[LAD] [PD-announce] smeck (6ch guitar processing patch) released]

2009-08-24 Thread Frank Barknecht
Hi,

something for the guitarists around. This is the patch, that Miller Puckette
explained during the workshop at LAC2008.

Ciao
-- 
Frank

- Forwarded message from Miller Puckette  -

Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:52:33 -0700
From: Miller Puckette 
To: pd-annou...@iem.at
Subject: [PD] [PD-announce] smeck (6ch guitar processing patch) released

Hi all,

I've finally done a good enough job of cleaning up the 'smeck' patch (seen
at Pd conventions 2007 and 2009) to consider it releasable.  This patch takes
a 6-channel signal from a separated guitar pickup (such as the Roland GK series)
and does a variety of cool things to it.  Smeck is available from:

http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/

cheers
Miller

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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Paul Davis
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:

> I don't know actual Peter Gabriel recordings, but I bet he still uses
> old synth, e.g. the Fairlight, especially for pad sounds.

he doesn't.
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Jens M Andreasen

On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 21:10 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>  Virtual synth often tend to make the mix muddy, when 
> playing pad sounds, because the polyphony isn't limited, every released 
> note is able to end the complete release decay. For the Oberheim some 
> notes are cut, while the wanted notes still can play the release decay.
> 
Where do the newly assigned voices start their envelopes from when they
are stolen from decaying voices? Say "the glass is half empty", will
they then:

a) "Empty the glass" and start over with a fresh attack from scratch.
Synced so to say.
b) Contnue from the level they were at when re-assigned, only that now
"the glass is half full" instead, and the attack will reach max almost
immediately. 

I think the latter could be more expressive when there are no more
voices than you can easily direct with a single two-handed chord, to get
in control of the stage again. Six voices would pretty good for that,
but I remember five like the Prophet had was annoying. Or that at least
I got lost fighting my own clumpsyness.

Hmmm ... Split 2+4 comes to mind as well.

> A selectable limit for polyphony might be a feature, that should become 
> more common again, not only for virtual analog synthesizers.

++

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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
Nick Copeland wrote:
> will not sound like an Oberheim.

PS:

And there's no need to sound identically. Even if a programme should 
program something absolutely new, not an emulation, the 'Prophet 
*5*'-'Matrix *6*'-Effect of having less voices, could add some charm.
Btw. I never used the Alsa modular synth, but even an intelligent way 
like Fons described, might be fine for my needs, if it's possible to 
reduce the polyphony to 6, 5 or less voices.
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
Nick Copeland wrote:
> Voice allocation really depends on what you want the virtual synth to do.
> If you want it to sound like the original then it should use a similar 
> algorithm,
> if you want something that sounds better than or like the original 
> then for
> something like an Oberheim, it will probably not be the voice 
> allocation that
> is lacking on the emulator, more likely the overall quality of the 
> sound that will
> prevent the emulator from being as good: whatever you do with voice 
> allocation,
> if the emulator does not have Oberheim filters and oscillators it will 
> not sound
> like an Oberheim.

I can sample some sounds of my Oberheim and make soundfonts and just 
need a soundfont player, that is able to emulate the voice allocation. A 
lot of sounds can't be emulated by algorithm¹ or layered samples, but 
this isn't what I need, not all sounds are using features that can't be 
sampled.

Btw. there are very good emulations for the ARP step sequencer sounds 
available as proprietary VST or modern external, stand alone synth.

Tonight I'll record some sounds of my Oberheim and then try to work with 
swami to make a soundfont.

Theoretically I don't need any virtual synth, but because on my computer 
there's too much MIDI jitter for external equipment, but no MIDI jitter 
for virtual synth, band-aid should be to sample some of my synth. Might 
become funny for long vector synthesis sounds, that I'll also sample. I 
guess I have to spend 20,- € to pimp my RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB.

Ralf

¹ resp. not today or just by some proprietary plugins
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Nick Copeland

Voice allocation really depends on what you want the virtual synth to do.
If you want it to sound like the original then it should use a similar 
algorithm,
if you want something that sounds better than or like the original then for
something like an Oberheim, it will probably not be the voice allocation that
is lacking on the emulator, more likely the overall quality of the sound that 
will
prevent the emulator from being as good: whatever you do with voice allocation,
if the emulator does not have Oberheim filters and oscillators it will not 
sound 
like an Oberheim.

