(but is that a wire i see dangling at the back of the console? tsk tsk..) 
But why did u choose bagpipe?
One-Synth-Challenge: General discussion thread
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 3922 posts since 15 Dec, 2009
Very nice looking studio.. (but is that a wire i see dangling at the back of the console? tsk tsk..)
But why did u choose bagpipe?
(but is that a wire i see dangling at the back of the console? tsk tsk..) But why did u choose bagpipe?
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- KVRist
- 355 posts since 24 Oct, 2007 from the bavarian badlands
Thanks V'ger. Yes, that's the main power cable for the whole setup. We have damages due to thunder storms rather often here. So I wanted quick access to protect my equip.
Can you imagine that the whole room wasn't there in 2004! When we started to renovate and restore our house twelve years ago I decided that I wanted a big room for my music, my own playground.
A place where I feel good with lots of daylight and warm colours. Well, the place was there, just had to build the room around.
Here in germany we have medival festivals every weekend from March to October and my girlfriend and I are big fans of those. Going there as often as we can and wearing clothes from that time. So I got infected with old music and old instruments. There are lots of great old songs and melodies that wait to get rediscovered in modern tracks.
It's cool to play an instrument that is not very common. And it's cool to play an instrument that is so loud without electricity or an amp.
Ok, one likes it or not. There's nothing in between.
There are many bands from germany, austria, switzerland mixing these old instruments with modern beats, electronic sounds, heavy guitars or orchestra.
You won't find this style anywhere else. E.g. Tanzwut, Corvus Corax, In Extremo, Subway To Sally, Eluveitie...
Can you imagine that the whole room wasn't there in 2004! When we started to renovate and restore our house twelve years ago I decided that I wanted a big room for my music, my own playground.
A place where I feel good with lots of daylight and warm colours. Well, the place was there, just had to build the room around. Here in germany we have medival festivals every weekend from March to October and my girlfriend and I are big fans of those. Going there as often as we can and wearing clothes from that time. So I got infected with old music and old instruments. There are lots of great old songs and melodies that wait to get rediscovered in modern tracks.
It's cool to play an instrument that is not very common. And it's cool to play an instrument that is so loud without electricity or an amp.
Ok, one likes it or not. There's nothing in between.
There are many bands from germany, austria, switzerland mixing these old instruments with modern beats, electronic sounds, heavy guitars or orchestra.
You won't find this style anywhere else. E.g. Tanzwut, Corvus Corax, In Extremo, Subway To Sally, Eluveitie...
EAT - SLEEP - SYNTH
http://soundcloud.com/pocvecem
http://soundcloud.com/pocvecem
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- KVRAF
- 2655 posts since 18 Mar, 2011 from Spain
I like your studio so much. Someday i will make one for me hehe.pocvecem wrote:Thanks V'ger. Yes, that's the main power cable for the whole setup. We have damages due to thunder storms rather often here. So I wanted quick access to protect my equip.
Can you imagine that the whole room wasn't there in 2004! When we started to renovate and restore our house twelve years ago I decided that I wanted a big room for my music, my own playground.
Here in germany we have medival festivals every weekend from March to October and my girlfriend and I are big fans of those. Going there as often as we can and wearing clothes from that time. So I got infected with old music and old instruments. There are lots of great old songs and melodies that wait to get rediscovered in modern tracks.
It's cool to play an instrument that is not very common. And it's cool to play an instrument that is so loud without electricity or an amp.
Ok, one likes it or not. There's nothing in between.
There are many bands from germany, austria, switzerland mixing these old instruments with modern beats, electronic sounds, heavy guitars or orchestra.
You won't find this style anywhere else. E.g. Tanzwut, Corvus Corax, In Extremo, Subway To Sally, Eluveitie...
My gf and i have a whole room only for computers, music, videogames at the moment, maybe i should to change the little gym room to a music studio.
Someday i will have a room only for music like yours. We expend much time in this room.
Great taste mate
By the way, take a look on Hevia on youtube. A spanish bagpiper mixed with rhythm.
Maybe you could like it.
Sorry for the quality, but this album is a bit old. Enjoy Hevia tracks.
And yes, what you saw in the middle on that video (the concert part) it's a MIDI bagpipe.
He has too many tracks, take a look when you have time.
I'm going to work.
Have a good day
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- KVRian
- 687 posts since 21 Aug, 2010 from Cagliari - (Sardinia)
@Irion: maybe the most famous Hevia's hit
Here are the "launeddas", bagpipes from Sardinia, the island where I live:
There's no "bag" at all, as you should use your mouth as a bag, and learn the so called "circular breathing".
