to send them to).

Jack_69 · December 5, 2019, 9:38pm

Thank you very much sir!
Seems to work better now. I‘ll let you know via DM if it is still not working for me.

another question: Is it already possible to delete samples from the Takt that are not used in any project? I did not find the option bit i do know, that you are working on.

Your app is really helping me, cleaning up my Takt. Grazie!

mzero · December 5, 2019, 9:50pm

This is an often requested feature, and one I’d love myself… But - the current Digitakt OS doesn’t give elk-herd access to any but the current loaded project. So there is no way to query the samples used by the projects stored on the +Drive. I’ve discussed this with Elektron, and they know of the need - and I hope will make such access available in a future Digitakt OS.

re5et · December 5, 2019, 11:06pm

Is it possible to.

Download and archive (project , sounds , samples ) each project .
Blank digitakt
Re-download each project archive to get things back on digitakt.

A slight long way to do it, but could work with things as they exist.?
The sounds could get added to bank A onwards
The samples could either maintain their folder or get dumped into project specific folders