KVR :: DSP and Plug-in Development » DSP and Finland (Suomi lovefest). [View Original Topic]
There are 46 posts in this topic.

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jupiter8 - Thu May 24, 2012 11:01 am

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Is it just me or are there a disproportional amount of DSP programmers/developers from Finland ? Sometimes it feels like half of the DSP related articles i read are written by someone from Finland and they're just shy of 5.5 million people over there.

Could be the Baader Meinhof phenomenon (hey i just learned this on Wikipedia,it's when you start to notice something odd you see it everywhere). I'm thinking it could be a Nokia effect perhaps ? Or is it just an illusion ? Do they teach DSP at kindergarten ? Just curious.

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antto - Thu May 24, 2012 11:03 am

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jup: i have had the same impression, even tho i haven't really read much books

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Robin from www.rs-met.com - Thu May 24, 2012 11:09 am

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i see finnish names more often on research papers than in books.

maybe this:

http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/

is rather big? dunno.

edit: and yes: i have the same impression

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chk071 - Thu May 24, 2012 11:18 am

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Well they don't have much to do there apart from mobile phone throwing, rally driving and coding.

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penguinfromdeep - Thu May 24, 2012 11:50 am

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It's true they have to spend quite a lot inside because it's so frikkin cold .. So they have some time to learn ins and outs of dsp magic.. But still there's not actually much in terms of audio software coming from Finland .. Only ANtti's synth comes to my mind now

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jupiter8 - Thu May 24, 2012 12:15 pm

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I doubt the cold has much to do with it. Sweden,Norway and Canada are pretty damn cold too most of the year.

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ksandvik - Thu May 24, 2012 12:17 pm

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Sisu. Required when programming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu

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Robin from www.rs-met.com - Thu May 24, 2012 12:22 pm

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especially in debugging sessions.

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Richard_Synapse - Thu May 24, 2012 12:24 pm

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Yeah, I think this is the reason. There's not many places like that, where DSP for musical applications is pushed forward.

Richard

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thevinn - Thu May 24, 2012 12:38 pm

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Every distribution has a largest element.

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mkdr - Thu May 24, 2012 12:42 pm

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Hi. I'm one Finnish dsp fan too

I've only released eq's(with saturation) and synth integration plugins(for DSI synths).. and done some basic dynamics and effects, but just for my own use. Guess i have to release them and my synth soon too.. To boost the Finnish image even more =)

Btw. I come from here: http://www.tut.fi/en/units/departments/signal-processing/

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Ichad.c - Thu May 24, 2012 2:02 pm

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Maybe it's the cold -> spend more time indoors - cracking the books, thinking etc. So I blame the African sun for my stupidity

Btw, it's winter here, about 12 degrees Celsius, and I'm freezing my butt off

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mkdr - Thu May 24, 2012 2:05 pm

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Btw, it's summer here, about 10 degrees Celsius

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Ichad.c - Thu May 24, 2012 2:16 pm

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Yeah, but indoors you have central heating or something similiar. Here you have bricks and a blanket.

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Ichad.c - Thu May 24, 2012 2:26 pm

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Hell, we're 64 million and add 11 languages to that. And I'm the only DSP freak here

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skipscada - Thu May 24, 2012 2:46 pm

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Lots of audio software comes from Sweden and EnergyXT-Jørgen is from Norway, so the theory holds if you find an explanation for Canada's underachievement. Perhaps they focus too much on the singer/songwriter angle in music.

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antto - Thu May 24, 2012 2:52 pm

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now i see.. you are so very right ;]

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jupiter8 - Thu May 24, 2012 10:04 pm

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Well Jörgen is only one guy and Norway has roughly the same amount of inhabitants as Finland. I can think of 3 Finns right now on the top of my head.

Now i'm thinking they're more visual due to the University. Maybe they publish more papers thus giving the impressions there's lots of them. While Swedish engineers mainly research stuff related to audio but don't present them in an audio context.

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BertKoor - Thu May 24, 2012 11:18 pm

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In the 90ties Finland was very heavily represented in the "demo" scene. Efficient coding is something learnt very early on there me thinks, maybe even in Finnish primary schools? Like gospel singing in church shows who's got talent for it that has to be nurished. The old USSR was also quite good at seeking the talented ones (chess, gymnastics) early on...

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mystran - Fri May 25, 2012 5:51 am

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Good luck finding a primary school teacher that knows how to write code (now or then).