Here are the "launeddas", bagpipes from Sardinia, the island where I live:
There's no "bag" at all, as you should use your mouth as a bag, and learn the so called "circular breathing".
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 3922 posts since 15 Dec, 2009
RULES CHANGE SUGGESTION:
We now know for a fact that SoundCloud transcodes everything uploaded and that the result from mp3 to mp3 is atrocious. And although people download the original mp3 files, the large play counts on the SoundCloud player proves that not all are listened in an optimum way.
So how about we allow wav files to be uploaded to SoundCloud? This way there's only one mp3 conversion to the player and the sound is improved a lot.
This has been discussed before in this thread, and the argument against was that the downloads from SoundCloud will be the original wav files which of course will lead to hundreds of MB having to be downloaded for each competition so too much of a hassle.
But as it has come out from the few answers in the query now, many, if not the majority will anyway wait till after the deadline to do the downloads, and then it's possible to have all converted to mp3 and uploaded to archive.org where it will be made as a zip file like now.
Thoughts?
We now know for a fact that SoundCloud transcodes everything uploaded and that the result from mp3 to mp3 is atrocious. And although people download the original mp3 files, the large play counts on the SoundCloud player proves that not all are listened in an optimum way.
So how about we allow wav files to be uploaded to SoundCloud? This way there's only one mp3 conversion to the player and the sound is improved a lot.
This has been discussed before in this thread, and the argument against was that the downloads from SoundCloud will be the original wav files which of course will lead to hundreds of MB having to be downloaded for each competition so too much of a hassle.
But as it has come out from the few answers in the query now, many, if not the majority will anyway wait till after the deadline to do the downloads, and then it's possible to have all converted to mp3 and uploaded to archive.org where it will be made as a zip file like now.
Thoughts?
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- KVRian
- 805 posts since 17 May, 2011 from Philadelphia
Rules change thought:
Has anyone tried an a/b and noticed better sound from a wav encoding vs mp3? Just wondering if there's much difference after it's been run through that soundcloud shredder.
In trying to decide the best way to rip my CDs I compared bit rates and 256kbps was the place for me I couldn't spot much difference from lossless. I do suffer from amp-battered ears and understand why many choose 320. 192 I notice a loss of high end, and 128 is utter trash. Soundcloud encoding is a disgrace and it would be great to find a way around it but I'm not so sure a wav encoding wouldn't have the same nasty artifacts as a high quality mp3.
But if wav is better, which makes sense because as far as I understand it compression is exponential, maybe flac could also be a possibility.
...and to get back on topic, what's the best synth for bagpipe emulation?
Has anyone tried an a/b and noticed better sound from a wav encoding vs mp3? Just wondering if there's much difference after it's been run through that soundcloud shredder.
In trying to decide the best way to rip my CDs I compared bit rates and 256kbps was the place for me I couldn't spot much difference from lossless. I do suffer from amp-battered ears and understand why many choose 320. 192 I notice a loss of high end, and 128 is utter trash. Soundcloud encoding is a disgrace and it would be great to find a way around it but I'm not so sure a wav encoding wouldn't have the same nasty artifacts as a high quality mp3.
But if wav is better, which makes sense because as far as I understand it compression is exponential, maybe flac could also be a possibility.
...and to get back on topic, what's the best synth for bagpipe emulation?
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- KVRist
- 485 posts since 19 Feb, 2011
1.-How do you like OSC contests?
Love them, as others have said before it has been the catalyst for inspiration and encouraged me to actually finish pieces of music. I'm also amazed by the quality of the entries and stunned by what some people can produce on fairly limited equipment (I'd love to hear what IrionDaRonin could produce on a high spec system!!)
2.-When did you started to come into OSC contests?
Started in February 2011, missed a couple of months due to software incompatibility issues but otherwise contributed most times
3.-What would you like to improve or change?
Very little really, I like the current organisation and time constraints. It would be nice to see even more people contributing, I had an idea to write to Computer Music to promote it, but I see this month someone has already done just that (Well done Edwin! Letter of the month too, you clever fellow!), so I'm sure we'll see an influx of new talent very soon
4.-How old are you and how many years you were composing?