The algorithm was also different between synths, many used a FIFO buffer: if
the voices were all allocated then the oldest voice was stolen. Some would steal
the lowest note pressed, some would steal the highest note. You will eventually
notice which algorithm it uses based on what you are playing - each algorithm
has its defects. Siel did have an allocation algorithm that was supposed to be 
superior in that stealing voices was not that noticible. Never seen the code 
but 
it apparantly stole a note from somewhere in the middle so the player never lost
either extremes of the scale. I've tried this as well and the results are a 
noticable
improvement on FIFO.

Pure FIFO stealing is a cheap algorithm however it perhaps does have the most
noticable flaws when being played. VIrtual synths can easily improve on this,
emulators can't, really, and still be something that approaches the original. If
you want an virtual synth to sound like an OB-X the it will have to steal notes 
in
the same way.

Regards, nick.

"we have to make sure the old choice [Windows] doesn't disappear”.
Jim Wong, president of IT products, Acer




> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:13:36 +0200
> From: ralf.mard...@alice-dsl.net
> To: ha...@opensound.com
> CC: linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org
> Subject: Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth
> 
> Hannu Savolainen wrote:
> > Albert Graef wrote:
> >   
> >> hollun...@gmx.at wrote:
> >>   
> >> 
> >>> One obvious question there is:
> >>> what should the synth do when it reaches the limit?
> >>> There are several things that are possible and afaik implemented in
> >>> synths. It could drop the first note played, or the highest, or ...
> >>> 
> >>>   
> >> Well, that's called voice stealing. Most synths do it, if they don't
> >> have dynamic voice allocation. Usually, you assign voices in a round
> >> robin manner, and the oldest note has to go when you're running out of
> >> voices.
> >>
> >>   
> >> 
> > Ideally the synth should use some kind of priority mechanism when 
> > stealing voices. Killing the oldest one is not the best way. For example 
> > some kind of psychoacoustic algorithm could be used to find voices that 
> > are masked out by the other voices playing at louder levels. Some voices 
> > may have decayed to inaudible levels or their pitch may be close enough 
> > to the new note to be played.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Hannu
> 
> Hi Hannu :)
> 
> this is a good idea to cover unwanted cutting. "My problem" is, that 
> most virtual synth have enough voices ;). I would like to have the 
> effect of old synth, e.g. listen to Peter Gabrial's pad sounds. It's 
> wanted to hear the cutting, because it has a musical function, it 
> produces ambience. My fault was, that I only referred to the elimination 
> of muddy sound by notes with long release times, I've forgotten to bring 
> up the musical function.
> 
> I like to have the effect that chords will be cut by new cords, similar 
> to the effect for monophonic sounds, with one difference, sometimes one 
> or two notes shouldn't be cut. There are some very good synth with a 
> polyphony of 5 or 6 voices, e.g. the Prophet 5 or the Matrix 6, btw. I'm 
> using a Matrix-1000 (the 1000 is for 1000 sounds in the memory, resp. I 
> didn't check if the battery is still fine, it might be possible that the 
> 200 RAM sounds of my Matrix are lost ;)).
> 
> For most of my external synth and 'virtual' synth I'm missing this 
> effect, they never run out of voices. It's bad not to have enough 
> voices, but if you have enough voices than some charm gets lost.
> 
> I don't know actual Peter Gabriel recordings, but I bet he still uses 
> old synth, e.g. the Fairlight, especially for pad sounds.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ralf
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> Or some _explicit_ feedback from somewhere downstream the patch
> telling the voice allocator that a particular voice has decayed
> far enough to be a candidate for re-use. My exploratory designs
> for AMS II (gathering dust since four years) did exactly that.

This "was" a very good mechanism at the times when the first synth were 
able to play different sounds for different MIDI channels, but tone 
generators were to expensive, because of technical limits, in the 80ies 
there were no DSP chips, 4MB RAM were very expensive :D etc., I still 
have got a 40 MB hard disk, that was more expensive than the complete 
dual core PC I've today. It's easy to understand that your AMS II is 
gathering dust :). I had to dust my Oberheim ;). It would be suspect if 
somebody would write to the list, that e.g his Linux synth don't have 
enough voices. I often wonder why a lot of  synth emulation don't sound 
as good as the original synth, even if comparing a held note sounds 
identical to an original synth. They differ in their behaviour, when 
playing a song, but not by comparing single held notes. To limit the 
polyphony today seems to be more important for some usage, than thinking 
about not having enough voices :).