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bmanic - Fri May 25, 2012 6:24 am

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Finns are doing quite well in the computer/technology area in general and also some very specific sports related areas. I mean just look at this list:

- Angry Birds
- Max Payne
- 3D Mark (same guys as Max Payne.. aka the Remedy dudes, right? Also the former Future Crew)
- Nokia
- Genelec
- Antti !
- Assembly demo competition (I attended the first one.. does that make me special? ) and in general the huge demo scene

Sports:

- Rally
- F1 .. motor sports in general
- tons of support people in various sports genres, tons of personal trainers from Finland

In general I think we are pretty "tech savvy" and extremely pedantic. "Passion" and "hotheadedness" is quite low on the list of traits.. unless we are drunk. That's when we are either loud and merry or grab a shotgun and kill our next of kin, spouses or ourselves.

Yeah, we are a strange bunch of people.

I feel kind of like an outsider.. I kept failing the acoustics 101 at the TKK (http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/ ). I'm just another dropout basically.

Oh well..

Cheers!
bManic

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jupiter8 - Fri May 25, 2012 8:22 am

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You don't say! If you meet a Finn male the chance he has raced in Formula One is is about 1 in 500 000 (may not sound like much but compared it to any other country). And if you do, the chance that he's a champion is like 50/50. That's pretty astonishing.

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Meffy - Fri May 25, 2012 8:30 am

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Jupiter, I hope you won't mind a small spelling fix in your revised subject line.

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jupiter8 - Fri May 25, 2012 8:35 am

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What did i spell wrong ? And no,i don't mind.

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Ichad.c - Fri May 25, 2012 8:48 am

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The only thing we're good at is Rugby. The only other thing we have is this:
http://dieantwoord.com/

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Meffy - Fri May 25, 2012 8:57 am

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Changed Soumi to Suomi.

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jupiter8 - Fri May 25, 2012 8:57 am

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No takers on the Nokia Effect theory ? From what i've heard and experienced Finland was a pretty poor (as in no money) country before Nokias success with mobile phones and now they're not. It wouldn't be that far fetched to think that Nokia has invested in a good DSP university to ensure future engineers.

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jupiter8 - Fri May 25, 2012 9:01 am

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Ah ok,it even took me a while to see the error even now that you pointed it out to me.

Funny normally typos sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I can quickly scan say a newspaper and the typos just like shine into my eyes.

Though that is mostly in Swedish and English. My Finnish was never any good (not completely true,according to my parents i spoke Finnish as a child due to a Finnish friend but i don't even remember that).

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bmanic - Fri May 25, 2012 9:16 am

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Well it's not just Nokia. We already had a pretty good forest/paper industry way before Nokia telecommunications division was born. We also had (and still have) KONE, makers of all kinds of large industry machines but probably most famous for their elevators, well at least here in Finland.

We also had some pretty high tech stuff from the 18th century, like Fiskars scissors, axes and such.

We are just that kind of people I guess.

Oh and apparently we used to be (can't verify if we still are.. I sure as hell ain't!) rather effective soldiers. Apparently there is an old saying in Sweden ".. and we fought until the very last Finn!" (at least according to my late grandfather).

The deadliest soldier throughout history of warfare was a Finn, a sniper called Simo Häyhä.

EDIT: yeah.. got a bit offtopic there.



Like I said.. we are very strange.

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jupiter8 - Fri May 25, 2012 9:30 am

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Yeah and don't forget the maritime industry, Wärtsilä and whatnot.

I just checked and it seems my reports on the Nokia miracle was way overestimated. There's no particularly big growth during the mobile phone introduction (at least not compared to Sweden).

True that. Kinda isolated for large parts of history living under the shadow of the Soviet Union. The language no one even knows where it comes from. And so on.

EDIT: Simo Häyhä
Damn that's the funniest thing i've read all week.

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Xenakios - Fri May 25, 2012 11:43 am

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Yaaaaaawn... Mitä vittua, täh?!

Never been that much into low level DSP coding myself, but I do know a few people here in Finland who have done things more in that vein...I am probably the only person doing anything like audio programming in my own city, though...

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ksandvik - Fri May 25, 2012 12:09 pm

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If you learned to drive outside the main cities on the twisty dirt roads across forests in a snow blizzard and elks suddenly crossing the road, then an F1 race is a no-brainer.

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ksandvik - Fri May 25, 2012 12:10 pm

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When I graduated from college in Finland in the mid eighties, the norm was that the industry told the universities and colleges how many engineers and other professionals they needed, in what domain. And the higher education schools conformed. Pretty good idea, me thinks. Especially in a small country that has to compete in the big world.

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jupiter8 - Fri May 25, 2012 12:30 pm

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Damn now i got all inspired by that badass of the week site. Finland is without a doubt the most badass country on the planet.