I'm 47 years old, thought I was probably the oldest one here but I suspect there are a couple even more ancient than me! I started composing aged 20 when I was in a band at medical school, and I was completely crap! There then followed two decades of career and family life taking priority. Then in 2009 I bought myself a copy of Cubase and a USB keyboard, inspired by a competition organised by Imogen Heap to write the music for a set of vocals she made available to her fans, it was the first time i'd ever finished something which I felt proud of
http://soundcloud.com/docjon/doc-jon-th ... that-never
I then spent a couple of years mucking about doing nothing very productive at all, trying out various VSTs, never really making much music until this year I made a New Year's resolution to actually produce some finished pieces, and I stumbled upon the OSC at just the right time to inspire me to do so
5.-What is your equip?
4 year old home built PC, Pentium Quad Q6600, 4GB, 1TB HDD, now running Windows 7 64bit and Cubase 6. MIDi input from Edirol PCR-800 keyboard with Korg NanoKontrol and NanoPad, sound output from Steinberg C12 USB audio interface via Sennheiser HD25 headphones (new this month!) and Wharfedale Pro 8.1 active monitors
6.-Do you like to download all OSC tracks at same time and start listen
I listen to them all as they come in. When voting starts I download the lot and listen to them all several times over, gradually cutting the list down each time until I've got a top 5
7.-How many prizes do you have from OSC contest? (in case you won any)
Just the one so far - Zebra 2 in OSC 28
Jon
Love them, as others have said before it has been the catalyst for inspiration and encouraged me to actually finish pieces of music. I'm also amazed by the quality of the entries and stunned by what some people can produce on fairly limited equipment (I'd love to hear what IrionDaRonin could produce on a high spec system!!)
2.-When did you started to come into OSC contests?
Started in February 2011, missed a couple of months due to software incompatibility issues but otherwise contributed most times
3.-What would you like to improve or change?
Very little really, I like the current organisation and time constraints. It would be nice to see even more people contributing, I had an idea to write to Computer Music to promote it, but I see this month someone has already done just that (Well done Edwin! Letter of the month too, you clever fellow!), so I'm sure we'll see an influx of new talent very soon
4.-How old are you and how many years you were composing?
I'm 47 years old, thought I was probably the oldest one here but I suspect there are a couple even more ancient than me! I started composing aged 20 when I was in a band at medical school, and I was completely crap! There then followed two decades of career and family life taking priority. Then in 2009 I bought myself a copy of Cubase and a USB keyboard, inspired by a competition organised by Imogen Heap to write the music for a set of vocals she made available to her fans, it was the first time i'd ever finished something which I felt proud of
http://soundcloud.com/docjon/doc-jon-th ... that-never
I then spent a couple of years mucking about doing nothing very productive at all, trying out various VSTs, never really making much music until this year I made a New Year's resolution to actually produce some finished pieces, and I stumbled upon the OSC at just the right time to inspire me to do so
5.-What is your equip?
4 year old home built PC, Pentium Quad Q6600, 4GB, 1TB HDD, now running Windows 7 64bit and Cubase 6. MIDi input from Edirol PCR-800 keyboard with Korg NanoKontrol and NanoPad, sound output from Steinberg C12 USB audio interface via Sennheiser HD25 headphones (new this month!) and Wharfedale Pro 8.1 active monitors
6.-Do you like to download all OSC tracks at same time and start listen
I listen to them all as they come in. When voting starts I download the lot and listen to them all several times over, gradually cutting the list down each time until I've got a top 5
7.-How many prizes do you have from OSC contest? (in case you won any)
Just the one so far - Zebra 2 in OSC 28
Jon
Last edited by Doc Jon on Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 3922 posts since 15 Dec, 2009
Yes I've tried and the difference is definitely noticeable.evo2slo wrote:Has anyone tried an a/b and noticed better sound from a wav encoding vs mp3? Just wondering if there's much difference after it's been run through that soundcloud shredder.
Wow that's cool.Doc Jon wrote:I had an idea to write to Computer Music to promote it, but I see this month someone has already done just that (Well done Edwin! Letter of the month too, you clever fellow!), so I'm sure we'll see an influx of new talent very soon
(Why didn't I think of that?)-
- KVRAF
- 2655 posts since 18 Mar, 2011 from Spain
About the rule suggestion i would say NO.
It won't change the fact people are not downloading the tracks.
In Soundcloud you can see the ratio Downloaded/Played and it's always more played songs than downloaded. Which is a shame.
I think a Wav file won't change anything really. And at the moment the slow mode render at 128 works for me. I don't want to think what Soundcloud could make to a track compressing an audio wave file.
So at the moment, i like the way it is, really.
Anyway, i have a little idea.
