echolevel

echolevel

@echolevel.co.uk

Brendan O'Callaghan Ratliff - Audio Director/Coder, Sound Designer & Composer at Cardboard Sword Games • Film Sound • BBC radio drama • Irish traditional music • chiptune/demoscene stuff as Syphus^UpRough https://echolevel.co.uk

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Now that our game's out, I can show off Metron Tracker running on Quest (ARM) in #UnrealEngine 5! Late in dev I whipped up a pattern/VU-meter display in UMG as a backdrop for the intro, so you can see the sample & synth notes being played in realtime. CPU usage is pretty minimal #gameaudio #indiedev

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Spotted just after posting about my own, artisanaly hand-bodged and slop free VST which, coincidentally, only works properly in Reaper because of a post I found buried in an ancient JUCE forum thread where Chris (who wrote this post) shared his arcane solution to a resize code quirk. Thanks, human!

Audio Damage, Inc.@audiodamage.com

It's blog post time! Some thoughts on the avalanche of shit. www.audiodamage.com/blogs/news/s...

audiodamage.comAI Slop, Vibe-Coded Clones & Indie Plugins | Audio DamageVibe-coded clones, AI pitch spam, and Big Tech gunning for music software. After nearly 25 years, our take on AI and why plugin buyers should be skeptical.
echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

It was _hard_ to find as well, because Google's deliberately shit now. Can an AI feel the same relief/joy of discovering that "no, I'm not a complete idiot: this weird quirk stumped smarter, more experienced devs than me but they figured it out and shared it with me"? I dunno, who cares, fuck em

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

I did some alternative colour themes for my plugin, see if you can guess which iconic drum machines I did before remembering that most iconic drum machines are just grey/beige/greige so I might as well do a WipEout team one for the craic

echolevel@echolevel.co.uk

I wrote (not vibecoded!) a VST plugin for myself that does a really basic thing I couldn't find without cruft elsewhere: x0x drum sequencer that emits MIDI, no audio, to any sampler. It's deliberately low clutter; I hate multi-track grids. I'm usually bad at UI, but quite pleased with this one.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

I wrote (not vibecoded!) a VST plugin for myself that does a really basic thing I couldn't find without cruft elsewhere: x0x drum sequencer that emits MIDI, no audio, to any sampler. It's deliberately low clutter; I hate multi-track grids. I'm usually bad at UI, but quite pleased with this one.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

How you know it's not vibecoded is that it doesn't do 2 things well but slightly differently every time it gets updated; 10 things badly forever; and 30 things nobody asked it for that aren't documented, not even on the soullessly polished single-page website it generated from stolen artwork.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Er also because I couldn't quite get the logo vertically aligned properly because I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to deal with font glyph dimensions, and then I sacked it off because I don't care. That's human as hell.

echolevel reposted

Oh. Cassidy
@ocassidy.bsky.social

Hey hey. Got a new tune out. Old school beats with Ryuichi chords and proggy fusion guitar business. Backed with a remix by Mr Blazey who is clinically amazing. Have a listen if you’re cool!

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Btw tracker enjoyers will be wondering "why not just do swing via 'funk timing' (alternating Speed commands in the pattern)?" and yeah, you can still do that; this just abstracts it out to a song-global value that saves you having to fill an entire FX column per pattern with F04,F06,F04,F06 etc

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Oh, and the chord stabs are a hardware synth being triggered by MIDI coming from a dummy tracker instrument. How do I deal with round-trip latency? I don't! I do no live input monitoring; this is just recorded direct from my RME's loopback. Latency compensation is hard and I cba

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Previously it was WASAPI only (on Windows; CoreAudio on MacOS obv). Now you can opt for either, pick your device, and choose which HW outputs to assign. Metron has internal bussing for Group Effects Busses; this adds ext busses per track, or for GEBs to route to in parallel.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

This all lives pretty much exclusively in the standalone tracker, not in the game engine SDK - I don't care about multichannel music output in games just now. So songs can just ignore it in game, and all it costs is a wee bit of metadata per track.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Been very down about sharing my work since the tsunami of vibecoded plugin slop hit this year, and it's hard not to wonder why I bother when there are folks out here calling themselves devs because they prompted Claude. Do you call yourself a paramedic because you phoned for an ambulance?

