Global QLab volume?

[nizer]

I use a Appogee Duet Firewire sound module to make my audio sound amazing. It is a great piece of hardware, but Apple™ removed direct support to adjust volume of a Firewire device like you can if you are using the Volume up and down keys which I can adjust with Applescript.

I can adjust iTunes volume via a applescript like this:

for up:

tell application "iTunes"

set sound volume to sound volume - 1

end tell

There are times where it would be nice to be able to easily from my onstage iPad (or other remotes) adjust the OVERALL audio output level of QLab like I do in iTunes. I know I can adjust individual sliders but wishing for a way to adjust overall system/QLab volume.

Thanks.

[Rich Walsh]

Does the Apogee have any control software? In principal I can assign my RME Babyface volume to a MIDI controller via TotalMix, but I’ve never actually proved that works…

Although, hang on: doesn’t the Duet have a big knob on it like the Babyface? I guess it’s not local to you?

Flux’s BitterSweet advertises that it supports OSC – so you could stick it across the main outputs and change the output gain – but I can’t get it to work, or guess the OSC commands for it!

You could use Blue Cat Audio’s Gain if you can leave the editor window open and access it via a screenshare. It’s MIDI controllable, but I don’t think QLab can connect MIDI to plug-ins (possibly it can’t connect OSC either?).

Other than that, maybe you need a volume control: http://www.radialeng.com/trimtwo.php; might be worth having a DI for line isolation anyway?

Rich

[nizer]

They do, but it doesn't look like it handles midi or OSC. It does have a GIANT knob but you are correct it is out of reach by about 20'

I am gonna try BitterSweet now.

Thank you so much for the lead.

[fishmonkey]

if you are going the screen sharing route then Sonalksis FreeG has a single linear master fader, which might be easier to use.

MeldaProduction MUtility is another alternative (much more cluttered interface though).

[nizer]

I am pursuing the Flex plugin but you are right there is no info about the OSC features of it. I tried a bunch of guesses and the woke up asleep with my laptop in my lap.

I sent a support email and will post here if I get a reply.

[nizer]

The more I think about this I realize it won't work because it will only change the volume on the plug in for the single audio cue it effects.

HOW ABOUT A QLAB GLOBAL SOUND VOLUME OPTION?????

[fishmonkey]

i assumed you were planning to strap the plugins across your master cue outputs in the audio patch (via the QLab preferences)...

[Andy Lang]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 7:07 AM nizer <ma...@nizer.com> wrote:

I use a Appogee Duet Firewire sound module to make my audio sound amazing. It is a great piece of hardware, but Apple™ removed direct support to adjust volume of a Firewire device like you can if you are using the Volume up and down keys which I can adjust with Applescript.

Just to be clear, Apple didn't remove anything. That's a feature that some audio device manufacturers choose to implement into their devices as an option. Others choose not to allow that at all, because they're designed as professional grade audio devices for use in situations where an inadvertent level adjustment in anywhere other than the hardware or it's control software could prove problematic and hard to troubleshoot efficiently.  

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 8:11 PM nizer <ma...@nizer.com> wrote:

The more I think about this I realize it won't work because it will only change the volume on the plug in for the single audio cue it effects.

Another poster has already suggested using a plug-in across outputs. I can't speak to any AU accepting OSC commands, as I've never come across one that does. QLab does not currently support sending MIDI to AUs, although it's on our list to investigate adding in the future.

 

HOW ABOUT A QLAB GLOBAL SOUND VOLUME OPTION?????

First, answering as a Figure 53 employee, we hear your request, no shouting necessary, and will make note of it for future consideration.  

That out of the way, I'm gonna take off my Figure 53 hat for a moment, and put on my designer hat, and then balance my retired-solo-performer hat on my nose while spinning a plate or two...

It seems like this is an attempt to find a method for a solution that doesn't solve the problem it's intended to. I assume that the adjustment you want to make is to adjust the sound and make sure the audience hears everything appropriately. If you're just looking to adjust your own monitors onstage, that's a bit of a different thing, although there are likely still easier solutions.

If that's a correct assumption, though, that you are talking about the levels the audience hears, then that's not something anybody can adequately judge from onstage. The audience is hearing different speakers, pointed away from you, and getting a different balance between your voice and the music, etc. than what you hear onstage. There may be reflections from the house that sound quite loud onstage, when the signal is actually just right or even a touch low for the audience, or vice versa. 

I understand the need to get in and show-ready quickly on one off shows, and to have control over tight cuing if you absolutely can't travel with a technician you can trust. At a certain point, though, there are things like sound levels that can only be properly set by a person with ears in the audience, hearing what the audience is hearing and making adjustments in response to that. 

