Head Case Builder 1.54 Sneak Peak

[Ken McLaren]

Hi guys, I wanted to give you a sneak peak at somne of the features that have been enabled in Head Case 1.54. Right now I only have the Builder done, but nevertheless some of these features will be added to the Suite, and the rest of the head case plugs.

MIDI CONTROL!!
I am happy to say that for the first time, head case will have MIDI control. This was a bit of a pain for me because I have never written any midi control code before. So, it was a bit of a learning curve.

I tried to make it as easy as possible. Select the knob or switch that you want to control, click learn, step on a switch on your midi controller, and click stop learning. Thats it.. Oh and click save when you're done.
There is an enable button, and an Inverse button. I'm sure this will get a lot more sophisticated as I learn and use midi control myself for now its a start...

Locking Controls.
One of the things that bothered me and Amit about builder was that sometimes you would miss the knob and click in the drag area. You would end up moving your knob somewhere that you don't want it. This allows you to lock the controls in place so this does not happen.


Third Party Applications and scripts.
Head Case builder now has an interface that will allow you to easily get to the scripts and apps.

No more going to windows explorer to run a script or app. Just use the above program to select what apps or scripts you want made available, they will be made available in the apps menu shown below.


Other news about 1.54. We will be lifting the 10 head limit for head case lite demo, and we will be enabling head categories as well.

I hope to have this available to the pre-purchase forum by Saturday, and a full final (cross your fingers) beta release by Thursday.

[strangedogs]

Outstanding work Ken. Looks great!

[sjc]

Excellent! You have been quite the busy bee! Thanks for all the hard work.

Looking forward to the new goodies

~scott

[Ken McLaren]

I am most interested in getting the midi sorted and I'd like to add the ability to change Head Case presets with it as well. However, one must creep before they crawl..

[chrishooker]

Creep, indeed. Don't go chasing waterfalls.

[Ken McLaren]

haha Thanks now I got that song in my head!

j/j chris..

[Tetragammatone]

You are God blessed, Master Ken. Thank you for not letting yourself a hint of retreat. Keep it on as you can. How about the Stomp Modder?

[Ken McLaren]

I was looking at it briefly today and there really is not that much left to do on it. The challenge will be rolling it out into head case. So, that will have to come at a later time after official release..

[atalwar]

Nice! Midi is cool!!
Ken are we not using the new app manager? or is this just old screenshot?

Thx Man.

[Ken McLaren]

Yeah its just old...

[PVDHP]

Head Case Lite Suite version (not Builder) have frequency flip above 11-12KHz (like an ringing artifacts). Builder not have such problem.

[Tetragammatone]

Well, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed, Ken...

[Justin121]

I failed to get in on the pre-purchase but have been waiting months to buy headcase. When is this being released as acmebargig isn't responding to questions on their website forum

[Ken McLaren]

Sorry Justin, we are in the process of removing our forums actually and instead will be switching to facebook and other social sites. I thought those forums were already down so I have not checked them.

So here is the status update..
I have just released the head case builder 1.54 to the pre-purchase group and pleased to say that all reports except for one have come back positive. The only reported issue was with the midi control portion, but I am about halfway through the fix for that already. I need to get to PVDHP's report from here as well for it..

The suite will be finished this weekl as well as all the other additions, so long as we don't run into any issues with the midi control. As soon as I have that done, we'll do a release of the LITE version 1.54 here for a final run through, and then ASAP We will release. I think it prudent to run through one more public release before we let the dogs out..

Thanks man..

[Justin121]

Thanks for the super quick reply Ken! I look forward to getting it!

Could you let me know what the price is again? I can't find it on the site.

Thanks much!

[Tetragammatone]

afaik headcase lite will be around $45 and the complete version - $65...

[Justin121]

afaik headcase lite will be around $45 and the complete version - $65...

Thanks, what's the difference between lite and full?

[Ken McLaren]

Hi Justin.. No worries, sorry I didn't get your question at the forum..
Yes tetra is right wityh prices.
Head Case LITE has the builder, and the suite (without iFace).

Head Case complete has..
The Builder, and the Suite, but iFace is also included in the suite. In addition it also comes with the following.

The Loner
This is the head loader without any of the other components so it allows you to build your own effects chain yet still use Head Case heads. You use this the same way you would use any of the freeware heads available here, and else where.
It also has all three cab interfaces as stand alone VST plugs iFace, Filter Cabs, and Mimic. as well as consolidated which is all three built into one stand alone VST plug as well.
The effects racxk is included as a stand alone vst plug
The Cabinet EQ as a stand alone

[Justin121]

Thanks!

[Ken McLaren]

NP

[Justin121]

Would iface load any impulses or just redwirez? I'm a noob!

[Tetragammatone]

iFace only takes RedWirez IRs but Mimic Cabs within Head Case let you load any external 3rd party impulses and even 'tweak' them to some extent...

[Justin121]

Thank you!

[Ken McLaren]

@justin..
The nice people at Red 5 Group, owner of the Redwirez franchise, have a freeware Marshall 1960A cabinet library. I think its got like 11 mics with it. Just go to their site and you can download it..

[Ken McLaren]

Update On Head Case Builder 1.54
I am relatively new to midi control in this regard, although I have used them before, I have never written anything to use them. I must admit, I assumed it would be a simple straight forward process, boy was I wrong. Every DAW seems to handle this differently, and just the vast amount of possibilities that midi control brings added to the complexity.

So we finally have decided on a Midi controller strategy and we implimented the code. That seems to have gained approval but we'll know more when we do a final test run at the private forum this week end. Then hopefully if everything goes ok at the private forum we can do a release here early next week. It would be appreciated if everyone here that has a midi controller can give it a run through at that time as well.

The features in Head Case's MIDI implimentation are as follows..

MIDI Learn
This allows you to select a switch or a knob from head case that you want to control. All you do is touch the midi control that you want to assign to the switch or knob and its done.

Stomp box mode
This is already programmed in the software so there is no need to assign multiple CC's or values. Head Case assumes you are programming a switch so it handles the details of the on off state by remembering what the last state was.

Enable
This simply turns midi control on for the knob or switch

Inverse
This sets the value for the switch or knob to be opposite, so off is on and on is off. If it's set to a knob, off is full, full is off. This is helpful if you have one cc that goes to multiple parameters. For example, say you have the Delay on for your normal song parts in the verses, then you want to have the Flanger on for the chorus. You simply assign te same CC value to both the delay and the flanger but you set one of them to inverse. This will turn on the flanger and shut off the delay, or turn on the delay and shut off the flanger.

Percent Min and Percent max
This allows you to define a range that the knob will move. For example, you can use the peak knob as a sort of wah type effect, now you can easily define the range in the knob itself, but in some cases with other knobs you can't. Say for example the mid knob. If you want to have the mid knob move from 25% to 60% for some special effect for a solo or something, then you can define that movement here. A real world example may be this..
You define the Gain knob on your expression pedal so that you can control the amount of gain, you use it on about half way for your verses, then for the solo you want it on full. So when the solo comes up you crank the gain and noodle. However, the increased gain makes your sound disappear into the mix. So you can use the Percent Min and Percent max to increase the volume, adjust the mids, and cut down on the treble all at the same time by assigning them to the same cc value and setting these percentages, and inverses.

If you want the treble to be cut by 25% when the expression pedal is full, set it to inverse, and set the percent max to 75%. Now when the expression pedal is full the treble knob will only go to 75%..