Besides the usual toolbar icons: new, open, save, save as, undo and redo. There's the play/stop icon (CTRL-SpaceBar to toggle play/stop).
Press this icon to go back to the parent group of the group currently displayed in the patchbay
Access the parameter linking window: Simply highlight one source parameter and one destination parameter, then the "Link" button to link them together
Click the box icon to access the MediaPool where all the clips (wavs, aiffs, etc) used by bidules are managed.
- Use it to load an audio file so that it becomes accessible to the Audio File Player, for example. Even if you open 15 sample playback devices to play myWav.wav, it will only be read/put in memory once.
- WARNING: watch the lengths of those audio files!!! (it has to fit in RAM).
To load file(s) press the Add File(s) button and select the audio files you want with the open file dialog. To remove files, select them in the list and press the Remove File(s) button or press the "Del" key.
Besides all the usual options you're used to seeing in the menus, there are 2 important items under Edit.
The Offline mode was added to Bidule so that it could be used to
- Render audio to disk faster than realtime, when the graph takes less than 100% cpu in normal use
- Render stutter-free audio to disk, when the graph takes more than 100% cpu usage in normal use.
When using the Offline mode, you will notice that the standard cpu gauge has been replaced by an elapsed time meter, which should give you an estimate of the speed at which the render is done.
On : Windows always stay on top of the patchbay Off: Windows only appear on top of the patchbay when double-clicking on a bidule
On : The video card will use its power to render the patchbay, potentially antialiasing lines. Off: A default "Microsoft" software OpenGL rendered will be used. If the Graphics slows down, or you get audio glitching when moving things around, you may want to try both settings to see what your system preffers.
Enable/disable use of your operating system's regional settings which include language, units settings (floating points are separated by comma or radix), etc. Bidule ships with some pre-defined languages, if you would like to help us in adding a translation to your language, please advise us so! WARNING if some VST/AU plugins cease working, please try without this option checked, if it makes any difference, please advise the plugin author that he doesn't support C locales properly.
Set the path where Bidule can find your VST plugins, this only exist for the Windows version as Bidule will automatically look to the standard locations in OS X (/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST and $HOME/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST)
On : sorts the VST plugins by company names Off: sorts the VST plugins with the folder names in your VST plug-ins folder
This setting only exists in the Windows version and is primarily aimed at Pro Tools/Digidesign hardware users. This needs to be turned on for Bidule to work as a ReWire slave within Pro Tools on Windows or any other ReWire master application using a Digidesign audio interface.
Enable/disable Bidule ReWire slave outputs to show up as stereo in the ReWire master application
Select the number of ports you want to use in the Bidule ReWire device, a port represent 16 MIDI channels, some software limit the number of available MIDI outputs (ReWire, virtual instruments, software and physical outputs) and will show each channel of each port as a possible MIDI output so you might want to set this to something lower than 4.
Preferences for streaming file from and to disk, don't touch if you're not sure what you're doing...
WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE is the new Microsoft standard header created to support multichannel files and non standard bit depths. as it is new, not all editors understand what those files are at all, while others expects all multichannel, or 24bit files to be in that format. Hence why you have the choice of the following behaviour:
- always: always writes it, for any number of channels or bit depth.
- adaptive: only use when required by Microsoft's standards, example any 24 bit file or any file with more than 2 channels.
- never: always use the old header style (WAVEFORMATEX)
The sampling rate to use for the audio interface. Be aware that some interfaces don't support all possible sampling rates. You will get an error message if you select a sampling rate not supported by your audio interface when you try to use it.
This is the size of the buffer used internally in Bidule, not the one for your audio driver. The lower this quantity the lesser the latency but the higher the CPU requirements.
When reducing the number of bits in audio samples, its better to dither. If your audio card only has a 16 bit DAC, you should think of putting this on (for a slight CPU increase)
Enable this option if you wish Bidule to bypass your ASIO driver's control panel latency setting and try set it closer to its own buffer size. ONLY use this setting if you know what you're doing. (under some configuration it may just as well add more crackling).
Since some ASIO control panels (like Creative ASIO) dont allow you to set power of two buffers (32,64,128,256,512), this is often the only way to get low latency and low MIDI I/O jitter using Bidule with your driver. In any case look at the "Current Latency Details" text displayed in the GUI of your Audio Device in Bidule for more details If you get both input/ouput buffer size "->match", then you know you have the best settings. if you get "-> adapting", then it probably means that it can be tweaked a bit more.
Use this option to launch a scan of VST/AU plugins using the directory that is set in preferences.
The ReWire Devices configuration dialog lets you specify defaults number of MIDI inputs/outputs, number of audio outputs and if the ReWire application should be launch/closed automatically. Use this to set up as many MIDI inputs you want for a ReWire device or restrain the number of audio outputs to only 2 if you only want to have the master output. If you have multiple layouts using ReWire devices and you want to be able to quickly change between them, make sure to un-check to the auto-launch option, this will keep the ReWire application opened and it will be ready to use as soon as the layout is loaded.