Requests/Wishlist

[A_SN]

Good to see the forum up and running.

Off the top of my head I would like the ability set start and end points and to loop a section of an image and export it as I use it often for creating rhythmic patterns. Also to be able to crop an image by selecting a section as it is often a small section I am interested in. Could this this be done with the rectangle tool?

All the best

Ian

Start and end points, only for playback/export I assume? As for cropping with a rectangle tool, I suppose it could be done, but wouldn't it be a bit imprecise (as in, too free-handed)? Also, what if you only wanted to crop in time?

[A_SN]

Mmmh, shared memory could do too I suppose, although I don't know how that works. I'll definitely have to look into that and decide which is the best approach, but regardless I'm pretty sure it'll be some form of inter-process communication. I quite like the TCP/IP with Photosounder on another local machine idea, so you can let Photosounder be a huge CPU hog. Plus it'd make it simpler to have many instances running, as each would have different port number (automatically allocated and discovered by the plug in).

To be honest, I see Photosounder more as a limitless treasury of sound,
rather than a regular real-time synth. I mean I will be fully content
if it does allow me to sculpt my sounds at the levels not possible
before, even if not in real-time. At the same time, not meaning to
hijack the thread, I wonder if, with some hefty effort,
one could recreate the sweeping synth bass that can be heard best
at 1:36 of this, or that sweeping bass at the very beginning of this.
I know he was (he is now hugely softsynth based) a fan of the D50
and the JD800.

Ah and I think support for image layers would be fantastic.
That way you could focus on sculpting transients, etc.
without being afraid of destroying the rest of the sound
if something goes wrong. It does not have to be as sophisticated
as what GIMP or Photoshop offer, though. I think opacity setting
and 3, maybe 4 layering modes (multiply, overlay, subtract, difference)
will do.

I wonder if it would be possible to make Photosounder
focus on its generation algorithms, while allowing
3rd party image manipulation apps to interface with it,
via a plugin, etc.

This would free you up from reinventing the wheel
(image manipulation) and allow to focus on more important (sonic)
areas.

What do you think?

For the sweeping bass, you'd have to look at it in Photosounder to see how it looks (you might have to tweak (decrease) min_bpo in config.txt to see it best), you probably could do it, although you might have trouble attaining a sound that sounds like an authentic synth, as they have a very characteristic type of sound that can only be imitated by employing the same techniques.

Image layers is definitely in my plans, this is actually something big, both in undertaking and in the possibilities it would offer. In my plans this is actually what will mostly define the version 2 of Photosounder, hopefully coupled with OpenCL (if you're gonna synthesise 70 layers you'll sure want to use some GPU muscle to ease the task). The plans I have for layers go beyond what Photoshop has. The biggest changes I can think of would be "blending modes" the would propagate in space, by that I mean, sort of like convolution, either 2D convolution (so you can have on a layer your instrument and on another layer points that repeat the instrument around to form a melody out of it) or 1D convolution either horizontally or vertically so that for example you can add harmonics to simple lines, or even make straight lines become wavy, as some sort of FM synthesis. Another essential thing would be a Divide blending mode, which is quite essential, and since we're dealing with 32-bit floating point pixels that's no problem, or even an Interpolate/Extrapolate mode, a Percentile mode (more useful than you'd think, finding the median between layers or pixels can be really useful) and quite importantly a way to define the ratio of the effect between two layers using a third layer which pixels would determine those relationships, so that you can do a sophisticated smooth kind of blending between two layers.

I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with the relationships between layers though, and that's a big question. I could go for the simple stack of layers with groups, but I think that for those kinds of things we might want to use something more flexible. Fox example you might want to reuse the same displacement layer in many places, without having to duplicate it, so that you only have to modify it twice. I think I might have to go with a graph showing layers scattered around and linked through lines. Or maybe a comprehensive kind of layer properties box could do?

