Linux-audio-user August 2004

linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org

148 participants
163 discussions

by Mark Wilson

Does anyone know what happened to mutopia.org? They used to have public domain scores formatted with among other things, Lilypond. I think they also had midi files. Now the website just has a big logo, with promise of the 'rebirth' of mutopia coming soon, but that's been up that way for awhile now. Any first- or second-hand knowledge out there? --Mark ===== -- Seek professional help! Ask a librarian. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] [ANN] TAP-plugins 0.7.0

by Tom Szilagyi

TAP-plugins 0.7.0 released. Homepage: http://tap-plugins.sf.net Reminder: the docs are in a separately downloadable package, get it from the same place! New plugins (as always, check the docs for detailed usage info): * TAP Chorus/Flanger An implementation capable of creating traditional Chorus and Flanger effects, spiced up a bit to make use of stereo processing. It sounds best on guitar and synth tracks. * TAP Sigmoid Booster This plugin applies a time-invariant nonlinear amplitude transfer function to the signal. Depending on the signal and the plugin settings, various related effects (compression, soft limiting, emulation of tape saturation, mild distortion) can be achieved. * TAP TubeWarmth Adds the character of vacuum tube amplification to your audio tracks by emulating the sonically desirable nonlinear characteristics of triodes. In addition, this plugin also supports emulating analog tape saturation. Fixes: * Caught denormal problem causing large CPU peaks in TAP Stereo Echo. Hopefully there are no more infected plugins in my collection; I carefully inspected all feedback loops in all plugins. But that don't mean a thing; please do not hesitate to complain if you still experience such bad behaviour in any plugin. Hope you enjoy this release. Please report any problems. Tom

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] documentation; Loudness by Ron Parker

by davidrclark＠earthlink.net

Ron, Thanks for posting your experiences and techniques. There is an article on this same subject (controlling loudness) in the most recent edition of Electronic Musician. Just thought you might want to check that out, too. This is definitely a "current topic." The Square One column: "You've Got the Power: Some straight talk about volume levels" by Mark Ballora, Asst. Prof. of Music Technology at Penn State. September 2004, page 82++. Best regards, Dave.

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] Weeding LADSPA folder

by Alastair Couper

I now have, after installing the various plugin packages out there, an embarrasment of riches in my LADSPA folder. Pawing through them all is inconvenient, even when catagorized as most are, since I will never use the majority. Does anyone have ideas on how to thin things out, without breaking apps that need specific plugins ? I mean, how many kinds of distortion does a guy need anyway ? It is not always clear which effect goes with which file name. The idea would be to audition the likely ones, say "Ohh I like that", and remove the rest from the listings.

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] documentation; Loudness by Ron Parker