When closing the submissions thread and open the track votes, we could put a direct link to the RAR with all the tracks in it (you know, the one in OSC site). So more people could download all tracks (i hope lol)
Have a good day kamerat
PD: What Edwin made about Computer Music Magazine is an epic win. Cheers.
But i would like to see a scan of the letter, in Spain Computer Music coming 3 months later
It won't change the fact people are not downloading the tracks.
In Soundcloud you can see the ratio Downloaded/Played and it's always more played songs than downloaded. Which is a shame.
I think a Wav file won't change anything really. And at the moment the slow mode render at 128 works for me. I don't want to think what Soundcloud could make to a track compressing an audio wave file.
So at the moment, i like the way it is, really.
Anyway, i have a little idea.
When closing the submissions thread and open the track votes, we could put a direct link to the RAR with all the tracks in it (you know, the one in OSC site). So more people could download all tracks (i hope lol)
Have a good day kamerat
PD: What Edwin made about Computer Music Magazine is an epic win. Cheers.
But i would like to see a scan of the letter, in Spain Computer Music coming 3 months later
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 3922 posts since 15 Dec, 2009
What do you mean exactly?IrionDaRonin wrote:I don't want to think what Soundcloud could make to a track compressing an audio wave file.
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- KVRAF
- 2655 posts since 18 Mar, 2011 from Spain
When i uploaded my first entry to Soundcloud in KVROSC27, i tried at 128 kbps, at 256 kbps, at 320 kbps, slow and variable bit mode render, etc. Different things to make it sound properly.
All of them sounded really strange and different one to the others. So definitelly i went with 128 kbps in slow render mode (more quality) at 0db.
When you upload a MP3 at 320 kbps (for example) to SoundCloud, the player compress the audio forced at 128 kbps. So there is a little change.
But if you upload the track at 128 kbps, the soundcloud player can't render a 128 thing into a 128 kbps because it's already compressed as the Soundcloud player was going to do it. So no changes really. (That's i want to believe)
Now you can imagine what could do the SoundCloud player with a naked wave audio file. This would be a total compression from zero (from WAV to MP3, from size in about 50~60 Mbs to 4~5 Mbs, from variable bitrate to 128 kbps, etc), which means a brutal change in the compression, so i can imagine that the final track in the player could sound crappy or at least rater different from the original. And also, people won't download it really.
If people won't download a little file between 4~10 Mbs, much less they are going to download a 50~60 Mbs file, which takes more time to download and also take more space in the hard disc.
That's why i always try to compress the file the same as Soundcloud player.
At 128 kbps in MP3 (already) with slow render mode, so the Soundcloud player can't change anything or at least the minimum things.
So my tracks sounds alike in Soundcloud player to the downloaded version (and still not completelly the same) and also, it's a little file in size for our hard disc.
Anyway, the best thing is to download the track, but i dunno why people don't do it really.
I usually see a ratio of 250 plays and about 20~30 downloads every month.
This could be people (non KVR users) just listening your track and not downloading it, but i really don't know.
As i said, the best thing, is keep the formula of uploading to Soundcloud and besides of that, making a link with all the tracks when closing submissions thread. I think is the best way to do it.
Anyway, when a new track is uploaded, i usually play from the Soundcloud player to get a first impression. And also i download them into my hard disc to listen them properly to make my votes from day 1st to day 15th.
Have a good day kamerat
All of them sounded really strange and different one to the others. So definitelly i went with 128 kbps in slow render mode (more quality) at 0db.
When you upload a MP3 at 320 kbps (for example) to SoundCloud, the player compress the audio forced at 128 kbps. So there is a little change.
But if you upload the track at 128 kbps, the soundcloud player can't render a 128 thing into a 128 kbps because it's already compressed as the Soundcloud player was going to do it. So no changes really. (That's i want to believe)
Now you can imagine what could do the SoundCloud player with a naked wave audio file. This would be a total compression from zero (from WAV to MP3, from size in about 50~60 Mbs to 4~5 Mbs, from variable bitrate to 128 kbps, etc), which means a brutal change in the compression, so i can imagine that the final track in the player could sound crappy or at least rater different from the original. And also, people won't download it really.
If people won't download a little file between 4~10 Mbs, much less they are going to download a 50~60 Mbs file, which takes more time to download and also take more space in the hard disc.
That's why i always try to compress the file the same as Soundcloud player.
At 128 kbps in MP3 (already) with slow render mode, so the Soundcloud player can't change anything or at least the minimum things.
So my tracks sounds alike in Soundcloud player to the downloaded version (and still not completelly the same) and also, it's a little file in size for our hard disc.
