Open Sound Control

Open Sound Control (OSC)

Open Sound Control was planned to be a successor of the MIDI control protocol: It enables communication between computer software, sound synthesizers and other multimedia devices that support OSC.

Its advantages over MIDI include: an open-ended and dynamic URL-style symbolic naming scheme, symbolic and high-resolution numeric argument data, pattern matching language to specify multiple recipients of a single message, high resolution time tags and "bundles" of messages whose effects must occur simultaneously.

Basically this means it can do a lot more than MIDI can do, but due to its very open ended specification, you always have to fully configure both, the OSC client (the one which sends OSC data) and the OSC server (the one which receives data - Renoise) in order to do something with it. Unlike MIDI, which works more or less out of the box with every device you connect MIDI to.

The advantage of this very open specification, is that OSC is not limited to music applications only, but can also be used with video systems, web-based tools, other programming languages too etc. Further OSC connections are done through network connections - ethernet or internet, which nearly every computer nowadays comes equipped with. This even allows remote-controlling other computers or devices through the internet.

For more general information about OSC have a look at the OSC Wikipedia page and the official OSC homepage.

Setup

OSC in Renoise can be used in two ways:

1. fully configurable and customizable via Renoises scripting API. Please have a look at the Scripting API pages for more info. This allows you to send and receive any OSC messages, define your own communication protocol, but requires programming knowledge.
2. using Renoise as OSC server (OSC receiver) via a prespecified OSC message set.

To setup Renoise as OSC server, open the OSC options panel by choosing "Edit -> Preferences -> OSC" from the main menu:

• Enable Server: This starts the Renoise OSC server and the network port is changed to a listening state, so you may get a firewall warning the first time this is enabled.
• Incoming Messages: This panel simply displays messages relevant to the networking process.
• Protocol: Select the protocol which the Renoise server will use:
  • Udp: Provides a high transfer rate with lower reliability than Tcp.
  • Tcp: Provides a lower transfer rate than Udp with higher reliability.
• Port: Select the Port number for messages to be transferred over. Generally, a number greater than 1024 is used.
• Command List: Lists the various commands that it is possible to use to communicate with Renoise.
• Explanation Panel: When clicking on a command in the Command List, an explanation of what the command does is displayed here.

Examples

TouchOSC via Duplex

The Duplex Tool comes with a Device preset for TouchOSC, an iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad app, that allows those devices to control Renoise via OSC. To use it, select "TouchOSC" from the "Device" pulldown menu in the Duplex Browser and adjust the configuration as needed within the "Settings" dialog box. Then, using the TouchOSC app on the Apple device, you can change the values of the various knobs and sliders on the screen to control various features of Renoise.

Duplex uses Renoises Scripting API to communicate with touch OSC, so its fully configurable, and can also be used as en example on how to wrap up your own OSC implementation in Renoise.

Pure Data

PD (aka Pure Data) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Pd was created to explore ideas of how to further refine the Max paradigm with the core ideas of allowing data to be treated in a more open-ended way and opening it up to applications outside of audio and MIDI, such as graphics and video. There are different versions available to download for PC, Mac and Linux.

Using PD With Renoise Via OSC

• First install PD, then download, unzip and open the "test-renoise-osc.pd" file within PD.
• In the top left corner you can set the port number to match the OSC port number you have chosen for Renoise [connect localhost XXXX]. With Edit Mode (Ctrl + E) you can edit the numbers.
• To the right, you can start and stop playing Renoise with the [send / renoise / transport / start] and [send / renoise / transport / stop] buttons.
• The test program comes with a set of commands already loaded in. Make sure a sample is loaded into into slot 00 within Renoise and press the "chord-test" button in PD. You should hear a chord being played. You can also click on the individual commands to hear the individual notes.
• If you would like to enter new OSC messages yourself:
  • Select from the menu "Put -> Message", place the box on the screen and enter your desired command (check the Command List in OSC Setup for available commands).
  • Connect the new message box by hovering over the bottom left corner (the cursor will become a circle) then clicking and dragging over to the "sendOSC" box.
  • Cancel edit mode with (Ctrl + E) and click the box to send the message to Renoise via OSC.