Soundart publish panel protocol for their Chameleon programm

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:32 am

Soundart have published a document for the panel protocol for their Chameleon programmable DSP hardware. This means anyone with a Chameleon could now in theory, not only code their own DSP based synth, filter, processor etc on high quality hardware at virtually zero latency, but now this step by Soundart is going to allow Chameleon developers to build or 'have built' their own custom panels for say, desktop units with more rotaries, knobs, switches, LEDs etc.

There's some info on the home page & more explained in the News section.

Seems the applications are slowly going GPL to allow anyone to develope the source code, which is also interesting... free software

<a href="http://www.soundart-hot.com/english/">Soundart Chameleon Home page</a>

sharc · Post by **sharc** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:42 pm

On 2006-01-13 13:09, stardust wrote:
some nice sound examples.
but there is zero integration to the computer. Only one synth has a vsti GUI (but only for sending midi controls to the rack box ):(

Yes, it could do with some more of these VSTi controllers....as could a lot of CW plugins come to think of it.

I've owned one of these for just over a year now and I have to admit I'm very impressed. Some of the 'soundskins' are really excellent. The Australis synth serves the same purpose as but sounds better in a lot of ways than my Novation KS4. The latest synth Entity is the craziest sounding synth I've come across in ages. Then there's the spin audio effects which give you the sound of the plugins without freaking out your CPU. For the moment (as long as it doesn't sport a usb socket) I wouldn't expect anything more than development and midi automation on computer side. But then, with some of the developments I've seen on the Chameleon recently (check the modifications section of the forum on there website) I wouldn't be surprised to see USB amongst other hardware upgrades developed in the near future.

And it loads only one skin at a time

True, but it only takes up 1u of rackspace.

And it takes one minute to load one

Only for larger soundskins like Fahrenheit. It's also a lot quicker to load via the serial port and there's been some talk on the SA forum recently about adding Compact Flash.

Needs some rework

It looks like it's happening. The way SA has encouraged 3rd party development seems to be paying off. It's amazing to see what can be done with limited DSP resources. It's a real shame that us Pulsar users haven't been given the same oppotunity to develop for the CW platform.

sharc · Post by **sharc** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 6:03 am

On 2006-01-14 05:47, stardust wrote:
You mean I can stack several chameleons with 1u each and 700 Euro each to use several skins in parallel ?

Yes...or to increase polyphony

I see the Chameleon more as a single multi-purpose piece of kit than a studio in a box solution, but it would be nice to have a stack of them.

I got my chameleon off ebay for under 400 Euro. I've also missed a few auctions since then where I've seen them go for less than 200 Euro. It seems that there aren't many people looking out for these machines.

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:06 am

Stardust, your conclusions are swiftly biased with a negative perspective. I don't understand the point in looking only at the bad points of a machine like this when it quite clearly has more good points. I won't list them, but for anyone who's interested, believe me when I say that this machine rocks the block.

... news in the communtiy is that more Soundskins (applications) are being developed as we speak. Many will become GPL (currently there's 3 GPL apps out of 10, but it looks very much like more will follow)

... hardware upgrades are being developed (including the afore mentioned custom panel options which 3rd parties are working on)!!

There's no other 1U rack unit on the planet which sports such rock solid longevity through a flexible 24bit programmable audio dsp architecture with a free SDK (very good one at that), example source code & GPL apps.

No other instrument of this nature is more customizable in terms of hardware or software as far as I'm aware.

[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-01-16 04:07 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:34 am

didn't the company go bust on that thing ?
...as CWA (almost) on NOAH ?

I may not have followed the complete story, but this kind of reminds me on NOAH's late success as a 598 Euro piece of sell-out hardware.
Of course including 6 plugins that each (would) sell for 198 on their 'home' platform...

cheers, Tom

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 7:01 am

Rumours

No, they didn't actually go bust as far as I know. They did however, put the MkII project on 'hold'. From what I've heard, they may have been forced into that due to a sudden move by Freescale to drop future support of the memory used.

