Patches on the Witch?

OWL Witch
#1

I am considering purchasing one of these. Could somebody please let me know how many patches can be stored on the Witch at a single time - is it limited to 8?

In addition, can the Witch run any PureData or Max patch, or do those patches need to be reconfigured or adjusted somehow to run on the Witch? I ask because I am not a programmer, and the idea of having a standalone device onto which (no pun intended) I can simply load pre-existing PureData or Max patches without further programming effort is very appealing.

Thanks in advance!

#2

How about 40 patches? But note that there’s second limit - 8Mbytes of storage shared by patches and resources (samples, etc). The patches themselves are fairly small (often end up less than 64k in size).

I would suggest to start by reading docs at https://www.openwarelab.org/ . You have to realize that you can run on such device is not identical desktop software . For PD you can only use objects supported by the Heavy compiler (there’s a lot of them but vanilla PD still has more). And we run code exported from gen~ rather than arbitrary Max patches.

Besides changes to patch contents that may have to be made, you’d have to assign some parameters to OWL inputs (or outputs). I guess that falls into adjustments category, however this is a rather trivial thing.

If that is clear, you can have a look at what’s possible in our current library - https://www.rebeltech.org/patch-library/patches/tags . Many of those patches were made for the old OWL pedal/module that has less SDRAM among other things and could be improved for current hardware.

#3

This is excellent information, and very useful - thank you very much!!

I think I will give it a go. One additional question, though - does the device come with a manual? I searched high and low on the website for the information about patch storage, but couldn’t find any reference to the 40 you mention (or, for that matter, how to cycle through more than the original 8)?

#4

This is as close as it gets to manual - https://witch.rebeltech.org/

Ah I see now, I think that currently you can use buttons on device to select first 8 patches or use MIDI to select any of the 40 patch slots. You can send MIDI from device page in OWL patcher or using anything that sends MIDI (external controller). I think that describes it accurately, but @mars could confirm if that’s true or not.

We could expose more patch for selection from device if we change patch selection process, for example enter them as binary numbers or use knobs.

#5

Thanks! The ability to select additional patches from the device itself would be extremely helpful, from my point of view. I don’t mind connecting a computer to upload/swap patches, but would rather not be connected to select them - this would provide the greatest flexibility as a standalone device.

Can the lights show more than two colors? Perhaps different patches can be shown by having more than one light of each color light up when patches beyond the original 8 are selected?

#6

No, there aren’t secret LED colors or we would be using them already :wink: But we could easily assign one of the knobs to act as bank selection for choosing groups of 8 patches depending on its position. I’m sure that Martin would add something like this once there’s enough users with pitchforks asking about more patches being selectable.

#7

That would be fantastic! I’m happy to provide the pitchforks to whomever needs them :).

#8

Hi there - just wondering how difficult it would be to implement the knob selection for banks of patches as you mentioned? Fingers crossed that this can be done simply/quickly!

Thanks in advance!!

#9

You do know that you can overwrite the factory patches right?

I’m not sure how bank selection could be done without complicating things for users that just want to select between 8 patches in an easy way.

What I had in mind was to use an inverted scheme for slots 9 to 16: all buttons apart from the selected one would be lit up, either red (9, 10, 11, 12) or yellow (13, 14, 15, 16). So to access all patches you’d have to press the button up to four times, and do some mental arithmetics.

#10

Fun fact: we could implement ternary patch number display to allow up to 80 patches with those 4 LEDs. Obviously nobody would be able to understand what’s the actual number being displayed, but that’s a minor inconvenience when things get that nerdy.

#11

Thank you both for your prompt responses and thoughts! As I mentioned above, personally, my goal is to avoid the computer as much as possible, so the more patches I have available to me on the device itself, the better. I don’t mind doing some mental gymnastics (and using my ears) to determine the patches. For example, if I could cycle through all my pads on button 1, all my leads on button 2, etc., I wouldn’t mind pressing the button 10 (or 20 :grinning:) times to go through them all.

I assume this would be optional for users, as well - in other words, those users who still just wanted to have 8 patches on the Witch could just upload 8 patches to the device, with the remaining slots for each button empty, correct?

I really appreciate your attention to this - thanks again!

#12

That doesn’t sound like something that everyone would want to do and is not even necessary. Realistically we can either add that inverted mode that @mars mentioned to implement selection of 16 patches with a few extra clicks or we could use a knob as bank selector. The latter makes a bit more sense to me and positioning bank selection knob in one of 5 positions without an indicator should be fairly easy.

#13

We’re talking about options here, no? Everyone doesn’t have to do anything - those who want to have only 8 patches stored on the device only need to load 8 patches; I assume that there would be a way for that user to cycle through just the patches on the device without having to go through 32 or 72 empty slots. If others (like me) would like as much patch storage as reasonably possible on the device without needing to be connected to the computer, I agree that your idea of using the knob for bank selection would be great. My comment was in response to @mars’ concern that with additional patch storage, it may become difficult to determine which patch you have selected. Again, personally, if I group my patches into one bank for pads, one bank for drones, etc., I don’t really care about cycling through each bank without precise visual feedback identifying the patch.

#14

Hi - just wondering if you have given this any more thought? Having one of the knobs used to select one of 5 banks does seem like a good idea - fully CCW, noon and fully CW could be three of the positions/banks, while anywhere between CCW-noon and noon-CW could represent the other two positions/banks.

I’m excited to get more patch storage (and selection) on the device - thanks in advance for your help!

#15

Hey @bharris22, sorry if I got you confused, but you should be asking @mars rather me about official firmware features. I’m merely a user on forum (that spends too much time on it or so it seems). While I do some firmware hacking and know that it’s fairly easy to implement this, I don’t have a Witch among my OWL family. But I’m fairly sure that Martin’s comment above indicates that he does plan to extend amount of selectable patches in some future firmware update.

And yes, what you described is exactly what I had in mind. BTW, OWL1 had something similar for selecting 5 banks x 8 patches with its first 2 knobs.

#16

Excellent - thank you very much for the clarification, @antisvin!