Exponential Audio M-7 control and Pyramix

[jkurtz11]

Hi all

I became aware of Exponential Audio's M-7 control plugin awhile ago and downloaded the demo. I got it to work well with Pro Tools on my mac but was unable to get it working with Pyramix. It communicates via midi to the Bricasti reverb unit in order to change parameters and save settings. It's really a great idea and would make my workflow much more elegant. In any case, I have never used midi in a windows environment at all, and definitely not with Pyramix. Does Pyramix even support any sort of midi functionality like this? Is there a setting somewhere to enable it? On the mac the audio midi setup app allows me to verify that midi communication is happening with my midi interface, but I do not know how to do this on windows. Has anyone tried this plugin with Pyramix or does anyone have some guidance to offer? I contacted Exponential Audio and they said they had not tested it with Pyramix, but there is indeed a VST version of the plugin.

Thanks.

Justin Kurtz
Associate Professor
The Hartt School
W. Hartford, CT

[klaukholm]

It works fine with Pyramix. As with all Exponential Audio products automation works great.
The midi is handled by the plugin, not Pyramix.
I use it with a simple USB/midi interface

[jkurtz11]

Thanks. I'm glad to hear it's working for you. I just got myself a new midi interface and purchased the M-7 control plugin. I will give it a try soon. So what you are saying is there is nothing special I should have to do within Pyramix to get the midi communication working? I'll post my results after I've given it another try.

[Jesse.Lewis]

Justin, we're using the MOTU Fastlane in Windows 7 with Pyramix 10.1.2. Working great.

-Jesse

[jkurtz11]

So it has been quite awhile since my last post. The good news is I have the M-7 control plugin working great with a MOTU fastlane. It turned out it was a windows problem and reinstalling windows fixed it. A big pain, but at least that is solved. Now, I was hoping the experience and knowledge of folks out there could help me make sure I have my delay and mixer set-up correctly in order to achieve proper delay compensation taking into account the AES I/O path delay to the Bricasti.

I'm getting what seem to be strange results with my testing setup in order to determine the number of samples of delay in the return strip from the Bricasti. Let me describe what is going on as clearly as I can.

First, I set up one stereo track with the generator plug inserted. I set it to a sine tone at -16 dBfs.
Then, I add an aux send to the mixer which I direct to the Bricasti AES inputs at unity gain, called "M-7"
I send from the stereo track at unity gain to the aux send bus.
The Bricasti is set 100% dry, no wet signal, so the signal is just passing through at unity gain with no processing.
Next I add a new stereo strip on the mixer whose inputs are the return from the Bricasti AES outputs. Then I invert the polarity of both channels.
Delay Compensation is turned on in the mixer settings and the "D" is green

This is where things get funny, at least to me - but I may very well be misunderstanding something. When I set up the return strip from the Bricasti as "M-7 Return", I am unable to find a number of samples delay that will achieve total cancellation at anything other than one specific sine tone frequency. I can get it cancelling at 1K, and then when I switch it 500 Hz, it will not cancel. This does not make any sense to me.

However, when I set the return strip up as a generic "input" strip instead, I am able to get complete cancellation at all frequencies down to 125 Hz when I set 54 samples of delay in a session at 88.2kHz. Below 125 I get significant but not complete cancellation. I'm assuming this has something to do with the generator at extremely low frequencies.

I have been careful not to adjust the buffer settings on my interface.

Here's the really quirky part, or maybe not, if this is the way it is supposed to work. After some trial and error I set the Bricasti strip to 54 samples of delay. The, after removing the polarity invert, and setting the Bricasti back to 100% wet, when I'm doing a listening test of my mix, it sounds infinitely better to my ears when I change the strip type back to "M7-Return" instead of "Input". When it's on input it sounds like your classic comb-filter that you get when combining two sources with an extremely short delay at comparable amplitudes.

So, my question to you all is, is this normal behavior? Am I doing this right? The question in my mind boils down to, why do I need to set the strip type to "input" when testing to determine the delay, but then need to switch it to "return" when I'm actually listening to my mix?

Any light you can shed on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading this long post. My system specifics are below

Pyramix 9.1.10 native
Windows 7 x64
Macbook Pro 17 inch late 2011 in bootcamp
Weiss AFI-1 AES Interface ch's 7-8 directly patched to Bricasti AES I/O
Metric Halo ULN-8 monitoring Weiss AES outputs 1-2

Justin Kurtz,
Associate Professor
Chair, Music Production and Technology
The Hartt School, University of Hartford

[charlienyc]

I'm hoping to acquire this plugin soon. Will I need an outboard MIDI interface, or will the plugin communicate via the Horus?

Also can I run two M-7s with it, or just one?

Sorry I am not of any help to you Justin. Hopefully this message will provide enough of a bump for someone to see it and answer however!

[alesC]

Hello Justin,

I’ve quite the same configuration with a M7 with AES i/o and pyramix. I can’t really know what is the best to use it. When i put it an on an external insert, I can find a delay of 130 samples but when i use it on a aux group with an external send, I find 34 for the delay.
The problem is when I want to record it on another track (to freeze the reverb), I can’t understand if I have to delay all the others tracks or not.
Could you tell me the way you use your M7 ? On a aux group, an aux send, a mix send ?
Do you record it ?

Thanks a lot for your help.