Even if you run the GO remotely, I strongly urge you to at least have somebody with a volume control in the audience. In theatres, if you're using a house system, there's almost certainly somebody there who knows it, knows how the house sounds, and can adjust levels with some guidance from you for how you want things to sound out there. If there's not, surely there's somebody you can draft into service for a modest compensation to simply ride a volume fader or two? If not, it would be to your show's and your audience's benefit to start negotiating enough to cover that, or a locally provided person, to do that job.

Anyway, to say it again, that's just my personal opinion as a sound designer, sound engineer, retired magician, and somebody who's done sound for lots of jugglers, from local solo acts to the FKB's and everything in between, and in no way reflects an official position of Figure 53. 

Best always,

Andy

[Peter Rice]

Hi Mark

I have the same frustration with Qlab and made a request for this feature a long time ago. I think it would be really useful for a number of reasons, particularly in tech as a designer so I can dip the level quickly without having to bother the operator or be tied into any desk software to do this myself remotely. 

I use an app called 'Soundbunny' which gives you relative control over each App running on your Mac. This App also allows you to balance all sound related programs so when you are working across multiple applications, on headphones pre show for example, you can set good relative level of Safari/Logic/Qlab/Abelton/Apple audio preview to stop you having to keep adjusting the computer volume.  You can also deselect any program you don't want to show here so could essentially make this a Qlab only parameter. 

Hope that helps

[fishmonkey]

the SoundBunny website says that it doesn't support USB and Firewire interfaces. does that limit it's use to the built-in audio output?

[micpool]

It certainly wont work with the Apogee Duet which was what Nizer was wanting to control.

Mic

[nizer]

Just to be clear, Apple didn't remove anything. That's a feature that some audio device manufacturers choose to implement into their devices as an option. Others choose not to allow that at all, because they're designed as professional grade audio devices for use in situations where an inadvertent level adjustment in anywhere other than the hardware or it's control software could prove problematic and hard to troubleshoot efficiently.  

 

The thing is it used to work fine via the volume up and down buttons but a OS upgrade killed it. :-/ 

First, answering as a Figure 53 employee, we hear your request, no shouting necessary, and will make note of it for future consideration.  

 

Sorry about the SHOUTING, just more of a nudge than a shout. 

It seems like this is an attempt to find a method for a solution that doesn't solve the problem it's intended to. I assume that the adjustment you want to make is to adjust the sound and make sure the audience hears everything appropriately. If you're just looking to adjust your own monitors onstage, that's a bit of a different thing, although there are likely still easier solutions.

You are so correct. Often all I am trying to do is get my monitors louder and if I have a sound op I warn him that if I ask to make it louder, just turn up my monitors.

But so many times, there is no one there to operate the sound, I don't have a monitor and my only option is to wander into the wings and make the adjustment. An adjust sound off stage in the wing make it even harder to hear the change than being on stage. As a solo performer, I make all my controls simple and where the audience will not notice I am doing anything. It is the real juggling act going on on stage that no one can see.

I know I am not a typical user of QLab, but it is the GREATEST TOOL EVER MADE  (yes shouting) and I want and wish it could do everything my brain wants it too. 

[nizer]

True :-(

[Bruno Carneiro]

I've felt the need for this as well for some shows, especially when I'm building the project and rehearsing at the same time.

What I usually do is route the QLab outputs to Ableton Live via Soundflower, and control the channel fader there with a MIDI control interface. In your case you just need to figure out how you want to control Live. I'm sure there are some brilliant people here that can help you with that. I would look into OSC. How about these options?

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209071989-App-for-controlling-Live-with-an-iOS-or-Android-device

[Rich Walsh]

Soundflower is long dead: not supported in El Capitan. As for Live, it would be cheaper to buy a new interface with software control! Also, why use OSC for Live when its MIDI functionality is so exhaustive and trivial to set up between Live & QLab?

Since this thread has bifurcated several times without any quoting (grrr) it’s become hard to follow, but a few branches back I suggested that Mark insert BitterSweet across the main outputs – ie: very much NOT per cue. After a bit of to and fro with Flux I’ve discovered that the AU plug-in is buggy, so you have to find a VST host to turn on the OSC and generate the dictionary file, before trying to use it in QLab…

Once you have it working you can send OSC to localhost port 52916, eg:

/LinkGain 0.00 [Turn gain linking off]

/OutputGain [x] [x between 0 and 1, for -12dB to +12dB – eg: 0 = -12dB, 0.5 = 0dB, 1 = +12dB]

Or buy an RME interface…

Rich

[Mark Nizer/Neisser]

That is awesome. What is a VST host? I didn't realize that you could add a plug-in to the main output volume that is so cool

Mark Nizer/Neisser

📩 Ni...@active-media.com

📲 434-974-9699

💻 http://activemedia.org

💻 http://Nizer.com

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[Rich Walsh]

Something that can host the VST version of the plug-in, rather than the AU version that QLab can host. Audacity, TwistedWave, etc: https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/macosx/vst-plugins/hosts/free/most-popular.

