Using Faust and Bela with a studio guitar system

Digital-Larry

These comments only reflect my personal biases and methods of working and may not apply to everyone wanting to use Bela with a guitar and/or Faust.

a) I do not need Bela to provide my entire guitar tone. I have an Avid Eleven rack and a Boss Katana and a couple of tube amps. What I want to use Bela for in this context is to add effects and things that those other devices do not do.

b) It is likely that the patch in Bela will be "of the moment" rather than programmed in there forever as it was so great and really eliminated the need for any other sounds ever.

c) As a result of (b) it's pretty important to have a UI where the current settings and their meanings can be visualized. I have not tried Faust on a touchscreen and it might not be suitable for the "knob" type control (the target is very small on those) but sliders might be OK. I'd even be willing to have a read-only UI and have the input be either from OSC (Android tablet) or the Bela analog inputs. But there's no way I'm going to be able to remember what 8 knobs and possibly some switches do without some visual reference. While I can label pots I don't want to do that every time I change a patch.

d) I'd prefer Bela to be able to work with the host (where Faust patches are developed and distcc used for faster compilation) over a wireless network. Preferable to either Ethernet or USB just because I don't want to string another long cable across the floor.

giuliomoro

Digital-Larry d) I'd prefer Bela to be able to work with the host (where Faust patches are developed and distcc used for faster compilation) over a wireless network. Preferable to either Ethernet or USB just because I don't want to string another long cable across the floor.

that would work

Digital-Larry c) As a result of (b) it's pretty important to have a UI where the current settings and their meanings can be visualized. I have not tried Faust on a touchscreen and it might not be suitable for the "knob" type control (the target is very small on those) but sliders might be OK. I'd even be willing to have a read-only UI and have the input be either from OSC (Android tablet) or the Bela analog inputs. But there's no way I'm going to be able to remember what 8 knobs and possibly some switches do without some visual reference. While I can label pots I don't want to do that every time I change a patch.

The tablet could connect over wifi to the board and visualise the GUI in a browser. The Faust GUI is a bit messy, in that the relative size of things is pretty arbitrary, but you can get around it by placing the GUI objects appropriately.
I also found this issue, so accessibility has perhaps not been their primary concern. Maybe with a couple of fixes that would become more usable.
On the other hand, you could build a GUI with Touchosc or Parat+ on the tablet, and that would be more friendly, but also require some custom design.

Digital-Larry I have done a lot of guitar pedal FX work with the FV-1, including having written a graphical patch development tool which completely eliminates the need for coding (a bit like a simplified pd) but it only supports the Spin FV-1 chip which has limited processing power.

What about a plugin for that to make it export Pd patches ? 🙂

Digital-Larry The more I look at Bela stuff, it seems primarily optimized for making these one of a kind self contained instruments that aren't changing function every 10 minutes and that seems worth pursuing as well.

Some patch-changing can happen by setting patches at boot in a loop, then you can then cycle through them in a loop. As you pointed out multiple times, in order to get this to work effectively, it would be very important to have some sort of UI.

If it is of interest (though I understand that you are more interested in using FAUST), there is also an host for lv2 plugins that you can use on Bela to get access to a large library of existing plugins: https://github.com/adanlbenito/lv2host .

ryjobil

This makes me think of this series:
http://geofex.com/Article_Folders/ASMOP/ASMOP.htm
The thing that stands out in this context is the title "A Simple Matter of Programming"

Seems like point (c) is the sticking point. One of the great things about Bela is you can do all of this stuff. One of the disadvantages of Bela is YOU are the pioneer.

Digital-Larry

Well none of this is really new to me. I've been an embedded systems engineer for almost 30 years. I started off soldering and at this stage I really don't like that so much but I will do it if necessary. I've done a lot of audio DSP programming and am interested in trying unusual things, just for the fun of trying them. I'm also trying to record some original music and none of it really depends heavily on sound effects.

I liked the "Giraf" box the one guy built. Not sure I'll maintain the level of dedication required to get something like that finished, but I like thinking about it. For me this is all recreation and I'm doing about 5 other things at the same time, switching between them.

ryjobil

Kind of an off-handed joke. Sorry I can't be more help, but I haven't done much more with Faust than to look at it with interest and think "oh, that's pretty cool...maybe someday I'll see what it's all about" 🙂

In a more general sense I agree with all the points you stated as being features worth developing. The off-handed joke is just a nod to the reality that these things are developed by "some guy", who is somebody doing this for fun, which means things happen in small steps over the course of many years. "Some guy" gets paid a salary to do things that happen in a period of weeks and months.

I work at the same pace. I have been building digital guitar FX, but almost 2 years into this I still don't have much more of a user interface than printing debug messages out to a 16x4 LCD. It's all this other stupid stuff like fixing gutters and mowing the grass and going fishing gets in the way making progress on the digital front 😃

Digital-Larry For me this is all recreation

And way better than TV and video games at that

Digital-Larry

I'm not even dead set on using Faust, it's just that I just finished a online Faust course and wanted to do something with it past making a VST in about 20 minutes. I've used Pure Data and maybe tried some SuperCollider at some point too. My big fascination in all of this is "optimizing the user interface for complex tasks". I could avoid complex tasks by simply playing guitar through a tube amp, or better yet, acoustic. I actually really like the Eleven Rack UI, but that's because it has a lot of knobs (6) and a big LCD screen right on it.

I came back into Bela hot on the heels of the Faust course as I saw they have a specific Bela target. It took a bit of mucking about, but I am good at mucking about, and I think I got some basic Faust patch working on my Bela.

The more I look at Bela stuff, it seems primarily optimized for making these one of a kind self contained instruments that aren't changing function every 10 minutes and that seems worth pursuing as well. I'd like to have a table to bonk on and make fun sounds!

I have done a lot of guitar pedal FX work with the FV-1, including having written a graphical patch development tool which completely eliminates the need for coding (a bit like a simplified pd) but it only supports the Spin FV-1 chip which has limited processing power. Getting back to the user interface idea, I find dealing with writing FX at the code level (unless you are coming up with something really new) to be counter productive, sort of like using MS Paint to make a nice looking picture. Really, it can be done, but for some reason people don't do it.

Digital-Larry

giuliomoro I did manage to get my Bela onto the wi-fi network last night (Edimax N-150 dongle).

I'm not set on using the Faust GUI, and I agree that it's a bit fiddly, but the way I go about doing things is always "in small increments". When I saw the Faust GUI coming off the Bela it was all arranged in a tall skinny stack which was totally unusable and stupid looking, but I was pretty ecstatic anyway.

I have TouchOSC on my Android tablet and that's not a bad idea for when things get a bit more mature. Using the Faust built in stuff (assuming I can organize them better) has the advantage of already being wired properly because it's built into the patch.

@giuliomoro What about a plugin for that to make it export Pd patches ?

Ah, there's no sense to doing that, pd is already ahead. Here's my FV-1 tool: http://holycityaudio.com/spincad-designer-2/ At the moment I have run out of enthusiasm to enhance that program very much, but it's open source and a few other people have contributed. 8⁾

Thanks again for your responses. Dealing with a real person makes all this easier to digest and I enjoy sharing ideas.