Time for me to go.

[Andy Turner]

Hi Everyone,

   Disaster has again stuck my ABox development efforts. After weeks of struggle with GBUILD/DLL/VST and getting nowhere, I tried backtracking to the last working ABox251 version. Then I lost that too. Damn! -- Now the only buildable code base is ABox242. Although it was purely an amateurish mistake on my part (or perhaps a very subtle Freudian slip), it brings into bright focus the fact that I'm not cut-out for code development. Additionally, my continually promising more than I can deliver weighs very heavily on me - so much so that it's affecting my health. 

   That being said, the time has come to take my leave of all things ABox.

    I'll leave the forum up until mid June -- if anybody wants it I'll turn over the keys. Those who have a copy ABox251 may use it for whatever purpose they desire. ABox242 source code still exists and may be used for whatever purpose is deemed suitable. ABox242.exe still exists and may also be used for whatever purpose.

THANK YOU _ALL_ FOR DECADES OF DELIGHTFUL ABOXITY !! 

Three cheers for ABox: hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, hip hip HOORAAY!!

--A

[William Croft]

Andy, hi.

Very sorry to hear your situation and frustration. It also sounds like you are being fairly hard on yourself. All of us here are extremely grateful for all the creativity that you and Analog Box have made possible . I added a few more comments interspersed below.

On Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 11:43:14 AM UTC-7, Andy Turner wrote:

Hi Everyone,

   Disaster has again stuck my ABox development efforts. After weeks of struggle with GBUILD/DLL/VST and getting nowhere, I tried backtracking to the last working ABox251 version. Then I lost that too. Damn! -- Now the only buildable code base is ABox242.

Can you clarify a bit? When was 251 released to the public? All I see on the Google Sites download area and here on the forum are mentions and downloads of 242. So 251 was your internal development version with the VST mods(?) Perhaps this is not the level of disaster you are currently feeling.

 

Although it was purely an amateurish mistake on my part (or perhaps a very subtle Freudian slip), it brings into bright focus the fact that I'm not cut-out for code development, Additionally, my continually promising more than I can deliver weighs very heavily on me - so much so that it's affecting my health. 

Can I make a suggestion? Instead of going into 'developer' mode, or feeling like we are obligating you to do this. Consider yourself the grand wizard or mage of the Analog Box world. Sit back, relax, perhaps make suggestions if someone on the forum has a question about an Abox242 feature. You are a mentor now, not the engineer / programmer in some tight little cubicle.  ;-)

 

   That being said, the time has come to take my leave of all things ABox.

    I'll leave the forum up until mid June -- if anybody wants it I'll turn over the keys.

I'm a co-owner of the forum and Google Sites pages. And own the site the Help pages are hosted on. Also cloned the Google Code pages over Github when the ABox242 Google Code site was archived by Google. So I have no plans to shut down any of these.

Those who have a copy ABox251 may use it for whatever purpose they desire.

If someone has 251 here on the forum, upload the zip as a post. I don't recall seeing it, maybe I was not paying attention.

 

ABox242 source code still exists and may be used for whatever purpose is deemed suitable. ABox242.exe still exists and may also be used for whatever purpose.

THANK YOU _ALL_ FOR DECADES OF DELIGHTFUL ABOXITY !! 

Three cheers for ABox: hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, hip hip HOORAAY!!

--A

Please see how you feel about just continuing as our grand wizard / mentor. Words of occasional wisdom. :-)

Cheers for you and cheers for the community.

William

[JP Burtell]

Andy, without getting too over-the-top about it, let me just say that I cannot thank you enough for all that you have given to us. ABox has helped me creatively in more ways than I can express and I am truly grateful for its existence.

Nothing is worth ill health, so if this is the decision that's best for your well-being, than I support it whole-heartedly.

Thank you again...for everything!

John Paul

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[Robert Jarvis]

Andy,

Thank you for creating ABox.

I love this program, and as you know have used it for sketching sonic ideas
for about 20 years now. It has been used for a range of situations, from
triggering ever changing atmospheres for sound installations, to converting
plant bio-electric signals into midi notes and synthesised musical patterns.
My favourite though was when sitting in a quiet bus station and having my
reflections interrupted by a bunch of noisy school kids. I opened up
AnalogBox and created an ultrasonic scattergun that played loud repeating
staccato patterns of high-pitched (15kHz+) sawtooth waves. In ten minutes I
had the place to myself again, and piece and quiet resumed. Moral of the
story: always keep your AnalogBox handy....

As long as I have an OS that can run it, I envisage its continued use.

Jam On,

Robert

www.robertjarvis.co.uk

[Keith Blackwell]

On 5/25/2019 12:43 PM, Andy Turner wrote:
> Disaster has again stuck my ABox development efforts. After weeks of struggle with GBUILD/DLL/VST and getting nowhere, I tried backtracking to the last working ABox251 version. Then I lost that too.

I had grabbed the 251 stuff you gave us recently at some point.  But that was not full source code, just stuff for testing the new features.  I think the only full source I have is for 241.  I recall that I was trying to work the 251 stuff with VS2019 (or VS2017), but I don't remember the status of that.  I did peek around, hoping to be able to help out somewhat, but learning x86 assembler is a line I cannot afford the time to try to cross.  I don't even have sources for 242.  I guess it's only the sources for the post-242 work you've done quite recently that you lost, right?  But if any of it is helpful, I can send you what I've got.

> THANK YOU _ALL_ FOR DECADES OF DELIGHTFUL ABOXITY !!

