Babu Frik v0.1 (beta1)

First beta version of Babu Frik (beta1, v0.1). This release is not production ready, lacks features and probably has many bugs. Read the notes below to get a better idea of what you can expect. Please use the issues section to report any bugs or make feature suggestions.

Known issues/limitations

• KIJIMI firmware 1.2.x has a number of MIDI CC control issues which will make some buttons/knobs in Babu Frik affect the wrong controls. This is fixed in the latest KIJIMI's pre-release firmware 1.3.x, so it should be available to everyone soon. Nevertheless, for most of the front panel controls, Babu Frik should still be usable with firmware 1.2.x.
• Babu Frik's ADSR2 mod matrix buttons do not work as expected due to a bug in KIJIMI's firmware (so far also affecting 1.3.x) which will be fixed in an upcoming firmware release.
• MIDI in messages coming from KIJIMI always arrive at MIDI channel 1 (regardless of KIJIMI's configuration) and sometimes include a bit of jitter. For this reason, when MIDI in is configured in Babu Frik, some messages are filtered out from the MIDI in stream. This should be fixed in combined updates for Babu Frik and KIJIMI's firmware.
• As of Babu Frik beta1, it has only been implemented the control of KIJIMI's main panel buttons and knobs. Future Babu Frik releases will add more controls to the UI (see below).
• Saving/loading patch files and bank files should work but, similarly as in the previous point, only main panel controls are taken into account and therefore there are bits of the patch that are saved/load with an unknown state. The sound of these patches might change in the future with new releases of Babu Frik that incorporate more controls.
• KIJIMI firmware 1.3.x patches are 262 bytes long, while 1.2.x patches are 134 bytes long. This means that if you load 1.2.x bank files to Babu Frik you'll get unexpected results with patches not sounding correctly. Black Corporation should provide some suggested way to convert bank files from 1.2.x to 1.3.x when releasing firmware 1.3.x and make them compatible with Babu Frik (maybe when upgrading to 1.3.x this will happen automatically).
• The timbre space works but, as you'll see, it generates wild sounds. This is very helpful if you want to make KIJIMI sing in Sith (as advertised in the campaign!), but you might want to tame it a bit to produce (sometimes) more "melodic" patches. This will be addressed in future Babu Frik releases.

Roadmap

• In the coming months I might (or might not!) make available more pre-release versions (v0.x) including some additional fixes and adding more controls to the UI.

• The goal for v1.0 is to have a Babu Frik version similar to the current one but with fixes applied and featuring all missing KIJIMI controls, including global controls, extra options and LFO madness matrix. Take as a reference the all panels Babu Frik UI mockup I published on Facebook some time ago to better understand the goal for v1.0. I expect v1.0 to be released October 2020 (as originally planned). Note that this somehow also depends on Black Corporation releasing firmware 1.3.x before, because Babu Frik requires 1.3.x to work properly.

• After v1.0, I plan to make more releases that include new features like finer control of the randomization function and the timbre space generation as well as extra stuff that you might suggest :)

Installation

The beta releases don't include an installer, so you'll have to install the plugins/standalone app manually. To do that, you should copy the downloaded files in the following location(s):

macOS

• BabuFrik.app (Stand-alone app): /Applications/
• BabuFrik.vst3 (VST3): /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/
• BabuFrik.component (AU): /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/

windows

• BabuFrik.exe (Stand-alone app): c:\Program Files (x86)\JFSebastian\
• BabuFrik.vst3 (VST3): c:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3\