Linux-audio-user August 2005

linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org

169 participants
209 discussions

[linux-audio-user] Distortion -- bad speakers or cheap soundcard?

by mrmoo1231＠ahooyay.omcay

Several questions, all of which may stem from quite imperfect understanding. (Please be gentle to the terminal newbie...) I have an admittedly consumer-grade sound-card (SB PCI 16) and moderately acceptable speakers with a under-desk sub-woofer. My question is this: when synthesizing a MIDI file from timidity using a soundfont, how do I tell whether the distortion is permanently in the .wav file, or if it's just my speakers? And if it is part of the *.wav file, what adjustments should I make to eliminate the distortion before creating a CD? Would I just need to reduce some levels either with timidity switches, or with alsamixer? Here's where my limited understanding of sound processing and hardware fail me: it seems to me that, if in rendering a MIDI file through a softsynth such as timidity, when I specify output directly into a wav file (e.g. with timidity it would be with the switch '-Ow' then I ought to be able to get decent digital output, even if my local speakers couldn't handle it. I was thinking it would be analogous to rendering a full color ray-traced image, even if I was using an ancient video card that couldn't handle more than say, 16 colors. After all, it's the software doing the processing, isn't it, even if I don't happen to have hardware that can render in real time? How is it that the DAC on my soundcard can handle input from a commercial audio CD, outputting sound levels at least as high, but w/o distortion? If you can suggest background to read up on, that would be useful, too! But nothing too technical, please, I never took trig or calculus... ;-) Thanks! -Mark __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail for Mobile Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/learn/mail

19 years, 3 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] VST Plugins Revisited (Again)

by davidrclark＠earthlink.net

Tim, You recently posted: > WINE is very useful for crossover environments and the work that has been > done in this area is awesome, but IMO a potential distraction. Certainly WINE is not optimized for audio --- no question about that. Speaking of distractions. Let's admit it: Linux audio is chock full of distractions, including such things as: Why isn't this compiling? Why is my system locking up requiring a cold reboot? How bad is the resulting file damage from using MuSE and jackd together with a 3-D ATI driver which necessitated a cold reboot? Why can't I hear anything? What was the name of that damn program again? How did I connect that up the last time? Linux Audio has a *lot* of distractions. Some might even say it's nothing but distractions, but I have found GNU/Linux to be an excellent research platform not only for audio, but also for other fields. Regards, Dave.

19 years, 3 months

[linux-audio-user] free Brackenbury tubeamp VST

by Paul Coccoli

I know there's been lots of discussion about VSTs on the list (I have yet to attempt to get them working). Has anyone seen this Brackenbury VST (you can download a free copy from http://www.floridamusicco.com/)? I was wondering if it works under any of the current VST solutions, and if so, is it worth checking out? paul

19 years, 3 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] Distortion -- bad speakers or cheap soundcard?

by davidrclark＠earthlink.net

And speaking of mastering as cleanup: > A lot of it seems to be what I would call "cleaup." I meant "cleanup." Dave.

19 years, 3 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] Distortion -- bad speakers or cheap soundcard?

by davidrclark＠earthlink.net

Hi Ron, I just saw the other post, explaining what you were getting at, so thanks for that. Yes, I agree that mastering isn't some kind of mystical, magical thing that only the initiated and brilliant can do. You mentioned that it was a task, and I think that's a good description of what it is. A lot of it seems to be what I would call "cleaup." I do still think, though, that someone new to audio is in for a lot of work until they get to where you are. I don't see any shortcuts there. Regards, Dave.

19 years, 3 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] Distortion -- bad speakers or cheap soundcard?

by davidrclark＠earthlink.net

Hi Ron, You recently posted: > Anyway, I jumped all over David's proposal. The topic > is a pet peve of mine and I'm on a personal mission. Would you be so kind as to explain to me exactly what it is that you think I've proposed? I regard my post as stating the obvious: A newbie in audio isn't going to be able to compete in loudness with someone with experience at it. If they were available, I could pull your own posts with ample evidence of frustration regarding making a track even louder than you thought was possible. Do you remember those days? And also: I'm sure you're familiar with Bob Katz's book, so I cannot help but wonder why you also posted: > The objective of mastering is to achieve the maximum > amount of loudness for each song on an album and to > make the loudness of each song relative to the others. It would seem that you and Katz are at odds here. You're also at odds with some of the best names in the audio industry, aren't you? In Katz's book, there are lots of tricks for fixing all sorts of problems that apparently slipped by the recording and mixing engineers in many projects. Just one example: Cross-fading a reverb tail to replace an audience applauding at the end of a classsical music performance. As far as I'm concerned, making things loud is about squeezing 24-bit audio into 12-bit resolution for a 16-bit medium. Some things sound OK like that; many don't --- not to me, anyway. Regards, Dave.

