O'Reilly Digital Media Blog Audio Category

Relaxing in the White Noise Lounge

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:33:59 -0800

What are you doing with your portable recorder? Former O'Reilly producer Justin Watt (aka DJ Justin Somnia) and partner Stephanie Soleil (MC Soleil) capture whispery ambiences and upload them to the White Noise Lounge. They complement each brief aural trip with an artsy black-and-white photo.

True field recording at Mt. Tam.

The project started as a joke, but like everything Justin touches, it's elegant and thought-provoking. (He and I worked together closely during the early days of the Digital Media site.) I told him it reminded me of the One-Minute Vacation field recordings, although the photos take it to another level.

Justin and Stephanie use a Zoom H2 handheld surround recorder, which Justin picked up after reading our review. The H2 has four built-in microphones — two facing forward and angled 90° apart and two facing the other way, angled 120° apart. The H2 can save stereo recordings from either pair or mix all four mic signals into a super-stereo file.

Justin reveals, "We use different mics depending on the scenario. The 120° is great for ambient handheld, because I can see the LCD readout while recording. I use the 90° mics if the sound is really localized, and the 2-channel surround if I'm trying to capture a 360° environment, like the food court at the mall."

I really like this concept of pairing audio snapshots with visual ones. It's a richer form of street photography and reminds us that life comes at us in fascinating little slices.

Portable Audio Recorder Comparison Chart

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:49:00 -0800

Wondering which handheld digital audio recorder to buy? Guitarist and recording engineer Mark Nelson just compiled this helpful comparison chart based on his detailed reviews. Mark is one of the few people on the planet to have used each of the top recorders extensively, recording everything from Hawaiian surf to wild coyotes, so he has an especially deep perspective. As the guy who edits Mark's reviews, I read every word, so I especially enjoy how he turns each review into a story. Consider this passage, from his review of the Edirol R-09. It's miles from the typical lab-coat test:

My review unit arrived just days before I left for Moloka'i, Hawaii, where I help run the Aloha Music Camp. A week of camping by the ocean, with guitars and ukulele playing ’neath swaying palm trees while tropical birds keep time. What better test, eh?

One morning I came across Big Island guitarist Chris Yeaton playing on the lanai of the Kaupoa Beach House. Just the kind of recording situation I love: no setup, no hassles, just a handheld recorder and a great musician playing from the heart. In the background, you can hear the ocean, a bit of wind, and a group of hungry campers.

As that passage suggests, another highlight of Mark's reviews is the wonderful sound files he includes. Here's an excerpt from his review of the Zoom H2, which uses four internal mics for 360° recording:

Enough with the suspense! What happens if you record to four tracks using the H2's front and rear mics? Is it surround sound? I set up a pair of powered monitors directly behind my usual listening position and connected them to a pair of aux outputs on my mixer.

Boy howdy, does it sound cool. The first thing I listened to was the thunderstorm recording. In stereo, it sounds like your average sound effects track — not much excitement, not a great sense of place. When I unmuted the rear tracks I found myself reaching for an umbrella! Now I could hear the thunder moving across the sky while the rain drummed on my tin roof. I have uploaded two short WAV files so you can hear it yourself.

Portable recording is tremendous fun. Thanks, Mark, for showing us so many ways to get started.

Funny reference to Beatles (American Idol runner-up)

Mon, 26 May 2008 10:51:20 -0800

Just for a little levity, I came across this quote from Joel McHale on "The Soup" about American Idol contestant runner-up, David Archuleta mangling Beatles lyrics from a recent song he did on the show: "Congratulations Yoko Ono, assassins, cancer, and one-legged gold diggers: you're no longer the worst thing to happen to the Beatles". I don't know about you, but I got a big chuckle out of this comment. (Sounds like something Simon Cowell would have said). A little post-Idol humor now that this season is behind us. ;)