Slight correction – you need this form to get to +12dB:

/OutputGain 1.00

Rich

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[nizer]

I tried to do all these steps and am finally calling it a night. No joy.

Here is what I see. (see image)

Did you get it to work?

Is this the whole message from Qlab to the plugin?

/OutputGain 1.00

Or does that have to come from somewhere else?

[Bruno Carneiro]

=) 

Just a small observation: Soundflower is working fine on my macbook with El Capitan...

[nizer]

In Lemur the message is not accepted and gets changed to /OutputGain1.00, so I assume that is should be /OutputGain/1.00

I think this may be too much effort to give me a little convenience.

I have a email out to BitterSweet to see if they can clarify there OSC messages.

I love the idea of putting a plugin on the main outputs. I never thought of that! Are there no other MIDI or OSC controllable plugins that would let me adjust the overall volume?

I guess I am still not giving up. 

[Rich Walsh]

Your first problem is that you haven’t actually turned OSC on in the plug-in: see the big OSC Enable button? Try that.

The command is correct and I have tested it. It even works when the editor window is closed. If Lemur is changing it then Lemur is wrong; presumably it also can’t cope with this perfectly valid and well-tested command for QLab:

/cue/selected/infiniteLoop 1

You’ll be lucky to get anything more out of Flux than a slightly impenetrable XML file, which I’ve already parsed for you to generate the OSC commands you need. Oh, and tested them – hence the correction below. You type that text into a custom OSC message in QLab addressing localhost port 52916.

QLab does not pass MIDI to plug-ins. Google does not come up with any other OSC-capable plug-ins. You could make your own in Max, but the learning curve might be a little steep…

Rich

[Rich Walsh]

OK: it hasn’t been updated since 2014 and has been described as buggy in El Capitan on other lists, by people I know are responsible for maintain multiple show-critical systems. I would not rely on software for a show machine that has no current development cycle.

Rich

[Mark Valenzuela]

FWIW, Rogue Amoeba makes a utility called Loopback, which looks like it has the same, or similar, functionality as Soundflower. I've only just discovered it, and only used it once, so I can't speak to differences between it and Soundflower, but worth checking out.

MV

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[Bruno Carneiro]

What would you use Rich? I often route audio from QLab to other applications, so I'm really interested in this discussion. I've just built a show that uses sound flower, and I'm about to build another one that will probably need to use some form of loopback as well.

Bruno

[fishmonkey]

as far as i am aware the only two alternatives under active development are Rogue Amoeba's Loopback, and Dante Via. Dante Via was only two channel until recently, but has recently been updated and extended.

Rogue Amoeba took custodianship of Soundflower development for a while, before coming out with their own (much slicker) commercial offering.

i have trialed both but haven't used either enough to have anything useful to say about stability. one thing to note is that Dante Via adds about 10 ms of latency if you are using it to connect to a Dante network..

[Sam Kusnetz]

Hi all

Here’s a GitHub link to Soundflower 2.0b2, which is at least nominally compatible with El Capitan.

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/tag/2.0b2

No guarantees, of course, but my causal testing shows it works better than the previous non-beta version of Soundflower.

Best

Sam

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[Mark Nizer/Neisser]

So could I send audio out to sound flower from Q lab adjust levels using OSC or AppleScript and then port that out to my Apogee duet?

Mark Nizer/Neisser

📩 Ni...@active-media.com

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[Sam Kusnetz]

On October 2, 2016 at 4:11:03 PM, Mark Nizer/Neisser (freeun...@gmail.com) wrote:

So could I send audio out to sound flower from Q lab adjust levels using OSC or AppleScript and then port that out to my Apogee duet?

Well not by itself. Soundflower is just a way to route audio from one program to another. You’d still need to route the audio to a tool that lets you adjust levels, and then output from that tool to the hardware.

Sam

[micpool]

When I'm cludging stuff together, to develop shows, in the studio or rehearsal room I'll use a variety of methods. But for show systms I will generally spec RME interfaces which allow loopbacks to be set in the TOTALMIX control software on any unused output paths.

On a show that opens tomorrow I have 10 outputs from mainstage feeding inputs in Vienna Ensemble Pro, for stereo to 7.0 autopanning and 7.0 reverbs.

