High quality audio morphing effect plugin, why it doesn't exist yet?

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I had a daydream about a gui concept for a simple morpher...
Kind of like say FabFilter Saturn-

First you identify a list of attributes of sound.
Then create a multi-band interface showing the freq spectrum.
Each band contains its own set of the list of attributes, and A/B switches corresponding to the samples loaded.
For each attribute, in each band, you choose the end-point of the morph for that attribute, on that band. So basically, whether the attribute/band morphs to 'B', or stays the same.
So, you want the low end amplitude to go from a cough in slot A to a locomotive in slot B;
You tick 'B' on the low end amplitude slot.
You want the hi end to stay a cough; You tick A in the hi end.
Pretty crude, but its some kind of control...
Now, how long the list of attributes is, and how deep sub-menus go, well...
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valhallasound wrote:
Trevor Wishart has written a book, Audible Design (published in 1994), that has LOTS of discussion about morphing between different sounds using the techniques available in CDP.

Sean Costello
We need less talking about theories and books (let the programmer-experts have their own discussion boards) and more developers who flag for new initiatives of morphing plugins and/or examples of the present applications, if there's one. H.

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valhallasound wrote:
Trevor Wishart has written a book, Audible Design (published in 1994), that has LOTS of discussion about morphing between different sounds using the techniques available in CDP.

Sean Costello
i think CDP was already mentioned, but this thread is more looking for something that can be integrated in a DAW. i'd be curious about how a CDP morph sounds though. any examples anywhere?

basically metasynth could also be used for morphing. or at least you can "stamp" a sound with a timbre of another, and with some twiddling you could sure make a convincing morph.

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Harry_HH wrote:developers who flag for new initiatives
I vote for Urs hiring xoxos for the job. :)

Someone mentioned a morpher that works via physical modeling. :-o
That is crazy to think about.
But talk to some video game devs. They might be working on it.
Probably called 'Dynamic Reactive Sonic Reality' or something. :P
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highkoo wrote:I had a daydream about a gui concept for a simple morpher...
Kind of like say FabFilter Saturn-

First you identify a list of attributes of sound.
Then create a multi-band interface showing the freq spectrum.
Each band contains its own set of the list of attributes, and A/B switches corresponding to the samples loaded.
For each attribute, in each band, you choose the end-point of the morph for that attribute, on that band. So basically, whether the attribute/band morphs to 'B', or stays the same.
So, you want the low end amplitude to go from a cough in slot A to a locomotive in slot B;
You tick 'B' on the low end amplitude slot.
You want the hi end to stay a cough; You tick A in the hi end.
Pretty crude, but its some kind of control...
Now, how long the list of attributes is, and how deep sub-menus go, well...
Nice one!! :D

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Aside from CSound, there's also SuperCollider which, in conjunction with SwingOSC, is incredibly fun and flexible. It's a bit steeper than, say, PureData or Max/MSP, but once you start getting the hang of it, you'll start getting some fantastic results.

Here's a morphing UGen for SuperCollider: http://doc.sccode.org/Classes/PV_Morph.html

Once you get deep enough, you can start writing your own UGens.

It's definitely cheaper than Kyma (free).

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Harry_HH wrote: We need less talking about theories and books (let the programmer-experts have their own discussion boards) and more developers who flag for new initiatives of morphing plugins and/or examples of the present applications, if there's one. H.
I wouldn't try to clamp down on the theoretical discussions of programmer-experts, as these are the people that are most likely to be the developers of a new morphing plugin. In general, developers ARE "programmer-experts."

Developers will work on projects that aren't guaranteed to be profitable, if they are personally excited about it. You are far more likely to get a good morphing plugin out of an academic type that has done extensive morphing research in their career, versus an established commercial developer that doesn't have a strong personal interest in the topic. However, if a developer comes on here and has some techie stuff to say about the topic, and you dismiss their discussion with "WE WAN'T THAT F**** MORPHING PLUGIN, you deaf developers!" - well, I don't know too many developers that respect people that talk like that to them.

Sean Costello

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At the risk of repeating myself, I still see a huge definition problem. What does "morphing" mean in the audio context?

When things grow over my head, I like to break them down into small pieces. Let's have a look at the most basic examples:


1) Sound A is a 20Hz sine, sound B is a 20Hz sine phase shifted by 180°

At 50% "morph"-state, is the ideal result zero? or a 90° phase shift?



2) Sound A is a 200Hz sine, sound B is a 2000Hz sine.

What's the 50% point? a ~1100Hz sine? A mix of both? Or maybe a Beethoven classic? ;)


Without proper definition of the term, it's impossible to answer these questions... ...and even more difficult to find a universally valid technical solution.



Again, the only kind of morphing I've heard so far is exclusively about creative synth parameter automation. One can do this in countless "convincing" manners.

But it doesn't really matter if this specific synth patch has been generated by a human or re-synthesis computer. You still need a synth and you still need to automate its parameters (of course, "human" musicians can approximate the effect too).
Fabien from Tokyo Dawn Records

Check out my audio processors over at the Tokyo Dawn Labs!

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FabienTDR wrote:At the risk of repeating myself, I still see a huge definition problem. What does "morphing" mean in the audio context?

