Toolbar Features

Besides the usual toolbar icons: new, open, save, save as, undo and redo. There's the play/stop icon (CTRL-SpaceBar to toggle play/stop).

Go up a level (up arrow)

Press this icon to go back to the parent group of the group currently displayed in the patchbay

Parameter Linking

Use the chain icon to access the parameter linking window: Simply highlight one source parameter and one destination parameter, then the "Link" button to link them together

MediaPool

Click the box icon to access the MediaPool where all the clips (wavs) used by bidules are managed.

  • Use it to load an audio file so that it becomes accessible to the Audio File Player, for example. Even if you open 15 sample playback devices to play myWav.wav, it will only be read/put in memory once.
  • WARNING: watch the lengths of those audio files!!! (it has to fit in RAM). On the TODO list is an option to stream the files from disk.

To load file(s) press the Add File(s) button and select the audio files you want with the open file dialog. To remove files, select them in the list and press the Remove File(s) button or press the "Del" key.

Palette (Gear icon)

Press this icon to toggle showing and hiding of the palette window

Edit Menu

Besides all the usual options you're used to seeing in the menus, there are 2 important items under Edit.

Preferences

Sample Rate

The sampling rate to use for the audio card driver. Be aware that some cards don't support all possible sampling rate. (You will get an error message if you select a sampling rate not supported by your audio card when you try to use it.)

Buffer Size

This is the size of the buffer used internally in Bidule, not the one for your audio driver. The lower this quantity the lesser the latency, but the higher the CPU requirements!

FFT Window Size

Size of the FFT windows.

FFT Overlap

number of overlaps for FFT frames (also called decimation factor).

VST Plugins Path

This is the path where Bidule will look for VST plugins.

VST By Company

Enabling this will sort the VSTs using the company name (if defined in the plugin) instead of directory names.

VST Internal Names

Enabling this will show the internal VST name instead of the DLL filename.

Shows Tips

Self-explanatory.

Show Processing Modes

View (or not) the processing modes icons alongside the bidules in the patchbay

Show sync masters/slaves

View (or not) the the little letters to differentiate syncable modules/sync source alongside the bidules in the patchbay.

Process at startup

Automatically start processing the audio signal when Bidule is launched.

Scan plugins

Use this option to launch a scan of VST plugins using the directory that is set in preferences.

Reset History

Use this option to reset to 0 the usage of each bidule (in the History list).

Set current patch as default

Use this option to save your usual setup. Once this is done, all new layouts will include all the bidules/devices in the current layout.