Generating Audio UI

Mon, 19 May 2008 19:02:10 -0800

every time i do linear audio (i.e. create a quicktime soundtrack), i always have the same reaction: "this is SO much easier than doing interactive audio!" i envy the hollywood SFX guys their ability to craft a sequence of sounds to tell a story, convey an emotion, or rock you outa your chair ... but it got me thinking about how to generate an Audio UI that sounds more like the ones in the movies. here's the thing: everytime you see/hear anybody using a computer, on big screen or small, there's always an Audio UI, and it always sounds great! it's completely complimentary to the task being performed, indeed, is specifically designed to inform the viewer "fingerprint matched" or "displaying and highlighting requested data" or "prepare for jump to hyperspace". it's also rendered in high resolution by magical speakers, perfectly mixed and balanced for the ambient environment, and never gets in the way of the dialog. it's like that woody allen - annie hall - marshall mcluhan joke: "boy, if life were only like this!"

Flash! Virtual Instruments Go Mobile

Tue, 13 May 2008 19:50:18 -0800

Todd "Mobile Views" Ogasawara just tipped me off to Hobnox Audiotool, a free electronic music studio that runs online in Flash. My first thought was that it looked like Propellerhead ReBirth reborn in a Web browser. But Audiotool points the way to an interesting musical future.

Hobnox Audiotool is an online electronic music studio based on emulations of Roland TR-808, TR-909, and TB-303 drum machines and synths. You also get a selection of modeled Boss effect pedals to drag around the screen and plug together. (Click to enlarge.)

ReBirth, of course, is the pioneering virtual studio composed of two software drum machines and two software bass synths, all modeled on old Roland hardware. It rocked the world when it came out more than a decade ago. I remember being in the hotel room where it was announced and watching a horde of weary, jaded journalists spring from their seats and rush the computer at the front of the room. Propellerhead has long since moved on to the vastly more powerful Reason program, and now offers ReBirth for free in the ReBirth Museum.

Audiotool has its own rough edges. As Eliot Van Buskirk reports, the online app has to use a Frankenstein of Flash and Java to offer interactive audio; Van Buskirk points to a campaign to bring Flash up to speed sonically. I spent an hour playing with Audiotool and found music-making tedious. When you have only a mouse to adjust a studio's worth of knobs and buttons, progress is sloooow. (ReBirth supports MIDI control, so you can map actual knobs to the onscreen ones; here's hoping Flash gets MIDI support soon as well.) Audiotool's sound quality isn't up to the ReBirth level yet either, and there's currently no way to export the music you make as a WAV file. I started to use a streamripper to capture the music from the browser, but then made an adjustment and lost sound completely.

Adjusting controls with a mouse is tedious, but the tutorial offers some shortcuts: Press Shift-1, 2, or 3 to zoom in and out, and Shift-A to bring up a navigation box. (Click to enlarge.)

But just as hardware evolved into software in the first Roland-to-ReBirth transition, it won't be long before online instruments like Audiotool settle comfortably into mobile devices. Already, top synth manufacturer Korg has released a virtual MS-10 synth as a Nintendo cartridge. I wouldn't be surprised to find the iPhone soon ships with software instruments the way GarageBand showed up as a full-fledged member of the Macintosh. And this time, the interface could be a highlight. It's amazing what you can do with the basic x-y pad on a Korg Kaossilator synth; couple that with the iPhone's multitouch screen and we could have gorgeous new instruments to go.

What are your favorite handheld virtual instruments? Please leave a link.

8-Year-Old Guitar Phenom

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:35:49 -0800

Just in case you thought you'd seen and heard everything in music, along comes something surprising. An 8-year old Japanese guitar prodigy has emerged on the scene named Yuto Miyazawa.

Apparently Yuto is already a pretty serious classic rock fan; he does covers of Clapton, Ozzy, and more. Not only that, he uses full-size instruments (like the Flying V pictured here) -- that are bigger than he is; and he even attempts to sing along. Check out his performance video(s) on YouTube by searching under his name. This one's an eye opener.

When Inventors Attack: Maker Faire

Fri, 02 May 2008 11:48:34 -0800

The third annual Bay Area Maker Faire is this weekend, and looks to be a truly inspiring event. Maker Faire combines art, science, recycling, and entertainment in a hands-on setting that celebrates the inventive spirit.

