Composers Desktop Project Forum

Soundshaper 6.3 has now been released. There are no functional changes since the 6.3 BETA release last month, so if you have downloaded this, you could possibly just change the exe name to Soundshaper.exe.

The CDP PC download now contains the new Soundshaper (along with SoundLoom and CDP Release 8 software, as before). Full and Upgrade versions of Soundshaper and CDP programs only are also available at the Soundshaper website:
https://www.soundshaper.net/dloads.html

Sounds like a fundamental setup issue.
The recommended CDP setup is to a folder called CDPR8 (though you could call it something else).
Within that there should be a Soundshaper folder called Soundshaper6.
Within that there's a BAT subfolder containing CmdData.txt.
Please check this is all in order.

If Soundshaper is not finding this file, it might be because you have installed into a path with a space in the name, such as \Program Files. If this doesn't resolve the issue, I would ask you to describe your setup locations/folders and I'll also look at the source code and test its checks against your setup.

Having looked into this question a bit further, it seems clear that the self-extracting installer for CDP (PC version) has triggered false positives in some anti-virus software. In response, we've created zip-file alternatives: the "FULL" zip includes the offline CDP documentation, while the "LITE" zip is the same but without the documentation (which can be accessed online).  In addition, there is a Soundshaper-only version. These files can be downloaded from here: www.soundshaper.net/dloads.html#CDPZIP 

In each zip, there is a folder CDPR8 which contains everything you need and should be copied to a location of your choice (with a few caveats) and can be renamed as you wish. The CDP programs themselves are housed within a subfolder _cdprogs where they must remain for the correct operation of either GUI.

We think the AV software is probably reacting to the self-extracting exe used for setup. I looked at the individual exe files inside the distribution and a random selection of the CDP ones scored completely "clean", as did Soundloom. Soundshaper,exe upset just one of the AV programs, which saw it as a PUP - Potentially Unwanted Program (same as PUA).

We'll probably switch to a disk-image ISO or a plain zip file, but this will mean revising the installation notes, which can't be done until after next week.  I'll post again when completed.

Thanks for this analysis. We'll try to follow these up. Two thoughts though: (1) I've not heard of any of the programs that found fault with the files - all the well-known anti-virus packages seem to pass them. (2) it's hard to believe that the Lite zip would be seen as more malicious than the full one, though, given that it has far fewer files - it's exactly the same as Full less the CDP Documentation, so that doesn't add up somehow.

Hi,
It's always better to be safe than sorry. I'll just add that if by any change there IS a virus in my machine, it's certainly not done any damage so far. Not to my files anyway. Also, I develop Soundshaper on a separate PC that is never connected to the internet, to keep it as clean as I can.

Robert

The Windows installer has been virus-checked by Trend Micro anti-virus and that shows up no threats; the same applies to the various Soundshaper downloads on my site. As you'll appreciate, it's not practical to install more than one virus checker, but I'd be glad if other users were to flag up any threats their particular anti-virus software has detected, so that these can be followed up.  It is marginally possible that there could be a virus, but I'm inclined to suspect this is a false positive. When I run a new copy of Soundshaper on Win10, Trend immediately thinks it's found a threat, because the program is deleting files - of course it is, they're temporary soundfiles!

Ultimately, the user must make up their own mind about the safety or otherwise of this software which is supplied "as is". There's certainly no intention to spread viruses.

A Soundshaper upgrade (6.3) for existing users has been released as a Beta-test version. The zip can be downloaded here: https://www.soundshaper.net/dloads.html and a brief description is given here: https://www.soundshaper.net/news.html

This is not a full release - just a revised exe to put alongside your existing Soundshaper.exe - plus a few supporting documents.

The main change is an improved method for processing part of a file: the CUT-PROCESS-PASTE mechanism is now built in to Soundshaper's scripts, where applicable, so that all you do is to select the portion to be processed, click PROCESS SELECTION, then the process itself, and the whole file is returned with just the processed segment altered.  There is also a new built-in BALANCE function, which can be applied to the whole file or the selected segment. A full description is included in the zip.

Comments and bug reports would be very welcome - either to the Forum or by email.

May I just add to that - if you want to hold a value for a while, put the same value at a later time, so that no interpolation occurs. Just make sure the later time is slightly less than the one which follows it. For example:

0.0 1
0.5 2
2.299 2
2.3 4.5
[etc]

Thanks for your feedback, Aila. Glad to know you've resolved the issue now.

Hi, In many programs, you can save content to different file types. For example in Paint, you can save the image as a jpeg, bmp etc.  Soundshaper doesn't as yet do this sort of conversion when saving (exporting)  files. So if the output type is .wav you should select .wav as the file type, if .ana, select .ana and so on.  The message you quote comes up only if you're trying to save the output file to a different type. This applies to saving via the standard Windows selector and the SAVE box on the left. The output cell is colour-coded to help with file-types: white for wav soundfiles, aqua for spectral freq. files (.ana), mauve for pitch-data files (.frq), green for formant file (.for), red for binary envelope files (.evl), plus a few others. 

There is one exception to the above, though. If Option 5 ("Auto-FFT ana-wav") is set (and I think it normally should be), spectral output (ana files) are auto-converted to .wav for play and display purposes (although aqua for ana is still the cell-box colour). You can therefore select .wav as the output file-type to save to. Soundshaper does have a range of auto-conversions and maybe more should be applied when saving (I'll look into this), but some are not technically possible anyway, e.g. .for to .wav. It would be clearer if the file-types listed for saving could be narrowed to show only the relevant ones and I'll look into that for the next update.

You're welcome to send me any screenshots if this doesn't help. I'm not clear what you're referring to when you "open up windows to do processing it looks well out of whack" - maybe a screenshot would help here.

Robert

Hi Aila,
There are some instructions here about unlinking OneDrive:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/turn-off-disable-or-uninstall-onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0

I would suggest caution before tinkering with any Windows setup though! On my own machine, the link between its internal OneDrive folder and syncing this to the cloud got broken somehow and I'm happy to keep it that way, as I can still access the actual cloud OneDrive by signing in to my Microsoft account in a browser. I've no wish for all my junk files to be sent to the cloud and clog up my limited space there.

Previously, you seemed to have set your temp. folder within OneDrive and I really wouldn't recommend this. However, I can't say for sure that this is the root of your problem and it would still be helpful if you could send me one example of a file that won't load. There have been instances in the past where copysfx is not able to read the file and it's important that we can rule this out.

I had wondered initially that slow loading could be the issue, but on re-examining the code Soundshaper does check twice to see if the file is there - after a 1" delay, which is enormously long for a modern computer.
Robert

Hi Aila, I still don't seem to have received your email. The current email address can be found on the Contacts page at www.soundshaper.net. Looking forward to getting this issue fixed! Robert

Hi Aila,
No email has come through yet (but sometimes these things are slow).
You've given me the path of your temp folder. I would like to check your CDP programs folder (go to Options | Settings, it should be listed there).
I'm not happy that the temp path has a space in it - could you not rename the \CDP ss\ bit to \CDPss\ ?
Also, your temp folder seems to be using OneDrive - for good reasons no doubt -  but I hope that's not slowing things down if it's syncing to the cloud. That might be the root of the problem.
Thanks,
Robert

Hi Aila,
Could you send me an example of a file that doesn't work? (Email can be found at soundshaper.net). Also, can you send me a note of the path of your CDP programs.   I need to test this for myself with an actual file.

Thanks,
Robert