Cheers,
Ralf
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
Hannu Savolainen wrote:
> Albert Graef wrote:
>   
>> hollun...@gmx.at wrote:
>>   
>> 
>>> One obvious question there is:
>>> what should the synth do when it reaches the limit?
>>> There are several things that are possible and afaik implemented in
>>> synths. It could drop the first note played, or the highest, or ...
>>> 
>>>   
>> Well, that's called voice stealing. Most synths do it, if they don't
>> have dynamic voice allocation. Usually, you assign voices in a round
>> robin manner, and the oldest note has to go when you're running out of
>> voices.
>>
>>   
>> 
> Ideally the synth should use some kind of priority mechanism when 
> stealing voices. Killing the oldest one is not the best way. For example 
> some kind of psychoacoustic algorithm could be used to find voices that 
> are masked out by the other voices playing at louder levels. Some voices 
> may have decayed to inaudible levels or their pitch may be close enough 
> to the new note to be played.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Hannu

Hi Hannu :)

this is a good idea to cover unwanted cutting. "My problem" is, that 
most virtual synth have enough voices ;). I would like to have the 
effect of old synth, e.g. listen to Peter Gabrial's pad sounds. It's 
wanted to hear the cutting, because it has a musical function, it 
produces ambience. My fault was, that I only referred to the elimination 
of muddy sound by notes with long release times, I've forgotten to bring 
up the musical function.

I like to have the effect that chords will be cut by new cords, similar 
to the effect for monophonic sounds, with one difference, sometimes one 
or two notes shouldn't be cut. There are some very good synth with a 
polyphony of 5 or 6 voices, e.g. the Prophet 5 or the Matrix 6, btw. I'm 
using a Matrix-1000 (the 1000 is for 1000 sounds in the memory, resp. I 
didn't check if the battery is still fine, it might be possible that the 
200 RAM sounds of my Matrix are lost ;)).

For most of my external synth and 'virtual' synth I'm missing this 
effect, they never run out of voices. It's bad not to have enough 
voices, but if you have enough voices than some charm gets lost.

I don't know actual Peter Gabriel recordings, but I bet he still uses 
old synth, e.g. the Fairlight, especially for pad sounds.

Cheers,
Ralf
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Fons Adriaensen
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 11:25:17PM +0300, Hannu Savolainen wrote:

> Ideally the synth should use some kind of priority mechanism when 
> stealing voices. Killing the oldest one is not the best way. For example 
> some kind of psychoacoustic algorithm could be used to find voices that 
> are masked out by the other voices playing at louder levels. Some voices 
> may have decayed to inaudible levels or their pitch may be close enough 
> to the new note to be played.

Or some _explicit_ feedback from somewhere downstream the patch
telling the voice allocator that a particular voice has decayed
far enough to be a candidate for re-use. My exploratory designs
for AMS II (gathering dust since four years) did exactly that.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

Io lo dico sempre: l'Italia è troppo stretta e lunga.

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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Hannu Savolainen
Albert Graef wrote:
> hollun...@gmx.at wrote:
>   
>> One obvious question there is:
>> what should the synth do when it reaches the limit?
>> There are several things that are possible and afaik implemented in
>> synths. It could drop the first note played, or the highest, or ...
>> 
>
> Well, that's called voice stealing. Most synths do it, if they don't
> have dynamic voice allocation. Usually, you assign voices in a round
> robin manner, and the oldest note has to go when you're running out of
> voices.
>
>   
Ideally the synth should use some kind of priority mechanism when 
stealing voices. Killing the oldest one is not the best way. For example 
some kind of psychoacoustic algorithm could be used to find voices that 
are masked out by the other voices playing at louder levels. Some voices 
may have decayed to inaudible levels or their pitch may be close enough 
to the new note to be played.

Best regards,

Hannu
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
hollun...@gmx.at wrote:
> One obvious question there is:
> what should the synth do when it reaches the limit?
> There are several things that are possible and afaik implemented in
> synths. It could drop the first note played, or the highest, or ...
>
> Just as a hint. I clear the stage for the synth freaks now.
> Philipp

That's right Philip :)

I funk to answer it ;), because my Oberheim has got 6 voices and I 
played 5 voices all the time, I couldn't discern it, but I guess for 
this case it doesn't make a big difference, release only is for 'all at 
last played notes', it can be called 'monophonic polyphony' ;). What you 
are talking about seems to be interesting for synth that needs to manage 
e.g. a limit of 64 voices, but for 16 sounds played by 16 channels. I do 
have such synth, they don't sound like my Oberheim.

The selection needs to be able to enable what I call 'monophonic polyphony'.