This for example,they course like nobody's business. Vittua,unless i'm mistaken, is the female genital parts and not the good word either. The worst. I had an co workers mother scream that to my face once. Why ? She had stalled the engine of the car. Without a seconds hesitation: WITTU!

One of the most badass men i've ever seen was one really old guy (looked about to croak any second) who was participating in one of their favourite pasttimes: Winter swimming. This particular year it was colder than usual. Like a lot colder. Like -40 degrees Celsius (funnily enough -40 degrees Fahrenheit too). The Swedish TV reporter asked if it wasn't hard to swim in such cold conditions ? His calm reply was:the colder it's in the air the warmer the water feels. And the funny thing was this guy was nothing special (like a Navy Seal or something) just a regular Finnish guy plus he was like 80 years old.

When swimming in artic temperatures isn't challenging enough they go to the sauna.Or both. And if you think you've been in a sauna,you haven't unless it's a Finnish one. They like it about 110 degrees hot. Now i'm not talking about 110 Fahrenheits scorching Arizona desert hot,i'm talking about 110 degrees Celsius. Well gee how hot is that ? Well, water boils at 100. That obviously isn't enough so they pour water on the heater so it gets 110 degrees hot and humid. You can't even imagine that.It's like being hit by a freight train. Now you're probably thinking they can't be any more badass than that. You'd die.

Well you'd be wrong. If that wasn't enough to feel like your skin is falling of your flesh, they start to spank each other with birch branches!!! No joke.

Finland we salute you,always stay crazy.

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mkdr - Fri May 25, 2012 10:48 pm

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Haha
That Häyhä page is so badass: "Throughout the Winter War (as it would come to be known), Simo Häyhä ran around being what experienced HALO players would call a "camping fag", and scoring enough kill shots to make f**king RoboCop and the Terminator hide their heads in shame."
"Häyhä not only passed out long-range silent death to anyone with a red star on his hat, but he did it without the aid of a telescopic sight. He preferred to use the rifle's regular iron sights"

"Throughout the war, Häyhä raked in a total of 505 confirmed sniper kills (in some sources he is credited with 542). On top of this, he also mowed down two hundred men with a Suomi 9mm submachine gun, bringing his total kill count to over 700 men in under 100 days."
That is f**king crazy. And probably why there are strict gun laws in Finland.




Btw. Sauna is actually very relaxing. The spanking with a birch is like a massage that relaxes the muscles and the skin. Gives out a pleasant scent too. I usually go to a sauna atleast once a week. Couldn't live without it


Also, Made in Finland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Oasis_of_the_Seas

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mystran - Sat May 26, 2012 11:26 am

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That particular word is pretty much like the word 'f**k' in English, except it's not used for it's original purpose quite as often (in fact it's almost never used for it's actual meaning).

You certainly don't want to learn the "worst" words for that particular part of female anatomy. There are quite plenty, though.



Actually, 110 degrees and dry is rather awful. In practice most people don't really heat their saunas quite that hot, rather something like 80-90 and VERY humid tends to be ideal. While the steam (from pouring water on the hot stones) can initially feel quite sharp (depends on the sauna and how you throw the water; most normal people prefer it smooth), sauna is actually more comfortable when it's humid enough. For electrically heated sauna's especially, some people might even throw water around the room when heating just to make it less dry.

Anyway, this stuff isn't specific to Finland; we might be the most famous for it, but Russians and apparently other eastern European people do it as well.



Generally I'd say the result of doing that is that you end up feeling LESS like your skin is falling of your flesh. It's funny that people always think there's something strange about it. It's not like you're supposed to hit hard enough to actually cause any sort of pain (which arguably is hard to do with a properly constructed vihta anyway; and don't get me started on how the other half of Finland calls those 'vasta' instead).

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t3toooo - Sat May 26, 2012 11:59 am

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and how can anybody forget this?

http://jeskola.net/


i thought it will eat any daw for breakfast but now i know it'll eat each of them three times.
x64 works perfectly.


sorry, couldn't resist.

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ras.s - Sat May 26, 2012 12:33 pm

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While you're joking about that man Häyhä, there's been a shooting in Hyvinkää, with someone snipering from a rooftop, injuring seven and killing two. In some of the news article it say him 'like' that Simo Häyhä on Facebook. In english.

Still one thing to consider when talking about finnish mentality, is that our country was urbanized in the fifties and afterwards, it hasn't been a long time since we still used to live in the bush. Our material development has skyrocketed, yet I think our culture hasn't evolved in the same pace.


On topic of finnish DSP, just discovered Mausynth myself, mighty nice. What else out there? Mystran's works yea (nice and stable methinks), Buzz already mentioned, Antti @ smartelectronix, that one guy with Kingston on his name, some crunch effect... I think there's couple more.