Tom, a few points worth a mention :-

A). This has nothing to do with Noah.

B). This has nothing to do with CWA.

C). I did not intend to campare this to any Creamware product.

D). I was not suggesting this as an alternative to any Creamware product.

The box rocks & if you can't see that then it's your tough luck & loss

I think something as flexible as this hardware will become rather sought after in years to come. Especially when people actually realise the potential.

In the past year alone at least 5 or 6 applications have either been developed (released) or updated. Things are happening on this little platform Tom (albeit slowly due to developement time of DSP code)

Anyway, as I said. I didn't post the info as an altenative to Scope or Noah, that's just nonsense. I just thought some of you guys might be interested to see that there *IS* life there & actually some pretty interesting developements if you care to look properly

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:38 am

sorry, maybe I wasn't expressing clear enough that my comment was about people jumping on the train only at sell-out rates and not when it's time to support a company in a way it can survive.
Freezing of the project state is due to economic reasons (according to public statements by Josep-Oriol Tomas and Huynh-Quan-Chiêu).

though in this special case I have to admit that I considered the box way too expensive when it was originally released

cheers, tom

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:37 pm

Astro, the original price was less than a decent Motorolla dev kit which wasn't as high quality in terms of hardware or software (re: the DSP audio platform specific SDK)

Stardust, no problem with me

The negative aspects of the hardware you mentioned, I don't even see as a problem anyway

It does what it does & very well too !! Maybe one day I'll be clever enough to make an application with it, which I think would be a massive ahievement

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:42 pm

Astro, 'economic reasons' can also mean different things. If their choice of memory was suddenly announced to be dropped by Freescale & they were 'maybe?' gonna be forced to significantly change their architecture, this may have been a major 'economic reason' !

[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-01-16 12:42 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:50 pm

here's the quote from their forum

...we have decided that we can not afford the financial risk that would be involved in going ahead with the Chameleon mkII project. Amongst the several factors that pushed us to make this tough decission there is the number of pre-orders received, the evident need to add several key features to guarantee some possibilities of commercial success (that would require additional development time) and the limited resources available....

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2006-01-16 13:52 ]

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:00 pm

wow, I've never read that one, thanks astro.

Not to worry. The platform is still alive & people are evidently still programming for it, which is great for anyone who owns one

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:25 pm

well, I wish anyone who likes the box (and M56K assembly in particular) to have a lot of fun with it, honestly.

Yet my personal estimation about 98% of the disciples of such a box is that they just serve their own vanity and nothing but their own vanity.

THEY want to be THE creators (you know that custom algo bs...) and don't have even the slightest chance to come out with something original.

They are idiots in my very humble opinion.
Tools like CWA's Modular, Flexor or the Nord Modular (for those who favour the Motorola sound) - are all rejected by those uber-egos because they don't allow to cloak a surface over their 100th me-too incarnation of the I-dunno-what...

1.8% (of the fan base) are actually happy to have something for hands-on experience in assembly programming - which can be fun if you have the time.

0.2% is in fact capable to squeeze useful results out of the box with acceptable effort - because they ARE talented

cheers, Tom

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:54 pm

Yes, I agree with you to a point astro. In fact one of these scarce extremely talented programmers is set to release a modular application for it. He's been developing it for 2 years. He seems to be a perfectionist & one of the talented few, so my own hopes are high. He mentioned that he's maybe going to gpl as much as possible, at least to allow others to add their own modules if desired

Be as negative as you like Astro, but this is the 'off topic' section & I fully expected such negativity at something so posative from 'outside' your kingdom. It's something different take it for what it is & don't diss what you don't understand.

I think you're simply trying to knock down this post & the Chameleon either to get at me or because you're not capable or couldn't be bothered to code for a machine like this yourself.

Anyway, carry on talking if you wish, I'd love to hear some more of your wise words on this.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 3:44 pm

don't worry Shroomz - you simply missed the post (long ago) where I confessed that I'm not mathematically compliant to DSP coding - I simply lack the necessary background.