That's another problem, layers are going to be a huge part, which means the interface will have to be re-thought. I have no idea how this is going to look right now, although I think I'll try making it as Photoshop-like as necessary. Although Photoshop doesn't really have any big Layer Properties box like I'd like to have... That's why I'm glad I have a forum, I need this to discuss my plans with you guys.

As for Photosounder taking the back seat on editing and letting Photoshop and the likes do the job, the truth is, Photoshop (and any other image editing program) is actually pretty inadequate for that kind of editing. First of all, they can't always handle the size of the images (IIRC Photoshop chokes on anything wider than 30,000 pixels, , which means a 5 minutes sound with the default settings, and even then, Photoshop doesn't handle images that big as smoothly as Photosounder does). They're also mostly made for integer pixel values (when Photosounder uses floats due to the high dynamic range of the images), they're made for images with pixel aspect ratios of 1:1 whereas the pixel aspect ratio doesn't mean anything to Photosounder, and most importantly they lack some crucial tools that Photosounder will need to have, such as curve editors (combined with curve visulisation, sometimes you just need to look at the cross section of an image as a curve, like if you're trying to edit an envelope or something) to make gradients, the aforementioned blending modes, etc...

But like I said before about the VSTi, it'll still be possible using an open inter-process communication protocol, so you could have GIMP and the appropriate plugin opening an image from Photosounder's memory, sending its modified image to Photosounder for synthesis and have it play it. That's just an example. But yeah, I'm really aiming for making Photosounder autonomous and fully capable as far as editing goes. It's going to be quite a lot of work, but I've got all my time to work on it.

[A_SN]

Great to see this forum!

In addition to what's been mentioned, I'd really love to have undo/redo buttons added! That's my biggest wish for photosounder.

Oh, you mean, on top of the Undo in the Edit menu? Is there any big advantage to having an Undo/Redo button in the interface itself? I for one always press U on the keyboard anyway.

[Optomadic]

Michel so happy your here now .

Perfect opportunity to ask if there can be a dll version that can be called from external apps.
It could be looked at as an ARSS revival for nerds like me .

Anyway thanks for any consideration.

[Optomadic]

...I have no idea what people want a VSTi of it for. I suppose playing an instrument generated in Photosounder at different pitches based on the MIDI input? I don't know, I don't use VSTs or VSTis myself, so I need more precise directions from what you guys want..

But most importantly for now I need to be told what you guys want to do with a Photosounder VSTi.

As I stated in the other thread, PS works so much better as an editor or its algos being used in other editors .

That said it would be cool if there were a VSTi player. It could work as a 'bridge' for the SA version. So one would draw or render in PS SA, press a SEND to VSTi button and then be able to play in any host.

I have to agree that it would probably not 'sound' very good to have a player that simply pitches playback via MIDI notes. In this case theres probably going to have to be a whole separate algo written just for the player itself. Not too sure if your up to this M. You may have to look into employing a well experienced DSP/VST dev for this . If it were to happen though, PS would be onto something really big(ger ) IMO.

Anyway will be watching this very closely ..

[DanielKonopka]

For the sweeping bass, you'd have to look at it in Photosounder to see how it looks (you might have to tweak (decrease) min_bpo in config.txt to see it best), you probably could do it, although you might have trouble attaining a sound that sounds like an authentic synth, as they have a very characteristic type of sound that can only be imitated by employing the same techniques.

The only problem is that I finally got to my own machine,
which also uses Win2k, for the same reasons as my friend.
And, guess what? The same symptoms happened to me, arghhh.

And I really do not feel like migrating to XP in the near future,
even for Photosounder...

But like I said before about the VSTi, it'll still be possible using an open inter-process communication protocol, so you could have GIMP and the appropriate plugin opening an image from Photosounder's memory, sending its modified image to Photosounder for synthesis and have it play it. That's just an example. But yeah, I'm really aiming for making Photosounder autonomous and fully capable as far as editing goes. It's going to be quite a lot of work, but I've got all my time to work on it.

