Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 09:56 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: On Thursday 15 July 2010 01:14:45 Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 00:46 +0200, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote: Apart from that, it remains to be seen if *real* timing errors of +/- 2 ms do 'destroy the groove'. To test this, make the same recording - without jitter, - with 1 ms jitter, - with 2 ms jitter, - with 3 ms jitter. and check if listeners are able to identify which is which, or at least to put them into order. I know very gifted musicians who do like me and they always 'preach' that I should stop using modern computers and I don't know much averaged people. So the listeners in my flat for sure would be able to hear even failure that I'm unable to hear. You really should do that test first before speculating about the outcome and your audience. You would expect Audiophiles to spot the super sounding denon cables by listening, right? Yet a blind test showed the opposite. The test was to identify which audio take was played with denon-cables, el-cheapo cables from walmart and a bended cloth-hanger. If they where as good as they claimed, the denon-cable should get hits with probability significantly better then 1/3, otherwise its just luck. Guess what the outcome was: There was a significant hit: But they spotted the cloth-hanger as the denon-cable. Thats what real experts do... Do the listening test with as many people as possible and then show the results. And only afterwards start the speculations what the reason and the effects might be. (Thats called science btw.) Have fun, Arnold Btw. I tested my own music. First I played inside songs from other people a Ralf-mastering of my own music. Most people didn't like my song. Some weeks later I played the same song inside other songs from other people by a loudness-war-mastering. Most people liked the song. Playing the same song two times can't be called heavy rotation, hence they were not accustomed to my song, but they need a bad mastering to be fine with this song. A blind study is useless regarding to musical issues. Or do you think we should start mixing music optimised to loudness, because tests show that the audience prefers music without dynamic? ;) Ralf ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 11:46 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: On Friday 16 July 2010 09:50:39 Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 09:56 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: You really should do that test first before speculating about the outcome and your audience. Btw. I tested my own music. First I played inside songs from other people a Ralf-mastering of my own music. Most people didn't like my song. Some weeks later I played the same song inside other songs from other people by a loudness-war-mastering. Most people liked the song. Playing the same song two times can't be called heavy rotation, hence they were not accustomed to my song, but they need a bad mastering to be fine with this song. A blind study is useless regarding to musical issues. Apples and oranges. You are working on midi-latency-jitter. Which is measurable. And the test is when the jitter becomes unbearable. Taste on the other thing is not measurable and while you could quantify it, common sense says that taste-minorities are valuable too... Your bad! On my computer the measurements are ok, but the audible results are bad. Or do you think we should start mixing music optimised to loudness, because tests show that the audience prefers music without dynamic? Taste-minorities. You play your dynamic-rich songs to fans of classical music and see their reactions. If you can distinguish the like it because of dynamics from the don't like it because of rock-vs-classical. Which just shows that taste is not measurable. And no, pop industry doesn't measure taste, it just measures profit. My bad! Because it's an unfair 'analogy'. OTOH, industry does measure averaged taste, regarding to profit. Arnold, I respect your opinion, because I guess you don't like recordings without dynamic too. Btw. I'm not a hardliner and a fan of Bob Katz. BUT! It's impossible to do neutral measurements and from a democratically worldview listening to recordings without dynamic is the winner. Today I listened to a very good free jazz recording, but even this marginal group tends to do masterings that are borderline. And I'm sure, my neighbours aren't able to understand this kind of music, I bet they were near top call the psychiatric ambulance when I listende to this free jazz, while they blow the vuvuzela the whole day. IMO Peter Brötzmann (on Sax) and a friend of mine on the Piano is much more pleasant, but any vuvuzela players, anyway the averaged opinion is different to my opinion. In other words, there's no neutral test regarding to musical issues. 0.00 € Ralf -- Is it possible to get an audible difference between white noise and transposed white noise? Somewhere in the vacuum I mislaid my endless sized metal plates. