Web-Connected Synths Render Your Patterns For Free

[alphacat]

Cool idea. Wish the output was better than mp3, but hey...

Web-Connected Analog: Synths Render Sound From Your Browser, Remotely



On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog. But they just might know you’re an MS-20.

Hector Urtubia – aka Mr. Book – has connected his synths to the Web and set them up for the world. Submit a music pattern, and send it off to the synths to be rendered to sound. It’s like Kinko’s, if they did analog synths instead of printers.


Hector explains more:

I created a web app (http://analogalacarte.com) which allows you to create a synth pattern, submit it and it will get rendered live in hardware on one of my synths at home.

I did this because I wanted everyone to be able to hear my brand new MS-20 mini, but have since put a Shruthi-1 online. The whole code that holds everything together is a combination of python, processingjs, html, javascript and a raspberry-pi. The plan is to start the cycling the synths on the side and maybe at a later point, implement rendering from VSTs as well.

That’s an MS-20 mini, connected to the world via Web tech. And below, a Shruthi-1 in the same role. Images courtesy the artist.



Keep up with the latest on his Twitter account:
@bigrobotstudios

[wormcode]

Someone was doing this a few years back with his whole studio, including modular & rackmount gear. You could actually control some of the gear as well... you had to set it up with him though if I'm not mistaken, I suppose like time slots. Basically it was virtual studio time. I'm still trying to find the site, but it's probably been 5 years, doubt it's still online. I'm still curious who/what it was though.

[alphacat]

It's a fantastic idea tbh, not sure why it hasn't taken off yet.

[ThisIsSovereign]

This is pretty interesting, like I never would have thought of this even being a thing.

[nameless133]

Really interesting, I hope it'll be developed to render wav files.

[outbound]

Pretty cool, just tried this out. Quite fun

[Gribble]

if you can't hear the sound the synth is making then what's the point?

[alphacat]

You can. You download the rendered file.

[Gribble]

You can. You download the rendered file.

So, you can tweak the filter cutoff, and hear it as you make the changes? I think not.

[Triphosphate]

You can. You download the rendered file.

So, you can tweak the filter cutoff, and hear it as you make the changes? I think not.

You can put the audio it produces into your DAW and automate a filter cutoff there? Sure, it's not a yummy analog filter, but what more do you want? It's free.

[AxeD]

The filters is what I get the synths for, but still a cool idea.

[skimpi]

not for the phat analog sine bass?

[Artie_Fufkin]

^well once its lossy digital audio, of course the phatness is gone, like duh.

AxeD, the filters are one of the hardest things to emulate digitally, right?

lol at how he has a nice analog synth, but chooses to record it with a behringer interface.
This is a very generous thing to do anyhow, so I shouldn't knock what people will give for free. Sorry, Hector.
*tries it out* 128kbps mp3 and I only got sound out of the right channel. But it sounds pretty cool and definitely useable.

[wormcode]

I got wav files. I also destroyed the server with wget and stole everyone else's files lol.
I dunno if it's a bug with the script or I'm just lucky but I did get wavs.

And true about the filters, but it's still in testing so maybe soon there will be a way, at least to have variable filter settings... even with a robot arm controlled by MIDI or something which is very possible if people gave him some cash. There's kits online fairly cheap.

[Gribble]

^well once its lossy digital audio, of course the phatness is gone, like duh.

Duh no, like every piece of music we listen to is in mp3. By your reasoning we wouldn't ever be able to hear an analog sound, which clearly isn't true!

[alphacat]

re: filters & whatnot - seeing as this is simply using a MIDI API, there's no reason he might not choose to add automation capabilities in the future.

I got wav files. I also destroyed the server with wget and stole everyone else's files lol.
I dunno if it's a bug with the script or I'm just lucky but I did get wavs.

And true about the filters, but it's still in testing so maybe soon there will be a way, at least to have variable filter settings... even with a robot arm controlled by MIDI or something which is very possible if people gave him some cash. There's kits online fairly cheap.

You cheeky fuck. I'll bet he was serving 'em as mp3's just to reduce bw. I think it's your job to sponsor the next samplepack contest with yer ill-gotten samples.

[Artie_Fufkin]

I think it's your job to sponsor the next samplepack contest with yer ill-gotten samples.

+1
I haven't gotten into using single cycles in a while, what would be a good soft synth to import a cycle of these samples into? I was thinking of importing a clip into atlantis.

^well once its lossy digital audio, of course the phatness is gone, like duh.

Duh no, like every piece of music we listen to is in mp3. By your reasoning we wouldn't ever be able to hear an analog sound, which clearly isn't true!

I listen to cd's and lossless files when I can, actually. where in my post did you glean I was using reasoning? I was making fun of one of the users on here, not making a serious point.

[wormcode]

You cheeky fuck. I'll bet he was serving 'em as mp3's just to reduce bw. I think it's your job to sponsor the next samplepack contest with yer ill-gotten samples.

Haha would be more than happy to. Honestly there wasn't a lot of files, I don't think many people have even used it yet. So far they all sounded like random Nokia ringtones, so it's a goldmine if you want to be the next Clipz but I'll try again when there's another better synth connected. I think there might be some serverside script that is converting them to MP3 to reduce the CPU load on his machine, the Pi is not ideal for that kind of operation.

[bigrobotstudios]

Hey,
I'm the one behind analogalacarte.com. Nice to see the project appearing in this forum. Regarding why I used MP3, you guys guessed it. The MP3 file is several times smaller than a WAV file, and since I'm not making any money on this project I'm not sure I can justify the bandwidth and storage to use WAV files. Just a question though, how much more likely to use this system would you be if you had the option of getting the WAV file?
Also, I'm having the Raspberry-pi do the encoding as well, it is quite an impressive little computer!
I have some other improvements planned for the system too, so we'll see where this all ends up.
Cheers,

Hector

[wormcode]

Thanks for this project Hector, it's really interesting. Also of course you would have more visitors if WAVs were an option, but if bandwidth is an issue then perhaps even FLAC would suffice, or serve an MP3 initially with the option to download something like FLAC/WAV somehow. You should definitely set up a dontation button somewhere because you deserve at least some compensation for your troubles.
Also I was under the impression the files were on Amazon's servers, so that's why I did that. If it affects your personal bandwidth then sorry, and I won't do it again, but when I saw they were on an Amazon site I figured it would barely be a drop in a haystack on their bandwidth. (For what it's worth, it was under 50MB of transfer)