Greetings…
I know earlier last year Qubit talked about a firmware update for the neb V2. Is that still going to happen…this year?
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Yes, we are still working on a Neb v2 firmware update slated for release this year.
Our engineering bandwidth was eaten up last year with some chip shortage related redesigns and the update was pushed back.
Are there specific features you want to see in the update?
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So great this module is still being supported with updates. I signed up to show my enthusiasm and share some wishes for a future update. Here’s what I’ve got!
More responsive and accurate pitch, start speed cv. Currently feels like each of these lags a little behind the CV that is fed in, so it feels hard to do precise sequencing with these parameters. Anything to make the Nebulae feel snappier and more accurate would be great for my use case.
When I use the option to randomly pitch grains, id like to be able to apply some pitch quantisation, maybe snap to different intervals, so this effect can be a bit more musically useful
When I use phase vocoder mode Id like to be able to use “freeze” without the “stepping” and warbling you currently get. It would be cool if this had some smoothing of some kind as currently the freeze setting isn’t very usable.
When I trigger grains via the source in jack I’d like this to be more responsive to higher rates of triggering. Currently the response doesn’t feel very true to
the rate of what is fed in.
QOL
- Automatic state save on power down
- more gracefully handling wrongly formatted audio files (currently can causes boot failures)
Thanks for reading!
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These are great ideas!
Thanks for posting.
We’ll keep this in mind for the update.
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I sent a request last year to tighten up the grain response to trigger input. But I will put it out there again
Green trace is trig, red is neb 2 response.
Also wondering if grain generation can be synced to clock input with multiply/division (including odd time).
Salut
k
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Hey!
I am super excited to hear about the upcoming update.
I would like to see improvements in crossfading at
The end of the loop to avoid clicks.
Also it would be great to let alternative instruments use reset LED to blink on the end of cycle.
Best
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People are posting request for things to put in this update, but what things are already going to be put in it? What things are going to improve or change?
Great to see you on the forum!
Here’s what we have slated so far in the update:
- Improved v/oct tracking and calibration routine
- Various latency modes
- Improved trigger response
- SuperCollider support
I can’t promise that we’ll be able to hit all of these, but they are the top priorities!
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I’d very much like to see this too
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Better CV Pitch response. I guess there is a slight slew/lag implemented when turning the knob(s) to get rid of the digital processing, but for the CV part (which can separately done in Python) this should not be present. Play fast note and you will hear it. (but this has priority, nice!).
Also way to calibrate the 1v/oct, now you need to hack control.py to do it (issue #24 on github).
And as a programmer of CSound, I’d wish a more updated version of CSound (6.16 or 6.17) is being used. A LOT of more stuff is possible in there!
For the main Granular Instrument… uhm… Maybe a different kind of file handling? It would ne nice to have instruments or wav’s in folders. Not sure how to do this, but now we (or at least I) have 5 or 6 USB’s laying around with ‘only’ ~75mb of wavs each. When you have 75mb of wav’s per folder, only 1 USB is enough.
Oh, and please update the Alternate Instrument page so my ‘Avalon’ and ‘Mars Affects’ instruments are available through the site, not only via GitHub 
Another tip, please ship the Neb’s with a better SD card. Loading 75mb of wavs (in my case for Robert Pabst Realms instrument), you need to re-flash the SD card with a faster one, or the unit hangs in a 'wav load / reset cycle). Robert and I have experienced this on three different Neb’s.
Cheers, Airell
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Maybe this can be considered too. Is the Size of the grain relative to the position of the knob, the length of the loaded wav and position of Start? It’s like you can’t get a (very) small part when a larger size wav is loaded, but it’s also that the Start selection is too course. I don’t know how many ‘steps’ of (digital) resolution it is.
I can imagine that at the end of a wav, the Size gets smaller because you can’t go passed the end of the wav.
For me it feels completely different throughout the same wav, but with other positions of the knobs how large the Size is.