When things grow over my head, I like to break them down into small pieces. Let's have a look at the most basic examples:


1) Sound A is a 20Hz sine, sound B is a 20Hz sine phase shifted by 180°

At 50% "morph"-state, is the ideal result zero? or a 90° phase shift?
The ideal result is a 20 Hz sine, phase shifted by 90 degrees. A simple frequency domain morphing plugin, that interpolates 2 signals in phase and amplitude, would handle this well.
2) Sound A is a 200Hz sine, sound B is a 2000Hz sine.

What's the 50% point? a ~1100Hz sine? A mix of both? Or maybe a Beethoven classic? ;)
My guess is that it would be "a signal with 50% 200 Hz sine, 50% 2000 Hz sine." Which is a pretty boring "morph," but if the morphing tried to interpolate the frequencies from two widely varying regions, pretty much any in-between sound would turn into horrible frequency domain hash. It is easier to think of the 200 Hz sine as a signal that has 0% energy in the 2000 Hz range.

Would the Hartmann Neuron fit into the category of "morphing"?

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr05/a ... uronvs.htm

Sean Costello

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Maybe the next ValhallaDSP endeavor should be a high quality morphing plugin. :!:

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@valhallasound: Mhhh.. The longer I think about morphing, the more I doubt that spectrum trickery is even relevant at all. My starting point would probably be a kind of wideband cross-vocooder (where on both try to approximate the level behaviour of the other "side"). This would "print" the dynamic behaviour of source A into source B. And the other way around. Finally, a simple cross-fade mixes both sides. If this works as expected, more bands would probably improve the effect.

So, it's maybe easier to try to mimic the level/transient behaviour of both sources relative to each other? This sounds like a realistic approach, and the importance of transients/envelopes in human perception speaks for it. Mhhhh... ;)
Fabien from Tokyo Dawn Records

Check out my audio processors over at the Tokyo Dawn Labs!

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Arglebargle wrote:Maybe the next ValhallaDSP endeavor should be a high quality morphing plugin. :!:
I want to explore frequency domain plugins in the future, but morphing isn't a personal interest of mine in this millennium. I did a fair amount of research on it at the end of the 1990s. My guess is that most of the tools that currently do morphing date from that era or before.

I can see several avenues that would lead to a developer working on a morphing plugin in 2013:

- There is a big existing market for morphing. Right now, this doesn't look like this is the case. There are several solutions that have been mentioned, but the fact that most of these seem to be "legacy" doesn't suggest that this is a hugely profitable domain for developers.

- The developer is fanatic about morphing. Developers make their decisions for a bunch of reasons. Some of the reasons are primarily about profit (i.e. people buy reverbs, compressors, analog modeled synths, etc.), but some of the reasons are personal reasons. For example, I know that reverbs sell, but I also LOVE to design reverbs. It makes me happy. I also loved designing ÜberMod, even though there wasn't a huge public demand for "whatever the hell ÜberMod is" that I was responding to. Other developers may have a huge passion for morphing sounds, or the technology behind morphing, that has lain dormant until being awakened by threads like this. You've also got people in the academic world, who might want to take some of their extensive experience and put it into plugin form.

- A major artist has a hit or series of hits that make use of morphing. This could happen with an artist that has roots in both the popular and academic music world (like BT, with his connections to folks at Berklee and MIT Media Labs). The various "glitch" plugins out there are an example of this, although not necessarily from an academic direction. Many of these plugins emulate sounds that were first heard on Squarepusher and Aphex Twin records in the mid 1990s, which were generated by a sampler triggered by a Boss DR-660. The sound became sought after, and a number of developers filled this void with plugins. It is worth noting that the first software solutions for "glitch" were created as unit generators for Supercollider, by an academic type in England.

I'm wondering if the best solution for morphing is a plugin, as opposed to a standalone program that generates audio files. A standalone program could easily integrate academic software and wrap an easier to use interface around it, without having to deal with the cross-platform 80+ DAW hellscape that is the plugin world.

Take a look at PaulStretch:

http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

The sounds that this program produces are VERY familiar to computer music types that have been around long enough. I first heard this time of massive time stretching in a Bill Schotstaedt composition at CCRMA in 1988 ("Leviathan"), and I know that Barry Truax was using similar techniques in 1986. By the mid-90s, the sndwarp ugens were in Csound, so Csound users could generate these sounds. Still, this sort of massive time stretching languished in academia, until PaulStretch became popular a few years ago. Being able to access these sounds in a program that has an actual GUI is MUCH easier than learning Csound or Supercollider.

Sean Costello

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I haven't read through all pages of this thread, but had no one mentioned native instruments skannerXT? It's a granular synth with preset morphing. I got the free ware version they gave out for Christmas a couple years ago, it can morph between multiple sounds pretty well, in my opinion...

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Harry_HH wrote:
valhallasound wrote:
Trevor Wishart has written a book, Audible Design (published in 1994), that has LOTS of discussion about morphing between different sounds using the techniques available in CDP.

Sean Costello
We need less talking about theories and books (let the programmer-experts have their own discussion boards) and more developers who flag for new initiatives of morphing plugins and/or examples of the present applications, if there's one. H.
yes!
this threads been open for a week now and we still dont have a free plugin that can take any two sounds i can dream of and morph them in a natural sounding way!

what a world!!

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I do think it's a trick tho. Notice the sample of the cat starts playing at the point the finger is off the toch screen. And theres never a clean inbetween sound.. More of a hasty swoop over to the other side.
Also I think it sounds jagged, more than it sounds lofi mp3 style.

Ah ^ indeed.. was typing slow.

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