That would be fabulous. I only hope you will not get overwhelmed
and depressed by the amount of tasks to do... I certainly would.
I know you are ambitious, but I know the feeling when
you wake up and always see the never ending list of tasks...
Makes me outright depressed and to think, the day has just begun.

[A_SN]

Michel so happy your here now .

Perfect opportunity to ask if there can be a dll version that can be called from external apps.
It could be looked at as an ARSS revival for nerds like me .

Anyway thanks for any consideration.

It's not in my plans ATM. But when that protocol thing is working, you'll be able to use that. Actually I'm even thinking, this Photosounder protocol combined with a 'live synthesis' mode could even be used for generating sounds live, as in, you could use that in a video game to make the sounds.

Oh and when I do get this protocol thing working, I'll make sure I release some code (like some sort of basic demo program) so you can easily reuse to use it (because you probably won't want to reimplement everything for it).

As I stated in the other thread, PS works so much better as an editor or its algos being used in other editors .

That said it would be cool if there were a VSTi player. It could work as a 'bridge' for the SA version. So one would draw or render in PS SA, press a SEND to VSTi button and then be able to play in any host.

I have to agree that it would probably not 'sound' very good to have a player that simply pitches playback via MIDI notes. In this case theres probably going to have to be a whole separate algo written just for the player itself. Not too sure if your up to this M. You may have to look into employing a well experienced DSP/VST dev for this . If it were to happen though, PS would be onto something really big(ger ) IMO.

Anyway will be watching this very closely ..

Yep, agreed!

[A_SN]

For the sweeping bass, you'd have to look at it in Photosounder to see how it looks (you might have to tweak (decrease) min_bpo in config.txt to see it best), you probably could do it, although you might have trouble attaining a sound that sounds like an authentic synth, as they have a very characteristic type of sound that can only be imitated by employing the same techniques.

The only problem is that I finally got to my own machine,
which also uses Win2k, for the same reasons as my friend.
And, guess what? The same symptoms happened to me, arghhh.

And I really do not feel like migrating to XP in the near future,
even for Photosounder...

Yeah, I installed Windows 2000 yesterday and I got the same thing. I'll see in the debugger what happens to see if there's anything I can do about it. If I can, it'll be fixed for v1.7.2 (which is mostly done besides from that, it's gonna be a bugfix release for the bugs (no crashes) I introduced with the new features in the last two releases). By the way, VMware Workstation 7 is awesome, it installed the whole Windows 2000 without me having to do anything except punching the serial code in lol!

But like I said before about the VSTi, it'll still be possible using an open inter-process communication protocol, so you could have GIMP and the appropriate plugin opening an image from Photosounder's memory, sending its modified image to Photosounder for synthesis and have it play it. That's just an example. But yeah, I'm really aiming for making Photosounder autonomous and fully capable as far as editing goes. It's going to be quite a lot of work, but I've got all my time to work on it.

That would be fabulous. I only hope you will not get overwhelmed
and depressed by the amount of tasks to do... I certainly would.
I know you are ambitious, but I know the feeling when
you wake up and always see the never ending list of tasks...
Makes me outright depressed and to think, the day has just begun.

Haha, I know exactly the feeling, although funnily enough it doesn't affect me when it comes to coding. If I've gotta do groceries and do the laundry and go to the bank and give a phone call in a day, I'll go "f**k it I'll just play Call of Duty and eat at McDonald's". But when it comes to development, I don't feel that way, because I'm fuelled both with my satisfaction of the work already done with the dissatisfaction of not being there yet, and the envy of being able to use the next feature. Like often enough when I'm playing around with Photosounder I think "I can't decently do this until I've implemented this and that" so I get to work and get it done. That's why I've always been coding more than experimenting, although these days with the fancy tool brushes and the Mask Invert thing and the zoom I find there's more I can do right now so I do more. But I know there'll be even much more to do when I'll have a number of features listed here so I keep on working.

[xNiMiNx]

A VSTi version of Photosounder
It's in the plans, probably not for too soon though. First I need to be specified what exactly it would be used for, so give me your ideas.