I was there last night for a pre-show gathering of exhibitors (my family and I will be performing our homemade Japanese storycard dramas throughout the weekend). Some of the people I met:

A photographer who bolted two cameras together to take 3D pictures
Two performers from a crank-powered music ensemble
A man who created an audio-based Pong game for the blind
The founding editor of Wired
A woman who built a three-story Victorian house on wheels
A grad student who turned a $40 Wii controller into a virtual whiteboard sensor, a feat that earned him the #1 video on YouTube for five straight weeks.

Each of those conversations gave us new ideas. For example, as the photographer was explaining 3D picture processing to me, I told him my background was in audio, so I was trying to conceptualize it in those terms. He suggested that the audio equivalent would be binaural recording. I told him I'd made some fun recordings with cheap in-ear mics and a voice recorder, and he got excited, realizing he could add another dimension to his digital storytelling.

Hope you can Make it!

Petition: MIDI Support in Flash

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:51:00 -0800

Imagine what creative developers could do if Flash could transmit and respond gracefully to MIDI. Now an online petition is urging Adobe to do something about that. You need an account on bugs.adobe.com to vote, but that simply requires providing your name and email address. According to the petition's author, Tyler Wright of MusicRain, Adobe determines the priority of features by the amount of interest it sees from the development community. MusicRain makes Flash-based sheet music software. Wright grouses, "The sound is clunky and limited to piano only. Please support the future development of all online music software by letting Adobe know you want better support of sound." Petitions have worked in the past. Wright points to the "Adobe, Make Some Noise" campaign for enhancing Flash audio, and the previous request for USB MIDI Device support, which is now under consideration at Adobe.

why i hate the iPhone

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:09:50 -0800

i got an iPhone last year for the same reason i got a Mac Plus in 1986 - i'd been making a living writing business apps in COBOL, but i picked up this underpowered, overpriced, mostly useless, bauhaus looking, little glass-and-plastic computer because it had an interface device unlike anything i'd seen before ... a mouse. when i saw the iPhone touch screen (and the ads show you little else), i had the same reaction: "this is the future of the interface" ... and i knew i was right ... because everything i know i learned on Star Trek. so i bought one -- because i could, because it was my birthday, because i had an AT&T landline i could convert, because i wanted to see what the competition was up to, because i wanted to check out what my colleagues had been working on, because it was hip and trendy (and i'm never hip and trendy), and because i wanted to use it as the punchline to the opening joke of my conference presentations that fall ^[1]. later, i realized that the number on my dog's tag was the same as the iPhone, which means: "i'm so wireless, my dog has an iPhone"
(worth it for that line alone)

but that was then, and this is now ... and here's my verdict: iPhone sux!

Improving bad breath and wind control

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:27:46 -0800

Musicians who buy synthesizer wind controllers, such as a Yamaha WX-* or an Akai E*I, are often soon disappointed, not because of the controller's quality or their possibilities, but because they just don't work well with conventional MIDI synthesizer modules. Now that VST and other plugins are common, there has been an enormous explosion of new synthesizers. You would hope the situation for wind-controller musicians would have improved, yet the last decade of VSTs and plugins are almost without exception unsatisfactory for use with wind controllers. So I thought I would make up a little blog entry giving some extra information that fellow designers of VSTs could use, to make their synthesizers friendly to wind controllers and breath controllers. I'll use some SynthEdit schematics, but the general ideas should be pretty independent. ((I'm planning to put out some actual SynthEdit modules for this in the near future, so this blog is mainly about what I have learned through experimentation with different architectures)

The problem

First. lets have a base diagram, showing a typical MIDI mono synth. Where it says "oscillator", it could of course be any kind of complicated or simple sound engine. A sound-generator ("Oscillator") going through an amplifier ("VCA") then going though some effects, with the VCA being controlled by an envelope generator ("ADSR") which is triggered by the MIDI Gate signal (note on/off) and with level or peak of the ADSR controlled by the MIDI Velocity signal, to give keyboard dynamics. Now very often, when people want to add breath control, they merely add an extra VCA section in series, like this.

