While experimenting with upcoming features of EigenD 2.0, I was testing out the new audio input support and came up with this experiment.
I’m playing my Moog Slim Phatty with the Eigenharp Alpha by routing its audio back into EigenD through my Metric Halo ULN-2 audio interface. This allows me to use Audio Units for real-time performance effects through host automation parameters while playing the analogue synth through MIDI at the same time.
The Slim Phatty is full driven with 14-bit MIDI for modulation and volume, modulation being tied to a key’s sideways motion, while slight volume changes are tied to pressure. Pitch is, as usual, tied to a key’s up and down motion.
The audio units used are Rob Papen’s Delay, Distort and the iZotope Ozone limiter. The Eigenharp’s breath pipe is tied to the amount of distortion that’s applied and the first strip controller is tied to the amount of feedback that is used in the delay. At the same time, the key modulation also changes the filter frequency for the distortion effect.
The sample rate of EigenD an my audio interface is set to 96kHz with only 96 samples as a buffer size. This really captures the nuances of the analogue audio as well as reduces the latency so much that every interaction with the effects feels instant.
For the purists, you can download the original 96kHz file as recorded, without post processing from SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/gbevin/eigenharp-alpha-with-slim-phatty-experiment
Curious to know how you routed the audio back into EigenD?
I presume, it’s EigenD Midi Output -> Metric Halo -> Slim Phatty. And Slim Phatty audio out -> Metric Halo. But the next piece of the puzzle? How to get the audio in, so you can pass through the AUs? Or is that simply another feature of the MH, i.e. that it can host AUs?
It’s a feature of the Metric Halo audio interfaces where you have Firewire channels going back from the computer to the audio interface, which can then be used in EigenD. EigenD hosts the AUs and passes the audio that comes back from the audio interface through the plugins, to route it back out again to the analog outputs of the audio device.