osccontrol-light - An audio plugin that speaks OSC

This software enables sending and receiving of Open Sound Control (OSC) messages from audio plugin host environments such as digital audio workstations (DAW).

Controls are tied to OSC messages directly in the host environment without encoding the control data as MIDI CC messages. This way, control automation can be sent and received via OSC at full resolution, and all time sequencing, automation recording, modulation and side-chaining functionality of the host environment can be used for external OSC control.

We provide a plugin or standalone UI that enables prototyping of control presets by quick switching and reloading of preset definitions. To integrate into a host environment with automatable controls, the plugin can run in headless mode that loads a specific preset upon construction.

Control presets are defined via a concise YAML-based textual markup format.

Usage

To run the standalone UI application, execute the osccontrol-light application binary. To run the UI inside a plugin host, make the osccontrol-light.{so,dll} file available to the host environment and load the plugin.

The UI elements are illustrated in the following.

To create a headless instance of the plugin that provides automatable controls inside an audio plugin host environment, create a copy of the osccontrol-light.{so,dll} file with the preset name as osccontrol-light-<name>.{so,dll}. This enables registration of the controls at plugin initialization time, which is necessary for most hosts.

In headless mode, controls are exposed directly in the host UI and can be mapped to controller input or automated and modulated at full resolution. The following images show an example preset integrated into different host environments.

Environment variables:

OSCCONTROL_SCALE_FACTOR: Set UI scale factor for high DPI displays.
OSCCONTROL_PRESET_PATH: Set directory with preset definitions.

The directory specified via the UI or OSCCONTROL_PRESET_PATH will be searched recursively for *.yaml preset definition files.

Please note: setting OSCCONTROL_PRESET_PATH in the environment is mandatory for headless mode!

Preset Definitions

Control presets are defined in a YAML-based configuration format as follows. Refer to the Presets folder for more examples.

network:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 6789

controls:
  - name: frequency
    type: float
    default: 440
    range: [100, 2000]
    message: /synth/freq

  - name: amplitude
    type: float
    default: 0.8
    message: /synth/amplitude

  - name: vibrato
    type: float
    default: 0.0
    message: /synth/vibrato

  - name: voices
    type: int
    default: 1
    range: [1, 6]
    message: /synth/voices

  - name: sub-oscillator
    type: toggle
    default: off
    message: /synth/sub-osc

Continuous float, discrete int, and boolean toggle control types are currently supported.

Platform Support

Different plugin SDKs are supported via the JUCE library (VST, VST3, AU, RTAS and AAX), as well as all major operating systems (GNU/Linux, MacOS and Microsoft Windows).

Compilation

Build the standalone application and plugin for your platform by exporting the project files for your favorite IDE using the Projucer application that ships with JUCE.

Licensing

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

See the LICENSE file for more details.

mkschulze / osccontrol-light