I'm aware of that and I'm not even afraid to admit it

in this context it doesn't even concern me, as I've always been able to choose appropriate tools when necessary - but when it comes to cosmological items I really do regret my lack of knowledge.

I have no reasons to put this project down, yet it is imho (as mentioned) representative in several different ways...

Btw I'd really be interested what this thing can do that Flexor cannot...
or Solaris, BlackBox, the Wavelength synths
Celmo's emulations, Optimaster, STW Mastercomp and Reverbs...
the infamous PythonPro, CWA's in-circuit stuff

I'd appreciate if someone extends the sonic universe, but I see few changes if any at all - except the fact that for some strange reason Motorola DSPs just sound different.

I bet that my Korg Pandora bass/guitar amp simulation is Motorola based - I haven't opened it yet for warranty sake

cheers, Tom

ps: as you tend to get these things wrong (I don't even see a context to your person just because you posted the link)
I've made a long list above of what IS available (not only at CWA, count NOrd and NI in as well), the equivalent coded on that box will represent at least 500 years of coding.

So wtf don't these GNUers just concentrate on what's NOT available elsewhere but re-invent the wheel for the 10th time ???

[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2006-01-16 15:53 ]

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:32 pm

Not very pleasant, but if pointless flaming makes you satisfied in your little sphere...

Post by **hubird** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:13 pm

as always you're moving yourself in an imaginary conflictuous situation - which get real then

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:43 am

maybe hubird, but negativity = negativity & positivity = positivity. Stardust & Sharc both had positive things to say about this machine, which one would not only hope for but, expect given the machines capabilities. Astro, on the other hand, although pointing out a certain fact about Soundart's financial problems is quite obviously being overly critical for some reason.

[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-01-19 02:12 ]

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:17 am

Shroomz, I've already commented the box in 2003 - and I'll take this opportunity to correct a mistake I made back then:
The Chameleon has a 56303 and the gear I compared it to only had a 56301. Just for completeness, it wasn't part of this thread.

Other than that I didn't comment the machine and it's capabilities at all.

I made some remarks about it's user base, tho - and there are few reason to not do this.
It's nothing but food for thought anyway.

If 'sound' is the main concern (with customizable tools reaching from CWA's Mod w/out Flexor, the NordMod to Reaktor) - then the question IS justfied what people who obviously refuse those tools want to achieve with custom DSP programming, even more as most are beginners

This request for a general 'custom coding' (even mentioned in this thread) is an ever repeating item (to name it politely)

it's quite misleading about system capabilities - as you won't miss a thing

and about the difficulty to deal with items on that level at all.

I never claimed that I have special coding skills in this domain (god beware!), but I've had enough idea exchange with 'true' experts to know how to judge it from a timely and economic position - and I CAN read that stuff and make sense of it.

if the intro of the thread suggests a (whatsoever) huge advantage of such a box (which it certainly has in SOME cases), then it's a valid addition to ask those questions.
It's not dissing for dissing's sake.

I even bet that the 'vanity' argument hits the nail on the head - it's really nothing special, I've observed similiar things in sports dozens of times

people simply aren't able to admit it freely...

my critical point at the 'buying-at-sellout-prices' mentality is even a positive comment about the company behind this box.

Am I supposed to stand in the corner and laugh at their failure, only because their product isn't exactly my (personal) cup of tea ?
Eventually they are in the same business as me (more or less)

cheers, Tom

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 2:11 am

The thread was meant to inform any Chameleon users in these parts, IE :- PlanetZ (which I think there are a few) about new developements which allow custom panels to be added.

In truth Tom I don't care what you think any more. This thread certainly wasn't designed for the all-knowing astroman to throw his opinion around about other platforms and programmers (not me) trying to realise & create things. You put down positive people doing positive things.

Nobody cares wheather it's your cup of tea or not, but they do become accustomed to you voicing such opinions at any given opertunity.

Post by **hubird** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 3:47 am

well, then you should start your own (Chameleon) forum...