Ralf
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Albert Graef
hollun...@gmx.at wrote:
> One obvious question there is:
> what should the synth do when it reaches the limit?
> There are several things that are possible and afaik implemented in
> synths. It could drop the first note played, or the highest, or ...

Well, that's called voice stealing. Most synths do it, if they don't
have dynamic voice allocation. Usually, you assign voices in a round
robin manner, and the oldest note has to go when you're running out of
voices.

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  dr.gr...@t-online.de, a...@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de
WWW:http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag
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Re: [LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread hollunder
On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:10:55 +0200
Ralf Mardorf  wrote:

> Hi programmers of virtual synthesizers :)
> 
> more than an hour ago I wiped of the dust of my old Oberheim to make 
> soundfonts of some basses, but some pad sounds captivated me. The 
> Oberheim is limited by 6-voice polyphony, resp. this isn't a
> limitation for those sounds. Virtual synth often tend to make the mix
> muddy, when playing pad sounds, because the polyphony isn't limited,
> every released note is able to end the complete release decay. For
> the Oberheim some notes are cut, while the wanted notes still can
> play the release decay.
> 
> A selectable limit for polyphony might be a feature, that should
> become more common again, not only for virtual analog synthesizers.
> 
> I know that e.g. fluidsynth-dssi has a global setting for polyphony,
> but the problem with this is, that it has impact to all used
> fluidsynth-dssi plugins.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ralf

One obvious question there is:
what should the synth do when it reaches the limit?
There are several things that are possible and afaik implemented in
synths. It could drop the first note played, or the highest, or ...

Just as a hint. I clear the stage for the synth freaks now.
Philipp
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[LAD] Selectable limit for polyphony of virtual synth

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
Hi programmers of virtual synthesizers :)

more than an hour ago I wiped of the dust of my old Oberheim to make 
soundfonts of some basses, but some pad sounds captivated me. The 
Oberheim is limited by 6-voice polyphony, resp. this isn't a limitation 
for those sounds. Virtual synth often tend to make the mix muddy, when 
playing pad sounds, because the polyphony isn't limited, every released 
note is able to end the complete release decay. For the Oberheim some 
notes are cut, while the wanted notes still can play the release decay.

A selectable limit for polyphony might be a feature, that should become 
more common again, not only for virtual analog synthesizers.

I know that e.g. fluidsynth-dssi has a global setting for polyphony, but 
the problem with this is, that it has impact to all used fluidsynth-dssi 
plugins.

Cheers,
Ralf
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Re: [LAD] [ANN] Invada Studio LV2 Plugins 1.2.0

2009-08-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf
Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 07:27:18PM +0100, Dan Mills wrote:
>
>   
>> Lets say your card is aligned so that 0dbFS = +18dbu (EBU standard),
>> then 0Vu = +4dbu = - 14dbFS, so a software VU calibrated for 0Vu =
>> -14dbFs should read the same as an external Vu calibrated for +4dbu =
>> 0Vu. If it does not then either a calibration setting is off somewhere
>> or one of the meters is faulty. 
>> 
>
> True.
>
> But even a definition such as 'dB FS' is ambiguous, and
> it's easy to make mistakes as a result of that.
>
> Consider a sine wave that is just below digital clipping.
> This would be called '0 dB FS', but the actual RMS level 
> is 3 db lower. I've seen at least one context where this
> same signal would be called -3dB FS. Which somehow makes
> sense as well.
>
> AFAIK the first interpretation is the more common one.
>   

'Peak level' vs 'intrinsic level':

* 'dbFS' refers to 'peak level', 'full-scale square wave'
* 'dbFS RMS' refers to 'intrinsic level, 'full-scale sine wave'.

This is how is in Germany distinguished and because of the words on 
English, it might be an international way to distinguish it.

>> actually fairly common with professional cards. 
>> 
>
> And it avoids a lot of problems. Semi-pro cards will not
> have the correct levels, but some can be quite consistent
> between channels. For example my Terratec EWS88MT has less
> than +/- 0.1 dB variation between its 8 channels, both
> for input and output. But the actual level is just +3.5dBu
> for a FS sine wave.
>
> The real misery starts when (as reported in a recent post 
> on LAU or LAD), a user finds four volume controls between
> his audio file and the physical output (plus of course
> a fifth one on his amplifier), and then of course gets
> confused on how to set all of them.

I guess this is the leading point. Even professional IO amps at times 
need calibration.

We should imagine a setup like 'sound card --> tube pre-amps --> 
mastering recorder'. For this scenario a VU meter needs to be an 
external one.

Ralf
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