4ms Meta - Rackception

So, I just read through that mod wiggler thread, and the way the 4ms staff interact is really great and makes me even more confident that the module will be awesome and I am very excited to get one… I just wish the 4ms folks would come and interact with us, on this forum

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In the video at about 11 mins i think we can see some 4ms modules running in vcv rack on the laptop!

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Yeah, I’m quite impressed. Major feat from 4ms here, and they’ve been working on it since 2019 or so he said. I’m surprised it’s been possible actually.

This is great news, I’m pretty exited to play with some of those 4ms modules in Rack, and you could see from his demo that they’re already ported.

So I guess there’s kind of two ways you can look at this module:

  • As a “super disting on steroids” where this one module can be any of hundreds of modules, that you can just pick when you need it.
  • As a VCV Rack patch player, within limits. So having a patch within your patch.

The first one we kind of know from modules like the disting. And if it sounds and behaves great then it’s really good economy and flexibility.

The second one is quite new I think. Will take some mindwrapping to figure how to best use that in practice.

Exiting times…

haha - we used to make stuff for disting… 8 years ago!

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Can someone please port a multichannel wav player module over to work with the 4ms Meta module? That would be huge for me.

Perhaps one of these:

Nysthi simpliciter multi,

Voxglitch wav bank

on modwiggler forum

https://www.modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=277469&start=150

Initially it will not be possible for modules to load external resources.

So no wav player.

A slightly awkward video, but interesting still…

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Damn… Wonder if they will ever be able to stream multiple wav files at once, or if it’s beyond the specs of the module, any idea?

My use for the meta module would be playing one or two 5 channel wav files at the same time. And be able to switch to new wavs from a folder at will

It’s better to not speculate about any of this. It’s amazing that they have pulled this off, maybe we should just learn to deal with any limitations that ensue :wink:

Best place to ask questions about the module would be on the Modwiggler forum post linked to above. 4MS is active there

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In fact, per @zakforrest’s question, the MW thread mentions that they’re definitely planning on working out a framework for sampling. I would be very surprised if the platform doesn’t support > 2 channels–it’s got great specs–so now’s a good time to pitch that for 4ms’s #TODO list.

@zakforrest: OT, but the Disting EX just a few days ago got quad sample playback in its newest firmware (1.25). Obviously, 4ch < 5ch but if you have urgent needs and can live with quad it might tide you over…

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If this module catches on, there will be a lot of positive effects for VCV. Here’s one that just occurred to me: it opens up a new business model for plugin developers, in which they give away the VCV Rack version for free but charge for the Meta Module version. So users can demo modules all they want in Rack and then pay to use them on the Eurorack hardware.

well, could be. As a long time dev of VCV modules I’m not super interested in this platform, but we will see what others think.

Will the VCV modules (Fundamental and/or premium) also be ported to the Meta?

I have an ES-9 for a large setup, but I am very interested in this for smaller live setups…

for anyone interested in if the metamodule will do sample playback (or disc recording)… reached out to 4ms and this was the reply:

"We will have the STS Sampler built-in, with samples loaded onto the SD card.

The WAV recorder module won’t be there but we do plan to have some way to record the audio to SD card or USB drive. However, it’s looking like that won’t be for the v1.0 release. thanks, Dan"

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Release is going to schedule

image

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Let me rephrase my inquiry: Is there a public list of which modules/developers are incorporated into the Meta? I cannot find it in the ModWiggler thread…

maybe not a proper answer, but there are at least these opensource modules: GitHub - 4ms/metamodule-plugin-examples: Example usage of MetaModule plugin SDK

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Ok, hello, I lurked this thread a while back but have had my head in the sand to get v1.0 ready for release date. Now am seeing there tons of questions I missed… Sorry for the silence here!

So, first of all I just posted the code for our VCV plugin here: GitHub - 4ms/4ms-vcv: 4ms modules for VCV Rack platform They’re free, GPL-v3+ licensed. I plan to submit it to the Library shortly, too, but if you care to try out a pre-1.0 version, the CI on that repo is building releases.

Regarding wav file/sample playback: That’s the last module yet to port. I have our STS module (dual sampler) working on a dev branch, but there are some UX things to figure out still regarding where the sample library lives on a user’s harddrive when creating a patch in VCV, vs. on a USB drive or SD card when using it on the MetaModule… The idea is that you could have multiple sample “libraries” on a USB drive and each STS could be assigned to a different one. There is no hard limit for the number of samples being played back in parallel but obviously the USB through-put and RAM buffer will eventually be a limit.

Regarding plugins: I actively want to help developers port to the MetaModule platform. Ideally I see it as a fifth platform (linux, windows, mac-arm64, mac-x86, … and metamodule), but right now converting a VCV plugin requires a wrapper script and usually a few code changes. You can browse examples at the metamodules-plugin-examples repo. Please get in touch with me if you want help porting!

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