This seems the obvious thing to do, however it actually is the wrong way to do things. (I admit it is better than nothing,but not much better.) The trouble is that for wind controllers and players, intricate control of the attack portion of the note or line is really important: you need to be able to have hard and soft attacks at all levels of volume: a hard attack on a soft note and a soft attack on a loud note, not just a soft attack on a soft note and a hard attack on a loud note. Without this, a major weapon in the wind-player's armory goes unused, which will be unsatisfactory for the player and less From an analog synth point of view, MIDI wind controllers send five basic signals from a wind controller: the note number, the gate, the velocity, the breath control and pitch bend. (MIDI actually piggybacks them, so that there is a note-on code which has a velocity code with it, and a note-off code: MIDI sends events rather than continuous signals. A continuous variation such as breath control or pitch bend is sent as a sequence of events.) The breath control events from a wind controller take a little time to reach full level, so there is always a slightly slow attack. And since many people start from using synth presets, if the ADSR (envelope) of the that preset already has a little slow attack, this is compounded by the slow attack of the MIDI breath control signal. The result: many presets are unusable, and it is impossible to get crisp initial attack. You can very often hear this in real examples of people playing wind controllers with standard synths: either they use quite fadey-in sounds, or hard attack sounds (using the gate to control the VCA and the breath control on the VCF, for example) but nothing much in between. Wind controllers typically have a selection mechanism so that as well as sending on MIDI CC (Continuous Control) 2 Breath Control, they can also route the same signal to MIDI Aftertouch or to the MIDI Volume control. This is most unsatisfactory: sure you get really exquisite control of notes and lines once they have started, through the breath control, but maddeningly bad control of the start of notes and lines. It severely and unnecessarily limits the possibilities of the wind controller.

A Fix

The fix is surprisingly simple: instead of treating the breath control as a series effect, mix it in parallel with the ADSR. Use the ADSR with a tiny or no attack, a small "pluck" delay, no sustain and tiny or no release, with the most extreme velocity sensitivity possible. So the ADSR provides just the hard start portion of the attack needed before the breath control can kick in.

A setup like this allows the wind player to have "who-do" alternation of tonguing/blowing (the first a fast fade in with low velocity, the second a fast decay with hard attack from high velocity) at all levels. And what is nice is that it can be implemented transparently with existing keyboard-based MIDI architectures: as a parallel channel it doesn't interfere.

Response

Once this basic architecture is established, the designer can think of providing some extra support to make a really playable VST. The first thing to do is to provide some kind of user-selectable response customization, both for the breath control and for the velocity control to the ADSR.

The most important of these is the breath response. It may well be better to merely provide a half-dozen built-in settings for the user to select from, than a graphical interface, especially to allow the player to change the response during a piece. But what kinds of responses are most useful? A mathematician may be inclined to think, well, lets have a linear response and an exponential response, and a concave response without giving it much thought. When we think about responses for electronic music, one thing that is perhaps under appreciated is that players, while they want dynamics, also want evenness of tone: this is because they instrument needs to sit in a particular position in the mix, and often we want the dynamic extremes to be exceptions rather than the rule: the monomaniacal fondness for compression that many producers or engineers comes from a desire to keep sounds in balance, and selecting a response to fit this need for balance is helpful. To put it bluntly, if an instrument swings too uncontrollably in level, it will just end up being compressed, which rather blunts our weapon! Another reason why a variety of response is useful is because that is the way physical instruments are too: you can have a soft bassoon, however getting the reeds vibrating does require a certain amount of initial energy (and it is one of the skills that performers have to learn, for many instruments: how to get a super soft note.) At the other end, when after a certain level, plucking a guitar string with more force merely changes the tone rather than the volume as such. So here are some breath responses that might be useful to provide. This first one is good for soft sounds, and sounds with a lot of swells. However, if your piece needs consistent medium or loud passages, using this kind of breath will result in you running out of air fast.

This next response is useful for general performance.