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

an LLM to pin down a gnarly linker error? No: no human should ever have to pin down a linker error if there's any possibility that a tool exists that can sort it out for them quick. Or they should have to do it once, when young, so they learn how, and then never again. Fuckin' linker errors...

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

But jfc, letting someone/something else write code that I'm going to put my name on, presumably stake my reputation on, fuck no. And maybe that's why I'll always stay poor, but I somehow managed to stay poor all through the last infinite-VC-money-glitch game dev boom so what's new?

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Been very down about sharing my work since the tsunami of vibecoded plugin slop hit this year, and it's hard not to wonder why I bother when there are folks out here calling themselves devs because they prompted Claude. Do you call yourself a paramedic because you phoned for an ambulance?

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

And sure, everyone's having fun - I hate the whole genAI of it, the wider implications, the blackboxiness etc but I'm not gonna tell Timmy Trousers that he shouldn't spend his mid-life dad disposable income on a fun groovebox. It is, in every way, nothing for professionals to worry or moan about.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

I say everyone's having fun: obviously I'M not having fun. I've forgotten how. But that's mostly a me problem. I don't know what happens next. I don't want to use genAI tools, or play genAI games because a) fuck that but also b) they don't feel good. Am I going to boycott a veteran dev who uses

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Been very down about sharing my work since the tsunami of vibecoded plugin slop hit this year, and it's hard not to wonder why I bother when there are folks out here calling themselves devs because they prompted Claude. Do you call yourself a paramedic because you phoned for an ambulance?

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Like...you tell them "hey, this is meant to be a critical realtime DSP loop" and they go "pfsh yeah, shouldn't be reallocating memory in a realtime loop, no sir!" and yeah, if I - a programming understander - can't trust them to get this right, what the hell lurks beneath all the Claude slop that's

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

never had a human eye run over it? That firmware community has already - in the space of a week - settled on some firm Reddit reply-guy tenets re. the limits of the hardware in terms of DSP performance and...really? It might be capable of more but you'll never know because you abdicated thinking.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Been very down about sharing my work since the tsunami of vibecoded plugin slop hit this year, and it's hard not to wonder why I bother when there are folks out here calling themselves devs because they prompted Claude. Do you call yourself a paramedic because you phoned for an ambulance?

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

The pace of iteration is frightening, especially since Claude can also spin them up a suite of websites, in-browser emulations, changelogs and examples, but for them to be tools rather than toys, I'd need to know that the rug of a certain workflow wouldn't get pulled in the next update...

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

...and I have NO faith in that. Every few months I give all the main LLMs a C++ audio DSP hot loop to optimise. I know how good these models are at ingesting all of Stack Overflow & every textbook, and getting 99% of everything right, but every single time they resize a vector on the audio thread.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Been very down about sharing my work since the tsunami of vibecoded plugin slop hit this year, and it's hard not to wonder why I bother when there are folks out here calling themselves devs because they prompted Claude. Do you call yourself a paramedic because you phoned for an ambulance?

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

They're all awful in that particular way that's very hard to detect if you're not a professional who's making a living at this (making music, as well as making tools). Yeah yeah, gatekeepery - but not really. Pros rely on...well, reliability; consistency; workflow that isn't just infinite fEaTuReS.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

They all get some fundamental stuff wrong in a way that I'm not surprised a vibecoder who's used to being a consumer might struggle to articulate. They iterate on one another, not so much a circle jerk as a downward spiral jerk (it's hard to believe they'll defy entropy and iterate upwards).

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Been very down about sharing my work since the tsunami of vibecoded plugin slop hit this year, and it's hard not to wonder why I bother when there are folks out here calling themselves devs because they prompted Claude. Do you call yourself a paramedic because you phoned for an ambulance?