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Friday 16 July 2010 12:06:02 Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 11:46 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: On Friday 16 July 2010 09:50:39 Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 09:56 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: You really should do that test first before speculating about the outcome and your audience. Btw. I tested my own music. First I played inside songs from other people a Ralf-mastering of my own music. Most people didn't like my song. Some weeks later I played the same song inside other songs from other people by a loudness-war-mastering. Most people liked the song. Playing the same song two times can't be called heavy rotation, hence they were not accustomed to my song, but they need a bad mastering to be fine with this song. A blind study is useless regarding to musical issues. Apples and oranges. You are working on midi-latency-jitter. Which is measurable. And the test is when the jitter becomes unbearable. Taste on the other thing is not measurable and while you could quantify it, common sense says that taste-minorities are valuable too... Your bad! On my computer the measurements are ok, but the audible results are bad. Does it sound bad because of taste or because of something quantifiable? If the later, your tests are insufficient and you have to extend it. Simple as that. (Thats why scientists always want more money for devices:) If the first, you have to a) define good taste and b) if you want to measure it, you have to do blind-tests or even double blind-tests. And use a test-group as large as possible. Arnold signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 12:19 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote: (Thats why scientists always want more money for devices:) That's the reason for my signature. Ignore the ironical question, but the sentence about he metal palates in the vacuum is a serious ironical statement. No doubt about your argument regarding to esoteric audio cables, but timing issues are something that aren't measurable. A friend has got Huntington's disease, he does very good compositions, but he isn't able to play those rock songs. His timing is bad, for me and I'm sure for you too, but for him there are no timing issues. There is no objective valid timing fluctuation. The musical savant next door might be much more sensitive than I'm, regarding to the groove, I don't know ... I guess there doesn't live a musical savant next door, perhaps I'm this savant ;). Anyway, forget about my assumptions about ms of jitter. I'm fine with the C64, Atari ST and all those stand alone sequencers from the 80ies. I tested did it, but I'm sure I'll be able to hear hear the difference to my Linux computer ... not when listening to all MIDI instruments played alone at the same time, but when listening to MIDI instruments + audio tracks. I don't care about my neighbours who might be unable to notice a bad timing, resp. broken groove. I try to get a home studio equipment, just for my pleasure. It's not neutral science, it has to fit to my needs. - Ralf -- Is it possible to get an audible difference between white noise and transposed white noise? Somewhere in the vacuum I mislaid my endless sized metal plates. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 12:46 +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I tested did it, but I'm sure Oops, there's a sentence accidentally killed ... sorry, but I'm in a hurry. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Friday 16 July 2010 06:06:02 Ralf Mardorf wrote: It's impossible to do neutral measurements and from a democratically worldview listening to recordings without dynamic is the winner. My personal take is that I would prefer different mixes for different uses. When out walking on dangerous streets with my earphones in I have to keep the volume low if I hope to hear road noise. A mix with wide dynamic range ends with me not hearing the quiet passages as cars pass but hearing a mix of car and recording in the loud passages. So I might want a mix with little dynamic range for this situation. I need to make some and see if it works out better. all the best, drew ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 07:02 -0400, drew Roberts wrote: On Friday 16 July 2010 06:06:02 Ralf Mardorf wrote: It's impossible to do neutral measurements and from a democratically worldview listening to recordings without dynamic is the winner. My personal take is that I would prefer different mixes for different uses. When out walking on dangerous streets with my earphones in I have to keep the volume low if I hope to hear road noise. A mix with wide dynamic range ends with me not hearing the quiet passages as cars pass but hearing a mix of car and recording in the loud passages. So I might want a mix with little dynamic range for this situation. I need to make some and see if it works out better. all the best, drew Good argument ;), but regarding to Darwinism you better don't listen to music while being in the jungle ... 'sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under' (Grandmaster Flash). Of course, I like multi-band compressors, e.g. JAMin too. I'm not a Bob Katz fan or an anti-compressor-hardliner. I just want to point out that measured results are less important (not unimportant). - Ralf ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:54:35PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Wed, 2010-07-14 at 23:43 +0200, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:28:54PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Or it was at 4 ms = +- 2ms or something like that. This is a delay that isn't audible for day-today-day audio events, but it can brake a groove easily. That would mean my hardware synth (the yamaha vl70-m), connected *directly* (no PC involved), causes a huge latency (20-26ms) making it utterly unusable for making a groove - and not just slightly, but by a large margin. That *could* be (as it's not a drum synth), but it'd be kind of surprising. You keep repeating this, but so far I haven't seen a shred of verifyable evidence to support this claim. I could record audio for kick, snare, hi hat and bass one after the other and mix it to one rhythm group and additionally I could record all instruments at the same time and send the recordings to you and you could do the same by yourself. It's also hard to say, if there isn't more jitter, but 4 ms. At what point starts the attack of a signal within the ambient noise level? Perhaps you could make a stereo recording, the left channel recording the mic'ed 'tick' of hitting the trigger, the right channel recording the audio coming from the speakers? You'd say e.g. a loud hi-hat should be recognisable enough. At least I could record FluidSynth DSSI in unison played to the Alesis D4 by using different -p values. I'm sure everybody would be able to here the problem. Let's keep this thread restricted to the situation with only ALSA MIDI in routed directly to ALSA MIDI OUT - it's getting hard to keep track of what's going on :). Arnout ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 01:14:45AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Apart from that, it remains to be seen if *real* timing errors of +/- 2 ms do 'destroy the groove'. To test this, make the same recording - without jitter, - with 1 ms jitter, - with 2 ms jitter, - with 3 ms jitter. and check if listeners are able to identify which is which, or at least to put them into order. I know very gifted musicians who do like me and they always 'preach' that I should stop using modern computers and I don't know much averaged people. So the listeners in my flat for sure would be able to hear even failure that I'm unable to hear. I'm sure they would be sensitive to bad timing. But that's not the question. Would they be able to identify the recordings listed above ? Until you try it you won't know, and your claim that 2 ms of jitter 'destroys the groove' is pure conjecture. Anyway. this crowd shouldn't be the benchmark for good music. Am I wrong? It's not about what 'good music' is. The question is if midi jitter of 2 ms does degrade the quality of a rendering. Ciao, -- Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait. (Michel de Montaigne) ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Thursday 15 July 2010 01:14:45 Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 00:46 +0200, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote: Apart from that, it remains to be seen if *real* timing errors of +/- 2 ms do 'destroy the groove'. To test this, make the same recording - without jitter, - with 1 ms jitter, - with 2 ms jitter, - with 3 ms jitter. and check if listeners are able to identify which is which, or at least to put them into order. I know very gifted musicians who do like me and they always 'preach' that I should stop using modern computers and I don't know much averaged people. So the listeners in my flat for sure would be able to hear even failure that I'm unable to hear. You really should do that test first before speculating about the outcome and your audience. You would expect Audiophiles to spot the super sounding denon cables by listening, right? Yet a blind test showed the opposite. The test was to identify which audio take was played with denon-cables, el-cheapo cables from walmart and a bended cloth-hanger. If they where as good as they claimed, the denon-cable should get hits with probability significantly better then 1/3, otherwise its just luck. Guess what the outcome was: There was a significant hit: But they spotted the cloth-hanger as the denon-cable. Thats what real experts do... Do the listening test with as many people as possible and then show the results. And only afterwards start the speculations what the reason and the effects might be. (Thats called science btw.) Have fun, Arnold signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 01:46:41AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I don't know any pipe organ for a church in Parma, but I'm sure if the keyboarder pushes a key the sound will be audible at the same time. Absoulutely not. Organ pipes take some time before they will sound, this can easily be 20 ms and considerably more for some. Apart from that pipes are not all at the same distance from the player, this again can easily introduce variations of 20 ms or more, even between pipes of the same rank. I guess, Aeolus will play every note on real time when played by a Linux sequencer, e.g. Qtractor, but I guess not when played by my master keyboard, played by an organist. Aeolus doesn't care or even know where the MIDI is coming from. And it does quantise note on/off to Jack periods. Nobody ever complained about that. Ciao, -- Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait. (Michel de Montaigne) ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
[LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