I did quite a few tracks with Buzz back in the day, graduating from Modplug before that.. Probably got stuck with the idea of modularity from that time on.



And much appreciation for sauna. Heating it up tomorrow.. Puukiukaalla, ou jea.

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Borogove - Sat May 26, 2012 3:00 pm

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Stanford CCRMA is another one, but it doesn't seem as influential as the Finnish bloc in the trenches of the Music-DSP development world.

I think there's some kind of complex Finnish feedback loop between acoustics.hut.fi, the demo scene, Linux hacking culture, and techno music.

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EvilDragon - Sat May 26, 2012 3:26 pm

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ZEF SO FRESH!

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EvilDragon - Sat May 26, 2012 3:30 pm

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PIPARI!?!?!

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mystran - Sat May 26, 2012 5:18 pm

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Well, that's not uncommonly used to refer to such body parts, but really 'pipari' is short for 'piparkakku' which is a type of traditional Christmas cookie. I don't think that qualifies as a bad word.

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horsma - Sat May 26, 2012 8:55 pm

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[quote="Xenakios"]Yaaaaaawn... Mitä vittua, täh?!

Tervee.
I think this "mitä vittua" translates to "what the f**k"

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bmanic - Sun May 27, 2012 11:47 pm

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Yeah this is very unfortunate. Being on vacation in Seoul, south korea, I only got the news yesterday. Very unfortunate indeed and what's worse is that this kind of incident isn't exactly unique in our country.

Cheers!
bManic

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ras.s - Tue May 29, 2012 8:48 am

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Hope I didn't kill this thread by bringing that killer on the topic. It's just disturbing thing really, one of those collective drama moments we've been having plenty as of late. It's not unique anymore though I hope it's not common yet either.

Just some 18-year old kid, went home after hanging with his friends, picks up some guns from his parents' gunlocker and goes to town, trying out his airsoftgun skills on real people with heavy ammo. Some six hours later after fleeing the scene, he sees a police car and goes and surrenders. Now they've been questioning him for few days and it appears he doesn't have much for a motive, just says he's sorry.


??


Some years back there were two separate school shootings with several people dead. Few months ago some young man shot a SOS flare at his ex-girlfriend's father, then went to the school of that girl, the teacher stopped him at the classroom door and he started shooting through the door. No one dead but could have gone real bad.

And it's not just the youths. It seems like there been a whole lot of family murders recently, especially within the last decade. Those kind of situations where the man kills the wife, the children and then himself. Or mother killing the children.


I understand suicide is one thing to want, but why want take the life others? Some people today really see this kind of gore violence as the last resort. Especially the children born in the 90's, living their youths during last decade, I think some of that generation really messed up. Now some people say there's more pressure on the individual in our society today, but it's not true; man don't have to work for his survival like he had to before. I think it's more that people don't teach their children proper survival-/behaviourmechanisms - either they themselves don't have those or they're too busy careering or something to attend to their children and see how they are doing. And sisu already mentioned, think about the energy that build up if you can't embody that properly - so many people feel there's nothing in life to aim for.

It's like we don't know how to deal with anger or frustration and we manifest that in different ways, few individuals going to the extreme - and today's extreme is really grim.

On world scale this is still really small and petty. In some place like Mexico or Syria you can just find pile of one hundred dead bodies and cry and wonder why anyone would do that. Still in this country, these are big things, signs of the time and so on.


[/end venting -- hope this doesn't end up in HPC because of this]


I'd like to hear more what kind of image world people have of Finland?


Here's a list of finnish schtuffs I can gather, pretty much just list of folks appearing on this thread.


Xenakios, mystran / signaldust, mkdr (vain joku kontrollerihässäkkä tuolla! vitsivitsi), mausynth, Retroband, Jeskola Buzz, antti @ smartelectronix.

No audio companies with consumer products? Genelec's quite reputable but they don't deal with DSP. Anything? Come on folks, I know you know more than I do .. A DAW should come from this country, Finland could once again go and beat those pesky swedes and conquer some germans aswell.

Here's something to reap from the acoustics.hut.fi-site: Pori Concert Hall IRs (haven't tried them yet though).

And here's a pretty picture for the end. I hear they make sounds aswell!

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jupiter8 - Tue May 29, 2012 8:53 am

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Don't forget Yehar. http://yehar.com/blog/
He brought us all we need to know about interpolators (except Sinc-interpolation) and then some.



That could possible be the reason why we see so much DSP stuff on the net. Other nations commercializes the stuff they "invent" (in lack of a better word).

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There are 46 posts in this topic.