AWE Designer advanced features have been categorized into the following pages:

Changing Input Pin Properties

Right-click on the HW input pin to change its number of channels, Block Size and Sample Rate properties. Once the model is run or the ‘Propagate Changes’ icon is clicked, the updated HW pin information will propagate through the rest of the system. The output HW pin information is inherited from the connecting wire and cannot be edited manually.

Copying Modules

Existing modules can be copied and pasted within the same canvas, or across hierarchies and even across separate layouts. To copy and paste modules, highlight the module or modules to copy, then right click on the selection and select ‘Copy’. Right click on the canvas that you want to copy to and select ‘Paste’ to insert the selection onto the canvas.

Modules can also be copied by left clicking the selected module(s) and holding down, pressing the CTRL key, and dragging the cursor to the desired location on the canvas and releasing the left mouse button.

To copy the settings of one module to another of the same type, right click on a module and select ‘Copy’. Then right click on another module of the same type and select ‘Paste Settings’. When settings are pasted, only a module’s variables change, not its arguments.

Inspector Management

The ‘Inspector’ menu can be used to group the inspectors of related modules in the layout. The menu can also be used to show and hide different groups of inspectors to speed up inspector handling. To save an Inspector Group, open up your desired inspectors and then select the ‘Inspector → Save Group → New’ menu item. Once your Inspector Group is saved, it will appear under the top level Inspector menu. Selecting the group name will display your inspector group in exactly the same configuration as was saved.

The Inspector menu can also be used to close all open inspectors and to delete inspector groups.

Diffing Systems

Audio Weaver layouts can be compared using a ‘diffing’ capability. This can be useful for example to figure out changes between different versions of a layout during the design and tuning process. This functionality requires a Diff tool like WinMerge, to be installed. First specify your Diff tool under the ‘File Global Preferences’ menu item, then use the menu item ‘File → Compare Systems’ to make the comparison between two different layouts.

Another way to diff systems is to save the layouts in .AWJ format. Because .AWJs are plaintext JSON representations of a layout, any diff tool or text editor can be used to spot the delta between systems.

Reconnecting to the Server

If you accidentally close the AWE Server or change the connection type, use this menu item to relaunch the Server and reconnect to the target.

If the connection to your target hardware is lost through the AWE Server, you can quickly attempt to re-connect by clicking the ‘Connect’ checkbox at the bottom of the Server window:

Processing Files Menu

The file processing tool can be used to send audio data through a layout and record the output. This feature is useful for batch processing audio files and for quickly testing the output of your audio system. This tool will process files as quickly as possible, so operations are typically faster than real-time. Even more processing speed can sometime be achieved by increasing the block size in your layout.

Multi-Instance Operation

Some Audio Weaver target systems may have more than one instance of AWE Core running. In this case, the different instances can be selected using the drop lists in designer and server. For more information, see the user forum at www.dspconcepts.com.

Tunable Variables

Many modules contain variables that can potentially be tuned at runtime. When a variable can cause undesirable side effects, it can be locked out from tuning. To do this, right click on the module and select the ‘Permissions’ context menu. There, as pictured below, variable tuning can be can be allowed or disallowed for a module.

Setting Search Paths

Audio Weaver Designer comes with a few default search paths for Audio and Modules. You can add additional search paths for both modules and files (audio files, etc) via Designer.

The reason to update a module search path would be if you have created your own custom module. To add additional Module Search Paths, select File-> Set Module Path.

Module Browser/Palette

The Module Browser allows filtering by a few different parameters. You can filter the Module Browser list via data type by selecting/deselecting the boxes above the browser and under the search bar. The browser will only show modules with datatypes that match the selected boxes. For instance, if a user is not interested in any fract32 modules, they could deselect the box and see only float/int modules.

The image below shows the “Gain” modules of all data types.

The next image shows the same “Gain” category but without fract32 modules. Notice that the list is significantly shorter.

If you know the name or a keyword of the desired module, you can also use the search bar to filter the available modules.

By default, the module browser will filter out deprecated modules and missing modules (not present on the connected target).  To toggle these filters, open the Designer File->Global Preferences dialog and toggle the “Show deprecated modules” checkbox. Beneath the checkbox, there is also a dropdown menu which provides the option to show all modules, filter by target, or filter by ModuleList.h (see below).  Deprecated modules will appear in the browser with a yellow exclamation mark overlay, and missing modules with a red x.

An advanced feature is the ability to specify a specific ModuleList.h file as module filter. Any modules not in the specified list will appear on the canvas outlined in red.

Example AWDs

Example AWDs are included in the Designer deliverable. See Examples\Designer. There are layouts for both Fract32 and Float layouts.

ObjectIDs

ObjectIDs are generated symbols that are used in an AWE Core integration to allow the tuning of modules in the integration code. An objectID can be assigned to a module, and then that ID can be used to send tuning commands to a running layout on the target (without matlab or Designer). For more information on how to tune a layout via objectIDs, please see the AWE-Core—Integration-Guide.pdf.

To assign an objectID to a module, right click the module of choice and select ObjectIDs->Assign.

After you have assigned an objectID, it should appear under the Module on the canvas

You can clear the objectID by selecting “Clear” from the ObjectIDs menu shown above. You can also manually set a module’s objectID from the module properties “Build” tab.

Module Status

Each module has an associated runtime status with 4 possible values:

• Active — The module's processing function is being called. This is the default behavior when a module is first instantiated.

• Muted — The module's processing function is not called. Instead, all of the output wires attached to the module are filled with zeros.

• Bypassed —The module's processing function is not called. Instead, the module's input wires are copied directly to its output wires. Some modules use an intelligent generic algorithm which attempts to match up input and output wires of the same size. Other modules implement custom bypass functions.

• Inactive — The module's processing function is not called and the output wire is untouched. This mode is used almost exclusively for debugging and the output wire is left in an indeterminate state.

Changing the module status is useful for debugging and making simple changes to the processing at run-time. The module status can be changed in both Design mode and Tuning mode.

The Module Status can be changed by right-clicking on a module and selecting “Module Status”. To change the module status of a group, select multiple modules (including subsystems) with drag and select or by pressing ctrl, and right-click to change the status of all selected modules.