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

I shared a guitar sim/distortion VST early this year and within a day I realised both "people will think I vibecoded this" and "people will think I'm even bad at vibecoding, because the UI is terrible". That's hand-terribled UX, though! Artisanal human design incompetence!

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

So I have one of these M-Vave FM-1 thingies - the £50 Aliexpress toy that runs Dexed. Got it back in June before All This Nonsense kicked off and didn't really get time to play with it. Last week I decided to try some of these vibecoded firmwares and...wow:

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Transmission Shortwave, our lo-fi, low-stakes, high-vibes courier delivery sim set in 90s Britain to a chill jungle/d&b soundtrack wot I wrote is OUT NOW - again! This time for PC on Steam (2D & Steam VR). Just a couple of quid/bucks and 10% off store.steampowered.com/app/4348970/...

store.steampowered.comSave 10% on Transmission: Shortwave on SteamDeliver parcels as fast or relaxed as you like in the Pal-Co Virtual Cyber Megaspace! Enter a 90s retro-futuristic Great Britain complete with witty banter, wacky objects, and wonderful beats. Enjoy y...
echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Found this Gazetteer of Scottish Ghosts coincidentally(??!?) two days after being stuck behind a furniture van on the A75 between Dumfries and Annan, but what’s more alarming is that the author named it this despite ‘Och Aye The Boo!’ being right there (Aware of this one, @misterabk.bsky.social ?)

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Me: “Hey Belfast, where does your drinking water come from? It’s not Lough Neagh, is it? And I’m warning you, the answer had better not be enchantingly mysterious” Belfast: “er… The Silent Valley” Me: “asdfghj[]{}#%^”

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Hasn’t Belfast suffered enough? Ach sure I’m only messing, ONLY MESSING - love a good pluck. A mate of mine is teaching on it anyway, it’ll be class

echolevel reposted

jenspooki 👻🧛🎃🧟
@jenoki.net

Glitch2 is now available to download and use for free, in memory of its creator, Kieran Foster. AKA illformed / dblue. illformed.com

illformed.comIllformed :: Glitch²
jenspooki 👻🧛🎃🧟@jenoki.net

My dear friend Kieran passed away on Thursday 2nd July. Many of you will know him as Illformed or dblue, the creator of the famous Glitch VST plugin. He was the most genuine, no-bullshit, kind-hearted, generous person I have known.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

What the shitting fuck is wrong with Slack? What are "Miles Davis themes"? Genre-redefining innovation, smack addiction and guest starring on Miami Vice? I'm at work, I haven't got time for any of that

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echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Also no, I will never set myself as 'active', stop asking. That's way more information than anyone needs about me, especially my colleagues.

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

What the shitting fuck is wrong with Slack? What are "Miles Davis themes"? Genre-redefining innovation, smack addiction and guest starring on Miami Vice? I'm at work, I haven't got time for any of that

echolevel reposted

_lemon
@andylemon.bsky.social

Shame I couldnt make it down to #developconf this year, hope folks are having a good one down on the beach & at BIT's, sending remote happy #amiga #chiptune beep beeps + good vibes <3 :)

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

Finally switched to Dear ImGui's docking branch for Metron. With only a little plumbing (after ditching my own clumsy floating panel system) it does an huge amount right out of the box. Trackers are info DENSE so split tabs, showing/hiding, toggling layout presets etc is crucial. #dearimgui #gamedev

echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk

The plumbing: mostly rolling your own preset save/recall - but even that is largely taken care of automatically if you use Dear ImGui's .ini system, which stores child window size/position/hierarchy per user. You can build a default layout for new users, then let them immediately decide it's stupid.

echolevel reposted

jenspooki 👻🧛🎃🧟
@jenoki.net

My dear friend Kieran passed away on Thursday 2nd July. Many of you will know him as Illformed or dblue, the creator of the famous Glitch VST plugin. He was the most genuine, no-bullshit, kind-hearted, generous person I have known.