You're posting a lot of information, but I'm going to ask some stupid questions anyway - just trying not to jump to conclusions before getting a crystal-clear picture of your setup. On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 03:23:03PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: 1. I disconnected all audio connections for JACK and connected hw MIDI in to hw MIDI out. connected the DX7 MIDI out directly to the D4 MIDI in and then I reconnected to the PCI card. The difference is alarming :(. Yamaha DX7 -- Alesis D4 results in a 100% musical groove. Yamaha DX7 -- PC -- Alesis D4 results in extreme latency So here you're directly routing the MIDI IN to the MIDI OUT, and experiencing latency. Are you using JACK here, or directly ALSA? In other words, are you connecting 'in' to 'out' in the qjackctl 'MIDI' tab or in the 'ALSA' tab? Regards, Arnout ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Wed, 2010-07-14 at 19:56 +0200, Arnout Engelen wrote: You're posting a lot of information, but I'm going to ask some stupid questions anyway - just trying not to jump to conclusions before getting a crystal-clear picture of your setup. On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 03:23:03PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: 1. I disconnected all audio connections for JACK and connected hw MIDI in to hw MIDI out. connected the DX7 MIDI out directly to the D4 MIDI in and then I reconnected to the PCI card. The difference is alarming :(. Yamaha DX7 -- Alesis D4 results in a 100% musical groove. Yamaha DX7 -- PC -- Alesis D4 results in extreme latency So here you're directly routing the MIDI IN to the MIDI OUT, and experiencing latency. Are you using JACK here, or directly ALSA? In other words, are you connecting 'in' to 'out' in the qjackctl 'MIDI' tab or in the 'ALSA' tab? Regards, Arnout Now I'm really short in time, so very minimalist: Mobo: ASUS M2A-VM HDMI, a while ago the BIOS was up-to-date, I guess it's still up-to-date Integrated graphics ATI Radeon X1250-based replaced by a NVIDI Geforce 7200GS. # hwinfo --cpu 01: None 00.0: 10103 CPU [Created at cpu.301] Unique ID: rdCR.j8NaKXDZtZ6 Hardware Class: cpu Arch: X86-64 Vendor: AuthenticAMD Model: 15.107.2 AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2350 Features: fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,apic,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cmov,pat,pse36,clflush,mmx,fxsr,sse,sse2,ht,syscall,nx,mmxext,fxsr_opt,rdtscp,lm,3dnowext,3dnow,rep_good,extd_apicid,pni,cx16,lahf_lm,cmp_legacy,svm,extapic,cr8_legacy,3dnowprefetch Clock: 2100 MHz BogoMips: 4199.32 Cache: 512 kb Units/Processor: 2 RAM: 2GB Sound cards: 2x Terratec EWX 24/96 just stereo IOs, Envy24, not as one virtual card, I'm only using one card at the moment Not connected anymore: Swissonic USB MIDI IO No USB devices, e.g. keyboard and mouse are PS/2. I'm connecting MIDI in the Qtractor (quasi QjackCtl) ALSA MIDI tab. To be continued tomorrow or on Friday. Thank you! Cheers! Ralf ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 08:09:29PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Wed, 2010-07-14 at 19:56 +0200, Arnout Engelen wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 03:23:03PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I disconnected all audio connections for JACK and connected hw MIDI in to hw MIDI out. connected the DX7 MIDI out directly to the D4 MIDI in and then I reconnected to the PCI card. The difference is alarming :(. Yamaha DX7 -- Alesis D4 results in a 100% musical groove. Yamaha DX7 -- PC -- Alesis D4 results in extreme latency So here you're directly routing the MIDI IN to the MIDI OUT, and experiencing latency. Are you using JACK here, or directly ALSA? In other words, are you connecting 'in' to 'out' in the qjackctl 'MIDI' tab or in the 'ALSA' tab? I'm connecting MIDI in the Qtractor (quasi QjackCtl) ALSA MIDI tab. OK, if that's causing noticable latency, there's something odd going on - and we should first see if we can fix this: layering more stuff (jack, a2j, fluidsynth, qtractor etc) on top of this (apparently) weak foundation will just confuse us. Before finding out how to prevent 'noticable latency' for this use case, I'd say it would be good to try and quantify this for a bit. I took a MIDI Keyboard (m-audio keystation) and a Synth (Yamaha VL70-m), connected them to each other directly, put a mic close to the keyboard, and hit a key repeatedly with my nail. The recording has a nice plastic 'tick' of me hitting the key with my nail, and the softsynth sound starting a fraction of a second later. Looking with audacity, the total nail-to-synthsound latency is about 20-26ms. Then I plugged the synth into my USB audio/MIDI card (Edirol UA-25EX) and connected the MIDI keyboard to my laptop (directly with USB). Did the same test again, recorded it, and the nail-to-synthsound latency now seems to be rougly in the 23-26ms range. To *me*, this doesn't really seem to be a very noticable/problematic latency - but I'm not a keyboard player, I might not be so sensitive. I remember playing a MIDI wind controller at different latencies (I'm a saxophone player) - I'm not sure if I could *hear* it, but I could sure *feel* the difference. The wavs are at http://arnout.engelen.eu/files/dev/linuxmusicians/latencytests/ for your enjoyment. Such beautiful music! It might be interesting if you could make similar recordings - see what kind of