19 years, 3 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] Distortion -- bad speakers or cheap soundcard?

by davidrclark＠earthlink.net

Hi Mark, You've asked some good questions. One would think that perhaps software should indeed look at the results and at least warn you that you are exceeding some value, such as the maximum loudness. I haven't used Timidity++ in a long time, so I can't remember whether this program does or not. You should look at the messages or the interface and see if it's warning you. Some software will even tell you how much you've exceeded the maximum and where. Even my very rudimentary software does at least warn me. Generally, you are allowed to set the levels whereever you want, though, even if it does exceed the maximum. Isn't that just peachy? Those of us who are technical like it that way. We just love banging our heads against walls, especially those made of brick or concrete. I believe that Timidity has a gain switch, and this is where you could fix the problem. I usually fix the levels of MIDI files at the MIDI editing stage, rather than in the rendering stage because most of the time I do hardware recording, not software rendering. This would mean either adjusting the master gain or adjusting the gains of all tracks (channels). This latter method allows you to render it anywhere, and I believe most people would advise this as a practice. On your comment about commercial CD's: The people who produce those things are using a lot of tricks to make them very (very) loud without distortion that you can hear, but many would argue that the sound actually is distorted, me included. A lot of the values in those CD's are very close to the maximum, but never went over. If you go over the maximum, then that value is either set to the maximum, or it is changed to another value that is even worse. Either way, it sounds pretty bad, even worse than the "distortion" that many argue is audible on a lot of recent commercial CD's. So what you will probably find is that after adjusting your volumes by some method, your own recording won't be anywhere near as loud as the commercial CD's. You can either worry about it or not, but fixing that is a big headache. You would be in competition with some real pros. I hope this helps. Regards, Dave.

19 years, 3 months

[linux-audio-user] Plantronics CS50-USB

by Paul Check

Hi: I'm wondering if anyone has the Plantronics CS50-USB wireless headset working under Linux? --Paul

19 years, 3 months

[linux-audio-user] PD-questions

by Arnold Krille

Hi all, I finally got around lurking into pd the last evenings. Cool stuff, nevertheless I have some questions: * Why does pd support alsa/jack/oss for audio but only oss for midi? Or is something wrong with my install (gentoo)? * Is anyone interested in a bassline-sequencer which changes the notes occasionally? Probably I will have more questions as my journeys advance... Arnold -- Wenn man mit Raubkopien Bands wie Brosis oder Britney Spears wirklich verhindern könnte, würde ich mir noch heute einen Stapel Brenner und einen Sack Rohlinge kaufen.

19 years, 3 months

[linux-audio-user] (no subject)

by Un Worldly

I had originaly posted this to the demudi mailing list, someone from there directed me here, sorry for all you that are gettingthis same message twice for having not found this list first :) I need some help in making the decision whether I should return to using a prefab audio distribution such as demudi or if I should continue trying to tweak a vanilla linux system into a music production workstation. I am trying to weigh them against each other in a fair way. So far I have done alot of distro hopping, I have used the fedora planet CCRMA package, slackware + audioslack, and of couse sarge + demudi. I admit that I enjoyed planet CCRMA the most, it was the most painless of the three to make operational and it had the newest apps in it, but I switched from using it because I was told that other distros had superior performance (which I haven't really noticed). These days I am running Arch Linux, attempting to transform it into a suitable music production system. I like the idea of a premade DAW package because regular distros don't bother packaging many audio programs, and often it is a real PITA to get them to work on a general purpose distro because of gcc conflicts and stuff. I don't want to spend too much time fighting with my operating system because I would rather spend that time being productive. At the same time, prefab audio distros frustrate me because they are such a small niche, if I break something in demudi I dare not ask for help with it within the debian community, and I have trouble finding other people using the same audio package as I am that are able to give me the occasional clue. I have been flamed out of message boards and mailing lists when looking for help with demudi, I learned to stay away from the debian community unless everything is from the official repository, and I learned it the hard way, ack. There is also the bloat issue, installing a blank distro then adding the audio capabilities lets me install without the options I dont need and to create the optimal set-up for my specific computer, rather then using a setup designed for the lowest common denominator. But I have been at it for a couple weeks and still don't have an operational music environment, packages are hard to find and even less community support is available then with the music distros. It seems like gentoo is the most audio-ready of the general distros, but there is no way I am going to fight with gentoo just to use their sound packages. Arch would be great for this purpose if only there were more people to help the cause, unfortunately there are only a few arch musicians and there isnt anyone maintaining the hard-to-build packages because they are too hard. So I need help thinking of the advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, The tedious but customizable scratch installation vs the convenient yet 'black box' prefab installation. what would be absolutely perfect was a customizable audio distro, or a general distro that officially packaged music software, maybe something like that will exist in the future.

19 years, 3 months

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Linux-audio-user August 2005