This next response is useful for solos above a racket: full on.

A common kind of material has the player playing notes at one level with occasional stabs or emphasis. So a two-level response is useful.

Finally, a three level response like the following can allow p, mf and ff playing for pieces that suit it.

Creamy Smoothness

So that is the basics. Of course, there are many wrinkles and alternative architectures that are useful. For example, I use a system more like the following where a very low velocities, the ADSR doesn't provide a hard attack (even the low-level that would occur due to the low velocity.) That makes for smoother, less erratic fade-ins and soft-attack playing.

Another difference for the system I have been working on is that I don't actually mix the ADSR and breath control signals: I take the maximum of them. However, these are small details compared to the bigger picture. Finally, a plugin designer who really wanted to make help the playability of the plugin with wind controllers might also consider making available a modulations signal (to the rest of the synth, in particular to filters) using just the top 25% of the breath control signal. (This is in addition to providing the full breath modulation control signal.) Many kinds of wind instruments exhibit a change in tone when overblown rather than a level change, and this kind of signal can be really useful.

Esession Version 2: Online Recording, Now More Collaborative

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:20:53 -0800

A little while ago I wrote an article about my experience using esession.com, a web-based "virtual recording studio". Esession struck me as having a very well-integrated collection of professional features. Now comes esession.com Version 2, and it looks like it's going to be better - largely by incorporating more non-professional features. (Disclosure: esession founder Gina Fant-Saez has become a friend and musical collaborator, with my band The Desert Mothers, so while I can comfortably pass along news like the following, I'm out of the esession-reviewing business.)

Computer Music Haiku

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:48:49 -0800

Every autumn for the past 12 years, I've traveled to a remote ranch in Texas for the Fat Man's Project Bar-B-Q, an amazing computer-music conference. Its goal is to shape the future of music hardware and software, and it's been quite successful. Each year, about half of the 50-odd attendees are new, so introduction night is important. One year, everyone introduced themselves in haiku form, describing their background and interests in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Today I came across a few haiku I wrote, setting the scene and reflecting my goal of helping more people start making music on computers. Can you think of more? Fallen leaves crunching Sweet barbecue ribs sizzling Sound is essential Composing music On computers would be huge If it weren't so hard Digital music Can always be improved, y'all Crank it up to 1 [Crank It Up to 1 was the working title of my book, The Art of Digital Music.] Rigid computers Can work in harmony with Messy musicians Art is disruptive Computers — strong but stubborn Let's show them who's boss Distortion is art PCs — boringly precise Think outside the box Autumn in Texas Fire up the grill and the Future of music

top 5 ways to annoy an audio guy

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:05:40 -0800

my brethren in interactive audio are an interesting bunch. they tend to be extremely intelligent, highly educated, well trained, musically talented, and frequently brilliant. but like any group of creative types, they can also be wild, crazy, funny, scary, confused, outrageous, oratorical, and occasionally odoriferous. to do their jobs, they must be extraordinarily sensitive to the most minute modulations of vibrating air molecules, and thus tend to be easily annoyed by extraneous noise, inelegant tools, and bullshit (well, at least, this one is!) SO if you really want to annoy an audio guy, here are five ways to do it: 1. tell him "wow, you've got the best job!" ... when you make 4 times what he does. there's an unfortunate attitude in corporate america: "since you have fun doing your job, we don't have to pay you so much." while it is true that the work is it's own reward, the inverse implication that "your job sucks so bad, we have to pay you extra to do it" seems kinda sad ... but certainly no way to make music!

A Free Virtual Flute Saves the Day...er, Night

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:36:44 -0800

A friend was jetting off to Japan in the morning and offered to take copies of my storytelling books to show off. She thought teachers there might be interested in using them to help their students learn English. But what would really make the sale, she said, would be a CD with a native English speaker reading the book aloud.

I had a recording of the wonderful Emily Bezar reading the books, but I'd never gotten around to editing it. Emily had given me two complete readings plus variations of certain lines, so I decided to use a multitrack editor to make it easier to compare phrases. I set out the laptop on the kitchen table, fired up Ableton Live, and started cutting and pasting.