by R Parker

Hi, The recent discussions concerning documentation motivated me to write an article about mastering. This document isn't an application or library specific howto. I'd like to thank Daniel James for editing this version. To a small degree my document is a response to Rip Rowan's Over The Limit article. Over The Limit was referenced during a thread in which I requested assistance for achieving maximum loudness. Rip's article can be found here: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E… After I'm satisfied with Loudness, I intend to publish an article on mixing. That document has been sitting on the back burner for many months. I've just never presented it. My document is titled Loudness. The current version is good enough to publish but I know feedback from our community will make it better. Where it's appropriate I will rewrite Loudness. ron Loudness by Ron Parker This document is a definition of loudness in mastering, and an introduction to techniques for solving the basic problem. I'm including quotes from two letters as arguments in favour of loud mastering. The album referred to in the first review is a job for which I requested advice for techniques to achieve loud mastering on the Linux Audio User mailing list. For some of us, the ensuing thread concluded that loud mastering is bad. "Just heard the new CD. This is a phenomenal piece of work. The recording is very crisp and bright. Top of the heap. First rate! No kidding, this sounds much better than the majority of my CDs. It's like my stereo was designed to play it." The job order that caused this "loud" master basically stated, achieve every bit of loudness that you can get. And I did! After completing the above album, I engineered, mixed and mastered the audio for an eight minute art film. To design an appropriate mix and master, it was vital to know that the final destination format is DVD-Video and the venues for playback vary from 500 seat theatres to art center installation rooms that fit a couple dozen people. After asking numerous questions I concluded that the quality of playback systems would range from great to junk. Based on these insights, I designed a mix that lends itself to loud mastering. By minimising dynamics and carefully controlling total bass energy the level of the average soundfloor could be easily increased to produce a loud master. My reasoning is that low volume playback on garbage systems will lose an appreciable amount of information. And the client review: "Doctor, GOOD JOB ON THE FILM PROJECT SOUNDS GOOD ON OUR SYSTEM..... NICE BRIGHT & CLEAR NOTES SHOULD SURVIVE <production house name>" NOTE: Unlike the album review, the film hasn't hit the streets and passed the acid test. I won't know for a couple months but fully expect a dozen attendees crammed into the corner of a room, listening to a boom box playback system, to hear every single note of the audio track while a raging orgy of ecstatic wine and cheese tasters go bananas in the background. It's my opinion that to claim loud mastering is bad is the posturing of audio engineers that don't understand the task. In my experience, loud mastering is a style that is the perfect solution for specific challenges. The film track is an example of a job that requires loud mastering. TECHNIQUES FOR CONTROLLING LOUDNESS I'm defining Mastering as having the single objective of controlling loudness. The challenge is to increase the level of the average sound floor for any mix. Assume you have ten control room mixes that aren't loud enough, and that each of them has a max peak of -10.0dBfs. The first opportunity is to increase peaks to 0.0dBfs. JAMin and every other mastering solution have numerous gain stages; input, EQ, compressor, limiter, boost/softclip, output. The +10dB of input gain produces a max peak of 0.0dBfs, but this only begins to exploit the potential loudness. The opportunity is in creating headroom so the level of the soundfloor average can be increased towards 0.0dBfs. The peak is the loudest frequency while the average is the max response level for the majority of the frequency range. How to describe this: Peak - 0.0dBfs Average - ------- -20.0dBfs Frequency 20Hz---------20kHz In the audible range of 20Hz to 20kHz, our example mixes have a dominant frequency peak from 250Hz to 500Hz. According to our graphic, when 250-500Hz is peaked at 0.0dBfs, every other frequency is at 20.0dBfs. If equalisation is used to adjust 250-500Hz by 10.0dBfs the gap between the peak and the average becomes 10dB. To close the gap even further we can use the low range band of a compressor to apply a 10:1 ratio. This creates a new average peak at -20.0dBfs. We've got 20dB of headroom and all of the aforementioned gain stages can be used to move the average closer to 0.0dBfs. Now we've got incredible loudness. Obviously, real mixes have numerous "errant" frequency bands. MULTITRACK SOURCES The advantage of multitrack sources is a level of control that isn't available when working with stereo files. Even though good mixes don't require a great deal of tampering, common problems are discovered and easily fixed during mastering. Regardless, there is a serious limitation; it's difficult beyond reason to put 10 multitrack sources within one session file, and mastering is the task of making many songs sound great together. Consider a multitrack source where the snare drum is the loudest instrument and it has +6.0dB transient peaks. When this mix is routed to a stereo bus which in turn routes to JAMin the instrument controlling the potential level for the average soundfloor is the snare drum. When the LADSPA TAP Limiter is used to eliminate the +6dB spikes on the snare track the resulting average soundfloor (entire mix) can be increased +6.0dB without causing clips. Assuming low frequency energy below the audible range of 20Hz is a cause for peak levels, the Jack Audio Analyser can be used to examine individual tracks for excessive energy and equalisation can be adjusted. Imagine three instrument tracks where -3.0dB equalisation cuts in the low frequency ranges around 20Hz create an accumulated 9.0dB of headroom without having a negative effect on the sound quality. The resulting average soundfloor is a much better mix for the mastering engineer. These examples are far from reality but they describe what mastering is and how to use a typical set of tools to achieve the greatest potential for loudness. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] sounblaster live platinum and full-duplex recording (noisy)

by Erik Steffl

recording seems to be working OK but: in audacity when I record the track it sounds OK however if I generate click track and record then (the click track is playing while I am recording) the recording is really bad (noisy, low quality). I vaguely remember something about full-duplex on sounblaster not being very good, i.e. there's something wrong when using it but don't remember what (bitrate being forced to be very low or something along those lines). However I can't find any information on that subject now (I tried google and creative site), does anybody know details and/or have some pointers to relevant docs? system: debian unstable, 2.6.5 kenrel (with alsa), sounblaster live platinum (with live drive). TIA erik

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] Alsa mixer no longer retains its settings

by David Baron

Comes up muted (0-volumes) with each new bootup. New alsa core from sid.