In our old age, it is nice to have some significant accomplishments and contributions to look back on that have made a difference, especially when we realize we just can't do it any longer the way we could when we were younger.  I wondered if your ambitious plans to roll up the sleeves and get back into ABox code to do some rather heavy lifting was biting off too much, but figured as long as you're enjoying it then it's got to be a good thing, right?  I've noticed myself trying to go back and milk some old stuff of mine for all it's worth, and it just points out to me that I can't seem to muster the wherewithal (too undisciplined?) to produce anything truly creative and worthwhile any more (mainly due to certain life circumstances that constrain my ability to use my own tools).  But even the best in my dusty repertoire is kind of embarrassing.  You, on the other hand, have given us a masterpiece, despite its gaps here and there, and it is something that continues to be a tool
for ongoing creation by many.  I've even been messing around with ABox for hours on end over the past few days, before finally catching up on email and seeing this. 

God bless you -- Lotsa gratitude...
--
Keith W. Blackwell

[Catalin C.]

Hello everyone,

I'm quite new to the forum but not to ABox. In fact, it's going to be 10 years since I stumbled upon it and found it to be a fun and useful thing.

I came to know about and use VST plugins thanks to Analog Box.

In 2014 around this time I was making a more serious attempt at making music with it, and also searching the Internet for more fresh info, I found that it got advanced further and made open-source.

In 2015, another round of sessions with it, also found this forum. I liked reading the discussion, as well as trying the shared circuits - I will post in the respective topics...

All these years I've had an on-off relationship with the program, mainly because I wanted so much to make BIG! stuff... and each and every time got stuck with whatever usable circuits were already in the library, twiddling knobs and trying other stereo mix versions till late at night.

I felt a little disappointed... I have a part-time job in healthcare so, even having time for personal projects, I've always thought sound design is a bridge too far away for me.

But this spring I revisited some material I downloaded in 2016-2017, about synthesizers and audio in general and thought hey, maybe building synthesizers and sequencers in Analog Box and making them work is not such an impractical endeavour. I sat down and started to study the "Synth Secrets" series published on Sound on Sound and trying to translate the schemes to ABox. I made the circuits with sharing in mind. I have built several synths already, will open topics as I get them finished and tested to run OK. I feel like I really get somewhere. Got even better accustomed with Abox's workflow, aligning objects, grouping and routing them.

I've come to like ABox very much. I foresee a bright future for it, but we need the user base to increase and also to have the library reorganized and enriched. (I feel these two are interconditioned, so it's quite an effort.) And if it reaches further in development, it would become a solid visual programming environment that could compare with the big names, say Max/Msp or even Kyma (minus that boutique hardware, of course).

It was this announcement that prompted me to join the group. Mr. Turner, I hope this message finds you well. I thank you for this great little program and hope in seeing further discussion here.

And I didn't come empty-handed. It just *happens* that I've downloaded ABox 2.51 Alpha 1a from Github, back in April, so I will post the archive along with this message. I hope it's OK with everybody, all this time I've been waiting to see if it gets posted by Mr. Blackwell or anyone else.

I have to say it works well here on Windows XP SP3 32-bit, in fact I didn't see any difference from 2.42 in normal usage. It loads & plays my circuits just the same. I reverted to 2.42 for the sake of stability only.

Yes, the 2.51 includes a DLL version of itself and IIRC I was able to load it and open the test circuits (can't remember to make it output sound though). I was in a hurry but I plan to take some time to test this new feature.

(LE: this is the Nth time I'm trying to post here, it always ended with an error - no idea what happened -, so I removed the file, let's see what happens...)

[Sergey Ostanevich]

Put it (file) on your gdrive and share with the list?

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[Catalin C.]

Updated link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AA2uU8tYVvHvnLMkKjUUJebkqksTjkaA?usp=sharing

The folder contains all files of the 2.51 unzipped. Thanks for assistance.

Catalin

[Keith Blackwell]

On 6/22/2019 3:32 PM, Catalin C. wrote:

On Saturday, 22 June 2019 22:21:29 UTC+3, Sergos wrote:

Put it (file) on your gdrive and share with the list?

Hey, thanks for the interest. Here is the link:

It took a while, but I did finally get that zip to download, and I found it to be the same thing I already had, which was just a few files including source to demo how to use abox as a dll.  I was somehow under the mistaken impression that you had the full source for abox itself at that version.  I still have full source from back around 2.41 or so, but not even the version I had been using for a long time, which was 2.42. 

--

Keith W. Blackwell

[Catalin C.]

It took a while, but I did finally get that zip to download, and I found it to be the same thing I already had, which was just a few files including source to demo how to use abox as a dll.  I was somehow under the mistaken impression that you had the full source for abox itself at that version.  I still have full source from back around 2.41 or so, but not even the version I had been using for a long time, which was 2.42.

Sorry for the disappointment. Also I don't remember seeing any full source zip of sorts, and I have to say that I headed to the Github page after reading the topic about the UI components where Mr. Turner said the bitmaps, the "sprites" representing objects were posted on Github for anyone to analyze and so on. After some browsing I think I went to the "releases" page, and there it was, the 2.51. Downloaded, got a little interested by the new stuff but decided to stay with 2.42.

That was on April 27 as shown by the file timestamp on my computer. Then the bad news came and I thought this was it, clearly I was missing some big stuff but why not try to help anyway.

In the end, maybe one could succeed in disassembling it and start from there?(!)

As for the 2.42's source, it's still available from the Google site at:

https://sites.google.com/site/analogbox2/download

-

Catalin