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Thinking a bit more about a feature…a ‘clock input mode’. This mode would obviously accept a clock in, but would auto granulate (maybe allow manual granulation as well) the current sample so that the sample/loop is now played back in time with clock’s tempo. Sort of like ginkosynthe’s sampleslicer and how it chops the samples and can be held in sync
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Replying to show interest 
I’m wishing for changes that helps syncing/timing to play nicer with trigger or gate sequencers and consistency/responsiveness of cv modulation.
Polyphony/voice/grain amount count in some way; afaik different granular softwares out there are able to play/loop at a single point Or more at the same time where Neb2 play/loops a single point at a time.
A very cool feature would be some kind of calculation of incoming clock that influence the Speed setting relating to current buffer size (time).
Granular One shot sample player functionality, possibility to set up start position, density and overlap of the individual loaded one shots 
Perhaps these are instrument features and not firmware stuff or a mix, idk. If it’s not applicable due other reasons I’d appreciate learning why
Hello everyone,
owning the Nebulae V2 since march `22, I am not that experienced in utilizing all of it, but still I identified some things, most of which are allready mentioned.
So I‘d like to +1 on the following:
- Crossfading-feature with manually adjustable percentage depending on the filelength
→ zero-crossing-mode - clock-synced timestretching
And about that „new manual“ seen elsewhere, I hope this one is also coming with the firmware release?
Since I‘m absolutely not skilled in Coding or even understanding the magic of GitHub (i know there is a strong irony to having chosen Nebulae…) I hope there is a changelog easily accessible for „dumb users“ like me :[
I can confirm this. The internal card on the back is slow and small and I frequently ran into issues running an alternative instrument. I replaced it with a fast card and had to flash the Neb’s internal code to it. Not only does the V2 work flawlessly, it also loads a LOT faster. I can imagine a good SD card affects the production costs, but it simply doesn’t work without one. I used a 32 GB Extreme card from SanDisk. It may be a bit too much for the module, but when you take a closer look at the panel you can almost see it smile. Cheers, Robert Pabst - Cinematic Laboratory
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You say you had to ‘flashed’ neb’s internal code to the new card, which software did you use to do that?
Balena Etcher. I used it to flash Neb V 2.1.2 to the card that goes into the back of the module. I am not an expert but I guess it’s the operating system and the code that runs the Neb. I have no idea where I found the zip.
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The v2.1.2 update .zip file you can get from the QU-Bit website, but(!) this is not the one for flashing to the SD card. This .zip from the website (with updated internal instrument functionality) can be placed on the USB and it will load it onto the SD after startup (see manual).
The SD card image (with hardware OS) you use to re-flash the SD card with Balina Etcher (for example), can not be obtained via the website, but only via QU-Bit support. This is not a public available file, unless someone else placed it on a ‘webdrive’.
p.s. the SD card image will also contain v2.1.2 of the internal instrument functionality.
Can I suggest a really useful ‘update’ for the Record button. When playing and recording live, it would be so useful to have the record button flash/glow (to show):
a) It’s receiving the audio/signal coming in
b) Flashing dimmer or brighter depending on the signal strength
Also, something that as a new user seems very strange is the inability to mute either of the states (in both Live and File). What happens when you decide to ‘mute’ your module? You can either in Live clear the buffer, which isn’t so practical if you want to continue using it. And in the File play there doesn’t seem to be a possibility to pause … ?
So, maybe a button combination which mutes everything could be useful too?
And lastly, I’ve already seen this, but people seem to be asking to be able to scan through the files more easily. Just like your button presses on the Speed and Pitch, would there be a possibility to turn something to scan through the files as a special feature? Or even button combinations like on the Happy Nerding’s FX Aid.
I hope all that makes sense?
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One other thing I came across which I’m sure can’t be so difficult to include would be that when you save a sample onto your USB, the Nebulae automatically plays this sample back when you select file.
Maybe there’s a way of doing this that I haven’t discovered, but at present when I save the file and then change source to File, I always get the first file on the USB and then have to go through all the samples to get to the last one just recorded.
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