DISTRHO - Cardinal

Plugin updates can finally be pushed (a few more cloud setup details finalized).
Did one with Cardinal as a test, which was successful, so we got 22.10 release on the MOD Plugin Store now.

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I’m very excited about Cardinal and I had a go at sending a few patches to my Duo X.
I not sure what to expect regarding CPU usage, but it seems a bit more demanding than I thought it would be.

I tried recreating a patch composed of Mod plugins I had from before using Cardinal modules, and the CPU usage was peaking a lot higher. CPU usage was also a lot more erratic.

I was not structured enough when trying things out to save pedalboards and patches in comparable states. But I probably could do so if there is an interest.

I tried running this pedalboard and the CPU was mainly around 70%.

I’m on 1.11.6.2908 and Cardinal 22.10-4

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Not bringing much to the main topic, but…

Now you are :wink: You can edit the previous post if you’d like

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Store version updated to 22.11 as per latest release

An important change for MOD builds is the use of simde instead of sse2neon, following what VCV Rack chose to use for the official ARM builds.
How this affects performance still has to be tested, with a quick check myself I don’t notice much difference at all.

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Store version update to 22.12 as per latest release again

The Surge-XT modules are in, among a few other things.

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This does not appear to work on a Mac w/Chrome. I have the v22.12-6 plugin installed, I click connect to MOD on the CardinalNative App, menu then shows push to MOD, but when selecting that nothing happens. The plugin does not get updated, there is no “screenshot” showing in the plugin, no sounds and there is no confirmation in the Native app that anything has happened.

Also a minor issue, there are two menus, one at the top of the app window and the main Mac OS window. Selecting “Quit” from the Main Mac OS menu does not do anything.

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Have you tried to refresh the browser window with the MOD Webgui?

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I have (I also tried switching browsers etc). I did notice that after clicking Push to MOD, there is an increase of CPU usage shown on the little meter, but no sound and the plugin does not change visually (the screenshot etc). I have also tried both Cardinal and Cardinal mini (installing, re-installing etc).

Btw- A couple days ago, I had loaded the Cardinal plugin to see what it was about and it did indeed show a sample patch in the preview and it had sound. Then I removed it shortly afterwards until today.

Update: I have gotten a couple of the demo patches like Etherpad and Interverb to work only in Cardinal Mini, not Cardinal (why are there two?). But it’s still pretty sketchy because if I try to push another patch it may do nothing, it may get stuck on the previous one etc. A couple of the other patches- I am unable to determine what is required to “start” them.

This really needs more documentation- like mentioning to add a Cardinal “Host Params” module to setup the knobs in the plugin etc.

Update 2: As I mentioned, I have a few of the demo patches running, but the sound quality is pretty awful. Loads of crackling, high CPU usage. Cardinal also doesn’t show the name of the current patch that’s open, so I keep opening up the same one thinking it is a different one because I don’t remember the name of what I just loaded ha!

This could be like what Clavia was doing with the Nord Modular 20 years ago and the MDX with it’s knobs could make it a great host for such. I don’t think VCV would be the right vehicle for it though because it’s not exactly optimal CPU performance-wise. Thus it would put limits on everything. If this is hitting the roof on the MDX I think the Dwarf would certainly have an even bigger issue.

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Need to investigate the connection issues on macOS, but for performance indeed we cant expect much here.
The example patches are likely not going to work cpu-wise, that is what the “awful sound” comes from, they are probably just always hitting cpu limit and causing xruns.

For the semi-short term I plan to try to make the interaction better. Reducing the time that a patch is automatically sent to the remote instance, and also listen for knob changes and immediately send those over so we dont have to wait until we hear the change in the audio.

And a bit further down the line I want to have a proper version, with only a few select modules, where the GUI is directly shown on the browser. The idea is to have only things known to work well, in an effort to have a version that can be pushed to the stable part of the store.

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I think (for me anyway) the Cardinal plugin may be better used as a “fill-in” for times when I need a certain module/plugin (or a combination of a couple) that is not within the current MOD ecosystem. Like a flexible sample player for example. Or a source of randomness like what a “M.I. Marbles” type module can make.

Btw- why the two different Cardinal plugins? Which should I be using?

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one is audio/midi, the other has 10 optional CV ports. use the mini if you dont care to route CV signals

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Hi! Thanx for opening this universe :slight_smile: Currently trying to use the Voxglitch Grain Engine with expander to do some live sampling with MDX, But no luck so far. I tried both plugins? What could I be doing wrong? Should it work?

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Dont see how that would work at the moment, a remote control wont trigger such buttons, not quite yet.
The mini version will be much easier to understand and work with, we will get to that once 1.12.2 is a thing

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Ok. So those buttons cannot be asigned to midi as of yet?

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you need to be more clear. which ones, what exact setup, etc…

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Basically creating a simple patch to upload to MDX for sound processing in Cardinal Standalone on Mac Catalina Firefox. But Grain Engine doesn´t even produce sound or change CPU in the GUI. Maybe it doesn`t work on the MOD yet. The MIDI mappings can be difficult since its a button push, but I also had problems using this method with to give CC messages to using Audible Instruments Modal in another simple “audio in sound processing” patch. This loaded and made sound, but no reaction to cc mapping.

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Hi there, having a lot of fun with this - thanks!

I’ve just started learning Pure Data and saw there was this plugin for VCV Rack - VCV-Prototype (sorry, can’t add the link but it is on Github). Could this possibly be incorprated into Cardinal, as a way to get Pure Data patches onto the dwarf?

No. However I believe there have been some trials to use Camomile to run PD on MOD.

You can also convert some PD patches (vanilla only, and there are some limitations) to C/C++ and turn that into a plugin.

See the PD subforum for more information: Pure Data - MOD Audio Forum

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We would be very welcome to have some official procedure to get pd based patches as plugins, or some kind of JIT/dynamic loader. But it needs to be a community-lead effort

I can prepare the needed things to be setup on the cloud, but then someone the community needs to step up for assistance, guidance, docs etc.
If someone is willing to step up for that, create a topic on where @dreamer mentioned - Pure Data - MOD Audio Forum - and ping me there for assistance. Maybe the solution is Camomile, maybe something custom that allows hotswapping… but anyhow it always needs community-lead effort.

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Hey, I am trying to incorporate this more, but I notice Cardinal has a very high CPU load. The filters in there add a lot of cpu, so I am trying to just use the modulation within cardinal and use the mod filters instead.
Atm I’m taking midi out of cardinal via loopback to mod. I was wondering if there are plans to give cardinal CV ins and outs? This would make this whole modulation game a lot easier!