Mic

[mic]

Another AU plugin that can be controlled by OSC and MIDI is SooperLooper.

[nizer]

This puzzle is starting to really make me crazy. I can't drag around any more hardware, unless I get a divorce.

Can I adjust this (SEE IMAGE ATTACHED) with midi or OSC?

Cuz all my audio that I want to adjust is on the one patch.

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi Mark,

No, those parameters can not currently be adjusted via MIDI or OSC.

-C

On October 3, 2016 at 1:17:40 PM, nizer (ma...@nizer.com) wrote:

This puzzle is starting to really make me crazy. I can't drag around any more hardware, unless I get a divorce.

Can I adjust this (SEE IMAGE ATTACHED) with midi or OSC?

Cuz all my audio that I want to adjust is on the one patch.

[Sam Kusnetz]

On October 3, 2016 at 1:17:39 PM, nizer (ma...@nizer.com) wrote:

This puzzle is starting to really make me crazy. I can't drag around any more hardware, unless I get a divorce.

Can I adjust this (SEE IMAGE ATTACHED) with midi or OSC?

No. As we have said before, the output stage of QLab is not currently adjustable by MIDI, OSC, or any other automated method.

If you insert an audio effect on a cue output or a device output that is itself OSC or MIDI adjustable, then that’s your own business, but that’s not a native QLab thing, and I have no specific advice for you about it.

Best

[Gareth Risdale]

On Monday, 3 October 2016 18:17:37 UTC+1, nizer wrote:

This puzzle is starting to really make me crazy. I can't drag around any more hardware, unless I get a divorce.

Sounds like what you really need is an OSC handle for /Spouse_technical_schiznit_tolerance (expected to beta in QLab4.2 #rumour).

And this...

[Rich Walsh]

Mic beat me to it, but if I had to I would use an RME interface so I could do loopback inside their software. Failing that I would possibly test the Rogue Amoeba software ($99 for something that used to be free is a bit steep…), but you can’t guarantee that a hire shop or theatre is going to have bought and installed that – so unless you’re supplying the computer (which I never do), you need to stick with what the equipment provider can support.

Apart from MainStage – which I’ve not needed to use that often as I’ll generally make do with a bank of Lexicons or a console’s onboard effects – the only other software I’ve ever felt the need to run alongside QLab is Live, but I’ve always had a secondary system for that. Where are you sending QLab audio on its way out of the machine?

Rich

[Rich Walsh]

It is entirely possible to do this with Bitter Sweet. You need to:

1. Install it
2. Instantiate it as a VST plug-in in something like Audacity
3. Enable OSC in that plug-in, which should then copy to the global preferences: the button doesn’t stick on in the AU version
4. Instantiate it across your outputs in QLab
5. Send the commands I’ve already listed twice to the OSC port: watch the bottom right corner of the screen recording

This will give you ±12dB at the chosen outputs.

Rich

[Rich Walsh]

That works too – great plug-in, thanks! Download from http://essej.net/sooperlooper/, drop the files in the right place and off you go… Command is:

/set dry [x] – where x is from 0 to 1 for -inf to 0dB

Plug-in tells you which port. Lots of other buttons to press in the GUI to really mess up your sound! Or do Black Horse & The Cherry Tree…

Rich

[Mark Nizer/Neisser]

I feel just like Al Pacino in The Godfather…"They keep sucking me back in".

The photo you posted is so hilarious, I am tempted to make this. Is this real? If it isn't then your setup is GENIUS!!!!

That OSC command is already available. Just hit ctrl-alt-delete-option-esc with the shift key down. 

-------------------------------------------

Mark Nizer

When the Entertainment Matters

http://nizer.com

ma...@nizer.com

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[nizer]

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!! YES I AM YELLING IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN!!!!

Sooper Looper did the trick. The plugin can even be hidden. Now to test it with the Firewire interface.

Thanks to everyone for a great thread and even some fun along the way.

Off to a gig. I'll let you know how it works.

On Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 8:37:40 AM UTC-4, nizer wrote:

I feel just like Al Pacino in The Godfather…"They keep sucking me back in".

The photo you posted is so hilarious, I am tempted to make this. Is this real? If it isn't then your setup is GENIUS!!!!

That OSC command is already available. Just hit ctrl-alt-delete-option-esc with the shift key down. 

-------------------------------------------

Mark Nizer

When the Entertainment Matters

http://nizer.com

On Monday, 3 October 2016 18:17:37 UTC+1, nizer wrote:

This puzzle is starting to really make me crazy. I can't drag around any more hardware, unless I get a divorce.

Sounds like what you really need is an OSC handle for /Spouse_technical_schiznit_tolerance (expected to beta in QLab4.2 #rumour).

And this...

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