Photosounder

erasermusic · Post by **erasermusic** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 1:43 pm

Hi,

I have just bought the Photosounder. I hesitated a bit after realising that DEMO operated in MONO. So I've done googling and found out that since version 1.8, Photosounder works in STEREO, so I bought it straight away. But it STILL operates in MONO. Huge disappointment for me !

How can I work in stereo mode ?

Neon Breath · Post by **Neon Breath** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:55 pm

That's why user guides exist...

STEREO OPERATIONS
Photosounder operates entirely in mono. However, there are four options in the Options menu that can be used to treat each channel of a stereo sound separately and join the output into a stereo sound file.
The Load Left Channel Only and Load Right Channel Only options can be used so that when a stereo sound is loaded one of the two channels is loaded instead of an even mono mix of the two. You can therefore treat each channel separately and save the results for each into a separate sound file. However, before you save, you should make sure to toggle the Unnormalised Output option. Usually sounds are normalised so that their highest peak is set to 0 dB. This means that in the process of normalisation, one of the two channels might be amplify more than the other, therefore offsetting the pan in either direction. This does not occur when Unnormalised Output is enabled. However note that if one channel appears to be 100 times (+40 dB) louder than the other, just amplify the other channel accordingly by +40 dB. Unnormalised Output amplifies the output by multiples of 100 (40 dB) so that the peak amplitude of the output is always between -40 dB and 0 dB.
Once you've saved both the left and right channel to individual files, you can join them together into one stereo file by using Mix Channel Files to Stereo... in the Options menu. A first open dialog will appear with which you should select the left channel file. A second open dialog will appear so that you can select the right channel file. Then a save dialog will appear so that you can save the mix of the two files to a new sound file.

erasermusic · Post by **erasermusic** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:38 am

Code: Select all

The new release features:
[b]Stereo support[/b] to edit and create stereo sounds less painfully

http://rekkerd.org/michel-rouzic-announ ... nder-v1-8/

I thought STEREO support actually means STEREO support. The information above is misleading and I feel cheated.

Don't get me wrong. I really like and sincerely support Photosounder, as I find fantastic and inovative. But it does NOT support STEREO. And potentional customers should be well aware of that.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 9:11 am

I'm not sure if English is the devs native language, but to be fair 'Stereo support' isnt necessarily a synonym for 'completely stereo-processing cpapable all of the time'. There is support for stereo. Its not specifically misleading, although its open to interpretation. Reading the manual or asking would have made sense if it was a concern, and would have revealed the correct situation, so its not an attempt to cheat you.

Neon Breath · Post by **Neon Breath** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 2:08 pm

erasermusic wrote:
But it does NOT support STEREO. And potentional customers should be well aware of that.

Sorry, but it does. Not the way you want obviously, it take few steps but it does render in full stereo.

5against4 · Post by **5against4** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:26 pm

Very, very, very late reply here - but in case the OP hasn't moved on entirely, and for the benefit of anyone else who hasn't realised, getting stereo out of Photosounder is a piece of cake. Just render the image twice (i.e. hit Reload after saving the first WAV file). The two renders will sound identical but their data will be entirely different. Open them both in any sound editing program (Audacity, Sound Forge, whatever) and put the two files in the left/right channels. Bingo: true stereo.

A_SN · Post by **A_SN** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:54 pm

5against4 wrote:Very, very, very late reply here - but in case the OP hasn't moved on entirely, and for the benefit of anyone else who hasn't realised, getting stereo out of Photosounder is a piece of cake. Just render the image twice (i.e. hit Reload after saving the first WAV file). The two renders will sound identical but their data will be entirely different. Open them both in any sound editing program (Audacity, Sound Forge, whatever) and put the two files in the left/right channels. Bingo: true stereo.

There's a way in the Options menu do put the two files together into a stereo files using nothing but Photosounder. I provided that as a half-baked way of supporting stereo (along with being able to choose a channel when loading a sound).

5against4 · Post by **5against4** » Tue Jul 26, 2016 7:01 pm

What's strange about that, though, is that it takes two 24-bit mono files and kicks out a 32-bit stereo file. Why doesn't it remain 24-bit?

A_SN · Post by **A_SN** » Wed Jul 27, 2016 2:39 pm

5against4 wrote:What's strange about that, though, is that it takes two 24-bit mono files and kicks out a 32-bit stereo file. Why doesn't it remain 24-bit?

The output is in the prefered general output format, so 32-bit by default. Unless I screwed up somewhere and hardcoded it to 32.

5against4 · Post by **5against4** » Sat Jul 30, 2016 9:18 am

Ah, so how come when we save individual files they're 24-bit? Or have i altered something somewhere......?

A_SN · Post by **A_SN** » Sat Jul 30, 2016 9:28 am

5against4 wrote:Ah, so how come when we save individual files they're 24-bit? Or have i altered something somewhere......?

I just looked at the code, there is indeed an oversight from me, the code to join two files is hardcoded to float format.

And you must have set save_to_pcm_24 to 1 in config.txt for it to work that way.

I don't understand why this is an issue though (and why did people make me create the 24-bit option), how could 32-bit float format possibly not be just fine for any situation? There's no way it's a poorly supported format in 2016.

5against4 · Post by **5against4** » Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:40 am

From my perspective, i'm happy there's a possibility to save in 24-bit, as 32-bit is beyond my needs, and i'd end up converting down anyway. So i'm glad it's there

A_SN · Post by **A_SN** » Sun Jul 31, 2016 7:14 pm

5against4 wrote:From my perspective, i'm happy there's a possibility to save in 24-bit, as 32-bit is beyond my needs, and i'd end up converting down anyway. So i'm glad it's there

I'm asking because Photosounder 2.0 (a full rewrite) is in the works and I'm not gonna include that option just to make uncompressed full quality files be 25% smaller.

5against4 · Post by **5against4** » Sun Jul 31, 2016 7:53 pm

Ah, well in that case i'm perfectly happy for it to disappear, and everything to be 32-bit. It's no hassle to convert to 24.

Didn't realise there was a 2.0 in the works, very exciting. Have you contemplated the possibility of enabling the program to render an image at different rates, i.e. one section at a certain resolution, another at a different resolution, and so on?

A_SN · Post by **A_SN** » Sun Jul 31, 2016 9:29 pm

5against4 wrote:Ah, well in that case i'm perfectly happy for it to disappear, and everything to be 32-bit. It's no hassle to convert to 24.

Didn't realise there was a 2.0 in the works, very exciting. Have you contemplated the possibility of enabling the program to render an image at different rates, i.e. one section at a certain resolution, another at a different resolution, and so on?

you mean vary the playback speed? There will be tools to transform things, so yeah I guess.

Photosounder

KVR Audio

MONO only ??