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] some thoughts about Linux audio software documentation

by Dave Phillips

Greetings: Recently I received a letter from a fellow who civilly noted how atrocious is so much of the documentation for Linux audio software. While that may be generally true it is also easy to point out specific excellent docos, e.g., Snd, Csound, LilyPond, Rosegarden, etc., though too at the same time it must be admitted that even those docs are not necessarily the most well-organized. Perhaps this fellow's most damning statement was made re: the HOWTOs available from the Linux Documentation Project (LDP). I decided to check out the situation myself, and here's what I found (the doc is followed by its last revision date): Linux Sound HOWTO July 2001 ALSA Sound mini-HOWTO November 1999 Linux MIDI HOWTO May 2002 Linux MP3 HOWTO December 2001 Worse, the LDP's own documentation refers back to these out-of-date pieces, making sure that readers continue to be misinformed. I mean no critique of the excellent LPD, but it seems to me that as a community we have an obligation to correct this situation. For all the talk about improving documentation, here's a chance for anyone to get directly involved. The format for these HOWTOs is simple and already laid out: what's needed is currency, someone to correct and update the basic sound & music oriented HOWTOs. Otherwise it might be better if we asked the LDP to remove the docs in order to mitigate confusion. Any comments ? Any takers ? Does anyone care ? Best regards, dp

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] Trouble compiling JACK 0.98.1

by Jos Laake

Hi, I'm rebuilding my Linux Audio box after a card change and system crash. I know I've seen this problem before but can't remember what I did to fix it (and that system and all its logs are long gone.) I'm using a Delta 1010 (not the LT) I'm using the CCRMA kernel: kernel-2.4.26-1.ll.rh90.ccrma The latest ALSA release: 1.0.5a Now I'm compiling JACK 0.98.1 and I get this in the middle of my './configure' trace: ------------------------------------------------------ checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config checking for sndfile >= 1.0... Package sndfile was not found in the pkg-config search path. Perhaps you should add the directory containing `sndfile.pc' to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable No package 'sndfile' found configure: WARNING: *** the jackrec example client will not be built ------------------------------------------------------ wha...? Am I gonna be needing this 'jackrec example client'? Anybody have a clue-by-4 to throw in my direction? ;-) Peace, ~Jos~

20 years, 1 month

[linux-audio-user] realtime modules problem, 2.6.6

by dee

Hello I'm running debian kernel 2.6.6 and am trying to get the realtime-lsm module compiled -without success. I first tried the non-debian instructions in the INSTALL file, when this didn't work, i tried apt-get install realtime-source and make-kpkg --append-to-version foo --added-patches=debian modules_image it failed, the output is below. (never having added extra third party modules in this way i then tried a whole recompile of the kernel with the same result, make-kpkg --append-to-version=foo --added-patches=debian kernel_image modules_image) my kernel config contains CONFIG_SECURITY=y # CONFIG_SECURITY_NETWORK is not set CONFIG_SECURITY_CAPABILITIES=m # CONFIG_SECURITY_ROOTPLUG is not set CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX=y # CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX_BOOTPARAM is not set # CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX_DISABLE is not set CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX_DEVELOP=y # CONFIG_SECURITY_SELINUX_MLS is not set tia for any tips on getting this working, dee ----- end output from make-kpkg dh_testdir dh_testroot dh_clean -k make KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux MODVERSIONS=detect KERNEL=linux-2.6.6.20040815b C OMMONCAP=none make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/modules/realtime' make modules -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=/usr/src/modules/realtime make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.6' CC [M] /usr/src/modules/realtime/realcap.o /usr/src/modules/realtime/realcap.c:137: error: unknown field `bprm_compute_cred s' specified in initializer /usr/src/modules/realtime/realcap.c:137: error: `cap_bprm_compute_creds' undecla red here (not in a function) /usr/src/modules/realtime/realcap.c:137: error: initializer element is not const ant /usr/src/modules/realtime/realcap.c:137: error: (near initialization for `capabi lity_ops.register_security') make[4]: *** [/usr/src/modules/realtime/realcap.o] Error 1 make[3]: *** [/usr/src/modules/realtime] Error 2 make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.6' make[2]: *** [all] Error 2 make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/modules/realtime' make[1]: *** [binary-modules] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/modules/realtime' Module /usr/src/modules/realtime failed.

20 years, 1 month

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Linux-audio-user August 2004