Welcome, Intro, Explanation and Links

This section provides support for Paul's apps
Post Reply
User avatar
pvannatto
Posts: 1330
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2021 3:48 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Welcome, Intro, Explanation and Links

Post by pvannatto »

Welcome
Welcome to all who are searching for solutions to enhance their digital audio experience and work-flow. We have been blessed with a breadth of digital consoles from Music-Tribe that are both flexible and expandable. But with flexibility and expandability comes complexity which can introduce difficulties in finding solutions to desired results. Allow me to introduce tools that I have developed to provide solutions. Many thanks to those who have helped by reporting bugs and suggesting additional features.

Introduction
When the X32 was made available in the summer of 2012, there were very few external apps available (X-Control (now called X32-Edit) for PC and Mac, and XiControl (now called X32-Mix) for iPad). They also made available the external protocol, a dialect of the OSC protocol.Unfortunately the documentation consisted of a 3 page document of a basic overview.

About a year later, Patrick took upon himself to investigate and document the X32 OSC protocol. The end result was his extensive and concise document (unofficial X32 OSC Protocol) that we have all come to love and appreciate. With that knowledge and understanding, many developers (including myself) have been able to create external tools to help users expand the capabilities of these digital consoles beyond their initial design.

Explanation and Links
Here are my apps with explanation and links, in order of creation

X32 Scene Parser
When the X32 firmware 2.0 was released, I fell in love with one of the new features called snippets. But I found the snippet screen awkward and not very granular. So I developed a tool using Lazarus/Freepascal to take a scene file (which includes most of the console's settings) and parse (extract) out sections and modify the results to make a snippet that does exactly what you want, nothing more, nothing less. I decided to provide all my apps as freeware and open-source to the X32 community.

X32 Live Toolbox
With Patrick's help, I began to develop online (live) tools for needs that came up on the forum. Instead of releasing separate tools (apps), I decided to combine them into one app and called it Live Toolbox. More tools were added as they were requested or suggested.

It also became apparent that some needs required something beyond the capabilities of the OSC command (which process point-in-time and absolute settings), such as fade, cross-fade, etc. Thus tidbits, a snippet-like function, was developed with time-based and relative commands.

Sysex OSC Generator
Shortly after the X-Air consoles were released in 2015, there was an enormous need by the new users to enhance the midi capabilities beyond what was provided using cc and pc. One of the features provided was to send OSC commands using a sysex string of hexadecimal equivalents. To make it easier for the user, I developed a tool with a list of X-Air OSC commands and a user interface to convert the strings to hex notation and called it Sysex OSC Generator. It became an instant hit. X32 OSC and more recently Wing OSC commands were also added.

X-Air Live Toolbox
One of the features missing on the X-Air (from the X32 platform) is snippets. So I ported Live Toolbox engine to work with the X-Air consoles in order to provide the users with tidbits (equivalent to snippets) as well as other X-Air specific tools.

M32/X32 Show Manager
It became apparent that the M32/X32 show screens (Cues, Scenes, Snippets) were awkward to use, particularly with re-ordering lists, etc. So I developed an offline alternative interface as a better solution.

X-Air Scene Parser
Even though snippets were not a feature of the X-Air consoles, I discovered that partial scenes could function as snippets). So Scene Parser was ported to the X-Air platform to help in creating these partial scenes.

MX Terminal
In January 2017, an XR18 user joined the forum and asked if there were any apps that were not graphical in nature. He was blind and relied on screenreaders which could not read grapical elements of many apps. Over the next few months, we developed a chat-like interface that allowed the user to type any OSC command and receive the response from the console. Later the X32 and recently the Wing was added to MX Terminal.

It became evident that learning the OSC protocol had a steep learning curve. So I committed to create English equivalent commands of all of the OSC commands. That is currently about 75% complete for all X-Air and X32 OSC commands. Because it uses the Live Toolbox engine, tidbit commands are also available.

LT_Command
From a request for Live Toolbox as a command line app, similar to Patrick's X32_Command, came LT_Command. Since it uses the Live Toolbox engine, all OSC, tidbit and English equivalent commands are available.

XM32 To Wing Converter
When the Wing was initially released in December 2019, it became evident that it had a very different designed to the M32/X32 and snapshots were very different than the scenes we all came to understand and use. Wing snapshots uses the JSON formatting and commands were very different than the X32/M32, X-Air/M-Air OSC commands. I had a library of numerous scenes and snippets and wanted to use some of the scenes on the Wing. Instead of starting from scratch, I developed this offline converter.

Snipshot Toolbox
While investigating the new Wing snapshot format and structure, I discovered that a partial snapshot could be created to function similar to an X32 snippet. Since the developers have yet to develop this functionality, I took it upon myself to name them "snipshots" (snippet of a snapshot) and created an offline toolbox of tools to create these partial snapshots.

Currently the toolbox has the X32 to Wing converter, an Automix generator, a basic parser, a bus mix parser, and a JSON editor. The developers are currently developing show management for the Wing. Once it is released, this toolbox may change significantly.

Wing Live Toolbox
The Wing's native external communications uses JSON structure and TCP/IP protocol. When firmware 1.06 was released, it included OSC structure over UDP, which is very similar to the M32/X32 and M-Air/X-Air. So I ported the Live Toolbox to the Wing platform. Currently it can use all Wing OSC, most tidbit and some English equivalent commands.
Paul Vannatto
Global Moderator
User avatar
pmaillot
Posts: 624
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2021 1:32 pm

Re: Welcome, Intro, Explanation and Links

Post by pmaillot »

Excellent tools Paul.
RexBeckett
Posts: 122
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:52 am
Location: Bedford, UK

Re: Welcome, Intro, Explanation and Links

Post by RexBeckett »

That's a fine set of tools, Paul.
Post Reply

Return to “Paul's Apps Support”