latency gets unacceptable, if the latency is mostly constant or very jittery, if it's much bigger than here or that you're just more sensitive than me, etc. Arnout (the laptop used in these tests is a 2ghz single-core debian machine without much tuning - the kernel doesn't even have preemption enabled, let alone the -rt patch) ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Wed, 2010-07-14 at 21:37 +0200, Arnout Engelen wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 08:09:29PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Wed, 2010-07-14 at 19:56 +0200, Arnout Engelen wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 03:23:03PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I disconnected all audio connections for JACK and connected hw MIDI in to hw MIDI out. connected the DX7 MIDI out directly to the D4 MIDI in and then I reconnected to the PCI card. The difference is alarming :(. Yamaha DX7 -- Alesis D4 results in a 100% musical groove. Yamaha DX7 -- PC -- Alesis D4 results in extreme latency So here you're directly routing the MIDI IN to the MIDI OUT, and experiencing latency. Are you using JACK here, or directly ALSA? In other words, are you connecting 'in' to 'out' in the qjackctl 'MIDI' tab or in the 'ALSA' tab? I'm connecting MIDI in the Qtractor (quasi QjackCtl) ALSA MIDI tab. OK, if that's causing noticable latency, there's something odd going on - and we should first see if we can fix this: layering more stuff (jack, a2j, fluidsynth, qtractor etc) on top of this (apparently) weak foundation will just confuse us. Before finding out how to prevent 'noticable latency' for this use case, I'd say it would be good to try and quantify this for a bit. I took a MIDI Keyboard (m-audio keystation) and a Synth (Yamaha VL70-m), connected them to each other directly, put a mic close to the keyboard, and hit a key repeatedly with my nail. Hahaha, because the keys of my old metal case DX7 are very loud, I was able to halfway go on grooving ;). I'm neither a keyboarder nor a drummer, but a guitarist, anyway, playing with the right hand a ride cymbal and with the left hand kick and snare is ok for me. I don't need to record it, the sound of the keys came before the sound of the sound module and there definitive never was played a sound, before I touched the keys ;) ... for the sequencer I'm not sure if events wont be played before they should be played ... and only for the hw MIDI, internal the studio in the box everything is ok. The recording has a nice plastic 'tick' of me hitting the key with my nail, and the softsynth sound starting a fraction of a second later. Looking with audacity, the total nail-to-synthsound latency is about 20-26ms. I did something similar for my USB MIDI interface. I recorded short sinus audio impulses and watched the waveforms by completely zooming in using Audacity, but there's still the ambient noise level that makes it impossible to see the absolut beginning of a signal. Jitter was around +- 4 ms as far as I was able to interpret the waveforms. A short and loud sinus impulse is the best signal I could produce to see a difference to the ambient nose level. I didn't do this test for the PCI MIDI. Then I plugged the synth into my USB audio/MIDI card (Edirol UA-25EX) and connected the MIDI keyboard to my laptop (directly with USB). Did the same test again, recorded it, and the nail-to-synthsound latency now seems to be rougly in the 23-26ms range. To *me*, this doesn't really seem to be a very noticable/problematic latency That's right, it will become an issue when you will record HiHat, Snare, Kick, Bass etc., the rhythm group one after the other or if you wish to double a kick by two sounds etc.. - but I'm not a keyboard player, I might not be so sensitive. I remember playing a MIDI wind controller at different latencies (I'm a saxophone player) - I'm not sure if I could *hear* it, but I could sure *feel* the difference. exactly, as soo as you play an instrument while there is latency and/or jitter the feeling gets lost. The wavs are at http://arnout.engelen.eu/files/dev/linuxmusicians/latencytests/ for your enjoyment. Such beautiful music! It might be interesting if you could make similar recordings - see what kind of latency gets unacceptable, if the latency is mostly constant or very jittery, if it's much bigger than here or that you're just more sensitive than me, etc. At least I could record FluidSynth + external MIDI devices in unsion or do the finger-nail-microphone test ... Arnout (the laptop used in these tests is a 2ghz single-core debian machine without much tuning - the kernel doesn't even have preemption enabled, let alone the -rt patch) I've got a long todo list :( now. If I should forget something I should do, aske me again to do it ;). - Ralf ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