Anyway, the best thing is to download the track, but i dunno why people don't do it really.
I usually see a ratio of 250 plays and about 20~30 downloads every month.
This could be people (non KVR users) just listening your track and not downloading it, but i really don't know.
As i said, the best thing, is keep the formula of uploading to Soundcloud and besides of that, making a link with all the tracks when closing submissions thread. I think is the best way to do it.
Anyway, when a new track is uploaded, i usually play from the Soundcloud player to get a first impression. And also i download them into my hard disc to listen them properly to make my votes from day 1st to day 15th.
Have a good day kamerat
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- KVRian
- 687 posts since 21 Aug, 2010 from Cagliari - (Sardinia)
But V'ger tried to send a wav file, and noticed an improved quality.IrionDaRonin wrote: Now you can imagine what could do the SoundCloud player with a naked wave audio file.
Anyway, a 60-70MB upload could take a lot of time... even more, sometimes the upload fails on soundcloud, which is very frustrating.
+1IrionDaRonin wrote: I usually see a ratio of 250 plays and about 20~30 downloads every month.
This could be people (non KVR users) just listening your track and not downloading it, but i really don't know.
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- KVRian
- 805 posts since 17 May, 2011 from Philadelphia
Here's a test I just did for myself and figured others might find interesting.
Just used a simple preset from microtonic for this
Exported 3 audio takes - one wav, one 320, and one 128. Uploaded each one to soundcloud - labeled A, B, and C:
http://soundcloud.com/evo2slo/sets/encoding-test
Here are the original files:
@128kbps
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10032304/encodi ... %20128.mp3
@320kbps
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10032304/encodi ... %20320.mp3
@wav 24bit 48khz
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10032304/encodi ... %20wav.wav
Any guesses which is which?
Any suggestions on how to improve this test?
Just used a simple preset from microtonic for this
Exported 3 audio takes - one wav, one 320, and one 128. Uploaded each one to soundcloud - labeled A, B, and C:
http://soundcloud.com/evo2slo/sets/encoding-test
Here are the original files:
@128kbps
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10032304/encodi ... %20128.mp3
@320kbps
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10032304/encodi ... %20320.mp3
@wav 24bit 48khz
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10032304/encodi ... %20wav.wav
Any guesses which is which?
Any suggestions on how to improve this test?
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- KVRAF
- 2655 posts since 18 Mar, 2011 from Spain
Great idea and good job evo2slo.
Now try it with pads, you know, these kind of dense pads (supersaw for example would be nice)
Try to fill to maximum the wave space at 0db, very "normalized". More "saturation/normalization" better to detect artifacts.
The first one sound a bit better or clean than the rest (just 1% more lol) but really, all sounds the same.
Please try it now with pads, a long chord would be nice.
See you in some minutes
Now try it with pads, you know, these kind of dense pads (supersaw for example would be nice)
Try to fill to maximum the wave space at 0db, very "normalized". More "saturation/normalization" better to detect artifacts.
The first one sound a bit better or clean than the rest (just 1% more lol) but really, all sounds the same.
Please try it now with pads, a long chord would be nice.
See you in some minutes
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- KVRAF
- Topic Starter
- 3922 posts since 15 Dec, 2009
You probably need more dynamic and full range audio material like from a normal song to get the best comparison as from what I've understood, the worst results during transcoding is when the signal is too hot, meaning no headroom. I've read somewhere that it should be minimum 3db. And also it's the high frequencies that typically will start to sound harsh isnt' it. I tried with one of my entries before which was quite maxed out.evo2slo wrote:Here's a test I just did for myself and figured others might find interesting.
No need to imagine because like I already said, I've tried this out. It's also what I've read at SoundCloud help comments, but I think it's logical wav to mp3 will give better results than mp3 to mp3.IrionDaRonin wrote:Now you can imagine what could do the SoundCloud player with a naked wave audio file. This would be a total compression from zero (from WAV to MP3, from size in about 50~60 Mbs to 4~5 Mbs, from variable bitrate to 128 kbps, etc), which means a brutal change in the compression, so i can imagine that the final track in the player could sound crappy or at least rater different from the original.
As for downloading big files, I also mentioned that all songs would anyway be encoded to mp3 and put up at archive.org after deadline.
True the upload will take longer, but the use of wavs would anyway just be an option.bzur wrote:Anyway, a 60-70MB upload could take a lot of time... even more, sometimes the upload fails on soundcloud, which is very frustrating.