Although its similar, its not Exactly the same, but there has been a vst generator that creates sounds from images. I speak of Didier Dambrin's Beepmap. It has come part of FruityLoops, and now FLStudio since 2001. There are videos of this vst on youtube (search Beepmap) already (to show you what users would use a vst version for).

Dont take my comparison to beepmap too seriously, your videos show how advanced your program is, and beepmap hasnt been updated since its release as far as i can tell, it also isnt sold seperately.

Very impressive software you have here, will be toying with the demo soon.

[A_SN]

A VSTi version of Photosounder
It's in the plans, probably not for too soon though. First I need to be specified what exactly it would be used for, so give me your ideas.

Although its similar, its not Exactly the same, but there has been a vst generator that creates sounds from images. I speak of Didier Dambrin's Beepmap. It has come part of FruityLoops, and now FLStudio since 2001. There are videos of this vst on youtube (search Beepmap) already (to show you what users would use a vst version for).

Dont take my comparison to beepmap too seriously, your videos show how advanced your program is, and beepmap hasnt been updated since its release as far as i can tell, it also isnt sold seperately.

Very impressive software you have here, will be toying with the demo soon.

Had a quick look at a beepmap video, I think I should have a look at more advanced/regular VSTi plugins too to see what they can do. When I'll be ready to work on this I'll start a thread in this forum to discuss what I should make the VSTi do.

[5against4]

Hi, didn't notice this thread!

As i said in my other thread... i was hoping to generate some material that lies in the range 18-24kHz. Now, Photosounder is clearly able to cope with this, as the Max. frequency dial will go as high as 26kHz. BUT, as Photosounder will only save in WAV format at the standard rate of 44.1kHz, this obviously means that i'm well exceeding the Nyquist frequency, & so anything above 22,050Hz will not be accurately represented in the WAV file.

Is it possible that a future release of Photosounder could allow for higher-resolution WAV files to be generated? My preference would be 96kHz, & an option for 24- or 32-bit would be the icing on the cake.

[A_SN]

Hi, didn't notice this thread!

As i said in my other thread... i was hoping to generate some material that lies in the range 18-24kHz. Now, Photosounder is clearly able to cope with this, as the Max. frequency dial will go as high as 26kHz. BUT, as Photosounder will only save in WAV format at the standard rate of 44.1kHz, this obviously means that i'm well exceeding the Nyquist frequency, & so anything above 22,050Hz will not be accurately represented in the WAV file.

Is it possible that a future release of Photosounder could allow for higher-resolution WAV files to be generated? My preference would be 96kHz, & an option for 24- or 32-bit would be the icing on the cake.

Actually you can already do that by changing the sampling rate in config.txt. You can set it to 96000 and you'll get 96 kHz both for the playback and when you save the file. As for bit depth, I'll try to see what I can do about it. What if I make the WAV output be 32-bit float by default?

[wakax]

please add an audio driver selector for output/play
that could be set as default. after selection
thanks !

[5against4]

Actually you can already do that by changing the sampling rate in config.txt. You can set it to 96000 and you'll get 96 kHz both for the playback and when you save the file. As for bit depth, I'll try to see what I can do about it. What if I make the WAV output be 32-bit float by default?

This is excellent news - thank you! It might be nice to have an option somewhere to select the sampling rate, instead of having to alter the config file, but personally i'm happy to do that!

As far as bit-depth is concerned, it might be worth pooling other people's opinions, but i do think an option to select the bit-depth would be nice. 32-bit floating point would be fabulous as an option, but for most people's needs may be too much! i certainly wouldn't want it all the time, but again, the option would be great.

Anyway, keep up the good work, i'm very impressed with Photosounder so far!

[5against4]

Hmm, okay - it was simple enough to alter the config.txt file... but now i'm immediately getting "Cannot Allocate More Memory" errors. i have 3Gb of RAM, & i'm regularly working with massive sound files (typically over a Gb in size) & have never run into memory errors - so how come Photosounder can't cope with this? Is there a way of resolving this easily? HELP!