KVR Audio

Brittlestem · Post by **Brittlestem** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:15 pm

V'ger wrote: @re_mute: It's very rare that patches gets submitted even when it was encouraged before, seems that's intellectual property jealously guarded..

Okay, thanks.

IrionDaRonin · Post by **IrionDaRonin** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:42 pm

I would not have problem on send to KVR the whole project entirely if requested.
I was enjoying making it. It's almost done.
For first time in my life i'm thinking about making music and share with people, so they can enjoy as i did when i made it. Not for money at this moment.

About the "why" of rules, i'm grateful for know all now, thanks to you.
I haven't any doubt right now.

Anyway, about i said about mp3 at 128kbps, i read this in somewhere in forum:

SoundCloud will re-encode your track to 128kbps CBR (constant bitrate) MP3 for the webiste player which is not good for sound quality if already an MP3 track, so the best is to encode your track to that sample rate yourself before uploading so SoundCloud will not have to do the re-encode. For best encodes, use the 'slow' setting or
when encoding manually with LAME, use the switch -q 0

So, what to do? Encoding it by myself, or letting SoundCloud to do it...?

Also i have another doubt (sorry)
There is 5 Linplug Alpha as prize, are those 5 for the first 5 winners?

Sorry for all my questions, i'm new here and this is my first time in the contest.

Thanks in advance.

V'ger · Post by **V'ger** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:05 am

That quote is from the FAQ on the site and is what I thought SoundCloud did (there's no real info from SC on this) because why would they re-encode already in the right format? - but it's now suspected they do anyway for whatever reason.. I'll change the FAQ later.

But the song must be uploaded to SC in mp3 format and is anyway the same for all.

About the prizes you're right, since we got a whopping 6 licenses from LinPlug, they will all be awarded to the top 6 (unless one of the top 6 wants something else). As usual, winner gets first choice of the prize pool and so on.

gorgorgathgorgorgor · Post by **gorgorgathgorgorgor** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:26 am

Mine is finally up!

"Fantasie for Steel Pans"

9 instances of Alpha Free.

Blockfish compressor on "kik" and "snare"

Off the Wall delay on "snare"

Pancake on "castenuts"

DepthCharge compressor on "bass"

NastyVCS on "steel pans" of particular usefulness was the excellent hi-pass filter but I also used the compressor.

Used epicVerb on a seperate bus for snare, castenuts and pans.

Of course FerricTDS on the master.

Don't know if I beat any of y'all with this, but I hope you'll at least enjoy!

IrionDaRonin · Post by **IrionDaRonin** » Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:35 pm

Oh, my...
I was uploading the song and listening some i already uploaded to SoundCloud.
Sounds so badly compared to the original. Less quality.
My original song was in 320 kbps. SoundCloud encoded at 128 kbps, and the quality is not the same.

Now i don't know if i should encode by myself at 320 kbps, 128 kbps or another (obviously with the "slow method - more quality" even if you are encoding at 128 kbps)
I downloaded some songs from old contests, and all are in 128 kbps 44,100 Hz. Some of them at 48,000 Hz.

So, what to do?
When you upload a song, which are your methods guys?
I'm thinking about encode at 128 kbps slow method - more quality at 48,000 Hz.
I think is the best choice for SoundCloud.

Quality is very important!

My song it's almost there. I will put it here tomorrow or past tomorrow.

PD: I can't stop playing Flourescent Sky from Mike777, it's really precious.

V'ger · Post by **V'ger** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 12:52 am

Yea it's a bit of a shame about SoundCloud player quality, but 320kbs and 48khz at best settings is probably the best you can do now that it seems SC will transcode even the ones already in 128kbs..

I've been looking into FLAC as that reduces download size a lot and gives better quality at SC, but needs more testing and experimenting for the archive player etc.

We just have to encourage people to download and listen to that, certainly when voting.

IrionDaRonin · Post by **IrionDaRonin** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 3:29 am

We just have to encourage people to download and listen to that, certainly when voting.

I'm agree with that.

batgab · Post by **batgab** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 5:35 am

Yes, I would think (hope) that most voters will download the mp3 files and not just listen to them on Soundcloud. And for those people who don't download, at least they hear all the songs in the Soundcloud format, more or less giving all tunes equal "fidelity"....

michael2 · Post by **michael2** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:47 am

i have wanted to do one of these challenges forever, but never got around to it. so here you go: "All We Are" Not much time with kids in the house, but I had a couple of hours and this is what you get.

I used 10 instances of Free Alpha (3 for the drums). Pretty impressive how easy on the CPU this synth is.
For effects I used the following (mostly to just give some space):
Voxengo Tube Amp
Audio Damage Rough Rider (on the vocals)
Tal Reverb2
Tal Reverb 3
Tal Dub 1
Tal Dub 3

that was a lot of fun (particularly getting the drums together). I'm not a synth whiz and this was a good exercise. maybe next time I'll do one with some variety in the drum part.

IrionDaRonin · Post by **IrionDaRonin** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:16 pm

The Michael2's song has voice samples.
Is that allowed?

Nice relaxing base, anyway.

michael2 · Post by **michael2** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:22 pm

IrionDaRonin wrote:The Michael2's song has voice samples.
Is that allowed?

Nice relaxing base, anyway.

i wasn't sure about that myself. pored over the rules (and thread) and didn't find anything about vocals, so I went ahead and sang over it. stuck to the freeware premise though for my vocals. if this is something of a grey area, I can always pull the song.

IrionDaRonin · Post by **IrionDaRonin** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:53 pm

No samples then?
Hmm, then you are a good singer.
Well, let's KVR staff decide about it.
I'm new anyway.

gorgorgathgorgorgor · Post by **gorgorgathgorgorgor** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 5:07 pm

No vocals, as you don't use the synth to create the vocals, you use your voice. no vocal, no guitar, no tuba, as they are not the "one Synth" as the name of the challenge implies. Just use the synth, man.

michael2 · Post by **michael2** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:14 pm

gorgorgathgorgorgor wrote:No vocals, as you don't use the synth to create the vocals, you use your voice. no vocal, no guitar, no tuba, as they are not the "one Synth" as the name of the challenge implies. Just use the synth, man.

Jesus dude, no need to get nasty and talk down to people.

I said in my OP that I wasn't sure and would be happy to delete if there was an issue. I'll just write another song.

Happy Frog · Post by **Happy Frog** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 8:16 pm

I uploaded one more submission.

Surfing With Ballerinas

3 AlphaFREE for Kick (host e.q.)
6 AlphaFREE for all else (including FX from Kjaerhus)
Classic Delay
Classic Flanger
Classic Phaser
Classic Reverb

One-Synth-Challenge 27: Free Alpha - Submissions and gossip