I had lots of options to choose among, but one element was missing. Normally, when my wife and I perform our books, we start by playing a little melody on an alto recorder (the flutey instrument). It's amazing how that creates a mood. Often audiences applaud right then, which puts everyone in good spirits.

But it was now too late at night to record the recorder, so I hauled out my wee two-octave MIDI keyboard and started searching through my software synthesizers for an evocative flute sound. I started with the Proteus Packs for Cakewalk Dimension. The E-mu Proteus, you may recall, was a rackmount hardware synthesizer that amazed the world 20 years ago with its high-quality sounds. It became so popular that E-mu produced a string of them. E-mu sound designer Tim Swartz recently converted his original Proteus samples into a sample library for Cakewalk's Dimension soft synth, boiling these thousand-dollar modules down into $79 downloads.

I did find a few contenders in the Proteus Pack, but they weren't quite the sound I was hearing in my head. (As Talking Head Jerry Harrison once remarked, in the age of preset synthesizers, we've all become librarians, forever trolling through lists of sounds.)

Turning online, I found Kong Audio Mini-DiZi, a VST plugin instrument for Windows. It wasn't an exact mental match either, but it had character. I quickly played the Momotaro theme, dragged it to the beginning of the audio session, and burned a CD. (Incidentally, of the half-dozen programs that popped up and offered to assist me in that task on Windows, iTunes seemed to be the easiest — and it supported CD-Text.)

Momotaro Theme (368KB MP3)

This was just a quickie performance on a cheap keyboard. To hear what Mini-DiZi (and other Kong Audio instruments) can do with expressive playing, head over to the Kong Audio site. Kong also offers 40 free WAV loops of Chinese percussion.

And my friend? She sold the first book while still on the plane.

Revolutionary new Audio Product

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:32:26 -0800

I don’t usually recommend audio products in this post. But I think you’ll agree, this is an important milestone. The press release says it works for Windows and Mac, but it'd probably work on Linux as well. INFINITUDE!™ 1.0 Dynamic Exaggeration Plug-in! Saratoga, CA - April 1, 2008 The Sound Guy, Inc. has announced the release of INFINITUDE!™, their long-awaited dynamic exaggeration plug-in! According to The Sound Guy, INFINITUDE! won’t just make your music louder! It won’t just make your music ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE LOUDER! With INFINITUDE!, your music will be INFINITELY LOUDER than anything the public has ever heard (or will ever hear again)! So loud, it will literally set the world on fire! Using an undoubtedly patentable divide-by-zero process, INFINITUDE! ensures that your music is louder, and therefore better, than anyone else’s! “We were working on an app that would eliminate the +/- 1.0 limit on CD signal levels, allowing the range to go all the way to +/- 1.1!” explained CEO Earl Vickers! “But then one of our competitors came out with a product called Eleven, which pretty much killed the marketing plan! “We went back to the drawing board and came up with a brand new concept: Twelve! But the engineering guys pointed out that our advantage would be temporary! We needed a way to leapfrog the competition, to go beyond incremental improvements and WIN THE LOUDNESS WARS ONCE AND FOR ALL!” Enter INFINITUDE!, the Shock-and-Awe of the audio world! INFINITUDE! lets you EMPHASIZE! EVERY! SINGLE! NOTE! But The Sound Guy hasn’t forgotten about those important spaces between the notes! With INFINITUDE!, the quiet, sensitive moments can be JUST AS LOUD AS THE REST OF YOUR SONG — OR EVEN LOUDER! The built-in Subtlety Remover!™ eliminates any hint of nuance, but without flattening your music! Instead, YOUR MUSIC WILL FLATTEN EVERYTHING WITHIN EARSHOT (basically, the whole universe)! INFINITUDE! — Music never hurt this good before! System Requirements: We recommend speakers with an 8/0 ohm input impedance and a power amp with unlimited headroom! INFINITUDE! supports VST and Audio Unit formats for Windows and Macintosh OS X (Universal for PPC and Intel)!