How is Automat working for you?

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Sat Jan 22, 2011 6:14 am

This has been a long time favorite of mine! The patches didn't transfer from 0.4.2 to 1.0 so it was a bit of a rough transition. But I made it over the bumps & here I am.

Now in 1.0 I've got erratic, spiky behavior when any knob is clicked with the mouse. Seems like there is some absolute vs relative value issue going on here. So the knobs are not visually nor sonically smooth. You've got to click/move all the knobs to reset their relative position every time the GUI is opened. Anyone else?

Thing is, I'm not sure how to inform Stiwi to report the problems because there's no longer any contact links for him on the alphakanal website. There haven't been any updates or activity since 2008 either. The combination of those 2 things make me wonder I should continue using the plugin or not...maybe automat is not being maintained any longer? Really love using this plugin but don't want to be left hanging/wondering what is going on.

Thoughts or experiences?

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Sat Jan 22, 2011 9:22 am

works fine for me on 10.6.6 and latest Live

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Sat Jan 22, 2011 3:36 pm

That's the same setup I'm on. So you don't find the knobs twitchy? It's especially the first time I click & turn any knob. It usually settles out after turning back & forth a couple times.

stiwi · Post by **stiwi** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 10:06 am

i've testet automat on osx 10.7.2 with live 8.2.2 and it seems to be ok.
you can contact me at stiwi@alphakanal.de.

salatspinatra · Post by **salatspinatra** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 4:27 pm

Ah stiwi, bless you for chiming in; you're a top act.

I literally would stay on leopard indefinitely if you weren't around to tell us the coast was clear on automat. EVERYTHING else on my mac including Live itself and 3 years of work on an endangered mobileme account be damned.

How's .4.2 doing on Lion? I was never sure if the memory usage on the first stable automat 1.0 was capped, despite some tempting additions, ignorance is bliss. The community here is welcome to pitch me on 1.0 and see if I budge.

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 6:25 pm

You'll need to be running Live 8 for Lion.

Automat 0.4.2 will work in Live 7, but not Live 8. And since you won't be able to use anything less than Live 8 on Lion you'll to need to move to Automat 1.0 to use it in Lion with Live.

salatspinatra · Post by **salatspinatra** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:21 pm

Okay, that's helpful, but wait, I use .4.2 in live 8 already. Made the leap within the last few months. Not happily, but it generally behaves. Put it this way, it's a culprit but not the immediate explanation if and when my set is unstable. So are you saying that if I'm opening automat in live 8 now under snow leopard, I should see an equivalent performance in Lion?

You make a good argument for diving into automat 1, but its more a push away from 4.2 rather than an incentive to play with 1.0. With the memory spikes that you are experiencing, I always understood .4.2 to be MORE stable than 1.0. Like this new Tyrell synth: great to play with, but not what I'd reach for in a live performance setting. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of load difference were you getting with the two automats, and what are some of your selling points for actually preferring the complexity of the more recent version?

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 10:06 pm

To be honest, I liked 0.4.2 a bit more than 1.0 because it was easier to use & quicker to get results. The problems explained above with 1.0 weren't memory spikes, it was the knobs on the GUI which wouldn't react properly when first moved after the GUI was opened. I'm not using Automat much anymore because of that. It just became too tedious & less fun for me to program because of the unexpected knob behavior.

0.4.2 worked great for me in Live 7. But then it became the cause of a lot of crashing for me in Live 8. I couldn't even open some sets unless I dragged Automat 0.4.2 out of my components folder. Going to Automat 1.0 fixed that for me. I don't have any side to side comparison of 0.4.2 & 1.0 though because I've completely moved on from 0.4.2 out of necessity. It's not even installed anymore.

salatspinatra · Post by **salatspinatra** » Sat Nov 19, 2011 4:13 pm

icedsushi,
I had my first anomaly with attempting to perform in Automat .4.2 using live 8.2.2
It happened after I downloaded 8.2.6 to test the waters, loaded it up mistakenly in my same account, and updated permissions to the latest version. Automat did not cause Live to crash, but neither would it play a note (despite seeing the midi level meter react to my keys.) I brought another iVST into the same rack on a different chain without deleting Automat, and in that exchange Live DID crash.
I reverted back to 8.2.2 and Automat remained inactive in the same manner as it did in 8.2.6

I imagine after a restart or quitting out, I could get it to work again, but this is a crossroads I really don't want to take with automat. It's like an old friend, I've lots of presets for it, and I consider it essential.

Maybe one of us should call it in to Stiwi. I'm happy to remain on his schedule: I don't need to be the first person on my block to have Lion. But my computer probably only has a year left in it at best. By then it would be nice if apple (with iCloud and the like) and my favorite developers like alphakanal had the road cleared.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Nov 19, 2011 7:17 pm

I've had spikes in volume from Automat the last time I really used it, which was disappointing but I was too busy to email and submit bug reports. My mistake, as I really have liked Automat, Generator his earlier free synth is all over one of my songs. I'll re-instal and submit bug reports.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Nov 19, 2011 7:19 pm

icedsushi wrote:To be honest, I liked 0.4.2 a bit more than 1.0 because it was easier to use & quicker to get results. The problems explained above with 1.0 weren't memory spikes, it was the knobs on the GUI which wouldn't react properly when first moved after the GUI was opened. I'm not using Automat much anymore because of that. It just became too tedious & less fun for me to program because of the unexpected knob behavior.

0.4.2 worked great for me in Live 7. But then it became the cause of a lot of crashing for me in Live 8. I couldn't even open some sets unless I dragged Automat 0.4.2 out of my components folder. Going to Automat 1.0 fixed that for me. I don't have any side to side comparison of 0.4.2 & 1.0 though because I've completely moved on from 0.4.2 out of necessity. It's not even installed anymore.

You're aware that stiwi is the developer and he left his email for bug reports in this thread right?

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Sun Nov 20, 2011 1:41 am

Yes, I tried to contact a few times over the past year & it seemed he was MIA, or perhaps I was sending to the wrong email address. He replied to my most recent email last month though.

I know you cannot expect too much from a synth that's free, but I must admit it was a bit of a roller coaster for me with the incompatibility between 0.4.2 & 1.0 presets and then when I finally got that sorted, 1.0 having some issues with Live.

I'd look forward to seeing Automat updated to work properly with Live again someday, for the time being, based on reliability of the current version I am not using it anymore. Would be glad to make a donation or even see it turn into a paid synth. It's that worth it!

salatspinatra · Post by **salatspinatra** » Sun Nov 20, 2011 5:01 pm

Ok, today .4.2 is working in 8.2.6 under Snow Leopard. I'm not in my studio so I'm testing input through the computer keyboard.

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