Jitter was around +- 4 ms as far as I was able to interpret the waveforms. Or it was at 4 ms = +- 2ms or something like that. This is a delay that isn't audible for day-today-day audio events, but it can brake a groove easily. Not if all instruments do have the same jitter, but if just one instruments has got this jitter or all instruments do have different jitter of this value. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:28:54PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Or it was at 4 ms = +- 2ms or something like that. This is a delay that isn't audible for day-today-day audio events, but it can brake a groove easily. You keep repeating this, but so far I haven't seen a shred of verifyable evidence to support this claim. Ciao, -- Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait. (Michel de Montaigne) ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:54:35PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I could record audio for kick, snare, hi hat and bass one after the other and mix it to one rhythm group and additionally I could record all instruments at the same time and send the recordings to you and you could do the same by yourself. That is not a valid test. If the soft instrument that generates these sounds aligns MIDI events to Jack periods, and you are using a period size of 1024 as you say you are, it proves nothing at all. Apart from that, it remains to be seen if *real* timing errors of +/- 2 ms do 'destroy the groove'. To test this, make the same recording - without jitter, - with 1 ms jitter, - with 2 ms jitter, - with 3 ms jitter. and check if listeners are able to identify which is which, or at least to put them into order. What you have been doing so far is compare an 'exact' version with one that has some unkown and uncontrolled errors. You could 'prove' anything you want in that way. You are just jumping to conclusions and making gratituous generalisations. Ciao, -- Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait. (Michel de Montaigne) ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 00:46 +0200, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote: On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:54:35PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I could record audio for kick, snare, hi hat and bass one after the other and mix it to one rhythm group and additionally I could record all instruments at the same time and send the recordings to you and you could do the same by yourself. That is not a valid test. If the soft instrument that generates these sounds aligns MIDI events to Jack periods, and you are using a period size of 1024 as you say you are, it proves nothing at all. Apart from that, it remains to be seen if *real* timing errors of +/- 2 ms do 'destroy the groove'. To test this, make the same recording - without jitter, - with 1 ms jitter, - with 2 ms jitter, - with 3 ms jitter. and check if listeners are able to identify which is which, or at least to put them into order. I know very gifted musicians who do like me and they always 'preach' that I should stop using modern computers and I don't know much averaged people. So the listeners in my flat for sure would be able to hear even failure that I'm unable to hear. What you have been doing so far is compare an 'exact' version with one that has some unkown and uncontrolled errors. You could 'prove' anything you want in that way. You are just jumping to conclusions and making gratituous generalisations. Ciao, No doubt about it, I'm speculating. Earlier I send somebody an email off-list (see below), anyway, even when playing live by using ALSA MIDI just thru, there is latency, with or without jitter, but off course without negative delay ;). My speculations might be wrong. But there are audible issues and I'm sure that even non-musicians are able to hear it, unfortunately I'm some kind of freak, all the people I could ask to listen to this issues are highly gifted musicians, unfortunately the averaged German soccer, radio prime time, heavy rotation, music listening audience is beyond the people that I know. Anyway. this crowd shouldn't be the benchmark for good music. Am I wrong? I don't no what's bad, but something is absolutely bad for hw MIDI. Forwarded Message From: Ralf Mardorf To: [snip] Subject: [off-list] Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:22:17 +0200 ASAP, I guess later today (here it's 00:15 o'clock), I'll run jackd, resp. the alsa driver with 4096frames/period at 44.1KHz and record the external synth to the left and the virtual synth to the right channel. This should give a clear result, regarding to the 'event happened, before it was triggert' issue. I guess even for quantum physics such phenomena are caused because of technical issues. :D Cheers! Ralf ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Tests directly routing pc's midi-in to midi-out (was: Re: ALSA MIDI latency test results are far away from reality)
On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 00:46 +0200, f...@kokkinizita.net wrote: [snip] What 'we' are able to 'hear' differs to what 'we' are able to 'feel' while playing an MIDI instrument. After listening 10 minutes to a bad timing, I'm unable to differ between a bad and a good timing, this is human. Try to distinguish odours, not two or there but twenty or thirty. The feeling a musician has got, while playing is also important. I don't know any pipe organ for a church in Parma, but I'm sure if the keyboarder pushes a key the sound will be audible at the same time. I guess, Aeolus will play every note on real time when played by a Linux sequencer, e.g. Qtractor, but I guess not when played by my master keyboard, played by an organist. I don't know, I never tested it, but regarding to what I experienced, I'm sure on my machine there is some kind of real, serious, very bad timing issue, when using hw MIDI. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
