Additive Synth

[Matthew Pelsma]

Hi Everyone,

I am having some issues with Additive Synthesis. I do not know how to
get a clear sound with more than four voices. I'm sure it's a real
simple thing I have over looked, but when I right-click -> Help
directly on the canvas, nothing pops up. I searched the wiki for
Steve's example from class but could not find it, or any example that
would lead me to where I need to go. I think this is just from my
lack of knowledge about basic objects so if anyone knows the name of
the help file that explains the basic functions I would greatly
appreciate it. Thanks!

~Matt

[John Harrison]

for some reason on some windows machines the right-click help doesn't
work. You can find the same help window by choosing the 5.reference
folder from the help menu and opening 0.INTRO.txt. That's the name of
the help file you are looking for.

--
John Harrison
Associate Professor of Violin
Director: CRATEL
(Center for Research in Arts, Technology, Education and Learning)
Wichita State University
Wichita, KS 67260-0053
USA

http://JohnHarrisonViolin.com
http://www.wichita.edu/CRATEL

tel: (316) 978-6572
fax: (316) 978-3625

[bsmu...@wichita.edu]

Man, you're probably going to have to increase your latency setting to avoid the pops and clicks and stuff... open up settings, audio settings or whatever, and find latency, and change it to a larger number. Depending on your sound card, you'll need higher settings to get better (or good) performance. The only drawback to high latency is if you're trying to trigger sounds in real time, they're going to be late. Latency is measured in milliseconds so for instance, if you press a key on a keyboard, it'll take, say, 100 ms for the sound to be heard, which is enough to ruin a 'realistic feel' although it's still better than nothing. And I've noticed, PD in windows pretty much suck as far as latency is concerned - I've got two sounds cards that both have ASIO 2 drivers, and in programs like Reason I can get latency as low as 5 ms without too many probems. When I try to use ASIO in PD performance is pretty bad - I don't think Windows PD actually supports ASIO, there's a layer
of software between your card and pd I guess.

Anyway, try messing with that value, if I'm understanding your problem correctly.

Brian

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[bsmu...@wichita.edu]

Okay, I reread your email and maybe your problem is the sound is just being overdriven? As you add signals together, the amplitude is being increased. Decreas the amplitude of each signal (multiply by less than 1) before you add them together, maybe that'll do the trick..... Anyway, whatever

Bye

----- Original Message -----
From: John Harrison <john.h...@wichita.edu>
Date: Tuesday, September 5, 2006 4:12 pm
Subject: Re: Additive Synth

>

[bsmu...@wichita.edu]

Maybe this fixes the sound issue? In this case there's no distortion because I've decreased the amplitude of each of the 4 oscillators. Maybe this wasn't the issue, if not, oops.

Brian

[John Harrison]

bsmu...@wichita.edu wrote:
> When I try to use ASIO in PD performance is pretty bad - I don't think Windows PD actually supports ASIO, there's a layer
> of software between your card and pd I guess.
>

Brian are you choosing the ASIO (PortAudio) driver and saying that gives
bad latency performance with your ASIO sound cards? That would be very
disappointing if true...

I've had fantastic luck with ASIO in Windows but I never tried it with
Pd, only CsoundAV which is another sound synth language. Even if your
sound card is ASIO I have gotten very low (as in something like 10mS)
latency with crappy sound cards built into Windows laptops using ASIO4ALL:

http://www.asio4all.com/

But if you are already using asio soundcards and drivers and have good
results with other apps but not with Pd using its ASIO driver...bummer.

[Brian]

Yeah, I dont' know what the deal is, the problem is not with my sound
card(s). For some reason, I can't get latency below like 50-ish in PD
no matter what, even though, like I mentioned, I can get real low
latency in other programs. In PD using the PortAudio thing doesn't
seem to help, or if it does, it doesn't help that much. I actually get
the best results by using the WDM drivers for my cards (not the
built-in laptop card). It's low enough to play with but for
performance it'd be better to be down around 10. Maybe I just need to
tweak something somewhere, I dont' know.

Later,
Brian

[Brian]

Ah-ha! So the ASIO problem was I was selecting ASIO for the output,
but not messing with the input setting - I was leaving it as Microsoft
Sound Mapper or whatever, and that was screwing everything up. When I
either disable the input, or make sure they're both set to my ASIO
driver, then I can get latency down to like 15 ms before things get
weird. Much better. So I guess my "can't get lower latency NO MATTER
WHAT" wasn't exactly correct. BTW, I tried ASIO4All and got down to
maybe 20, but using my card's drivers I got down to 15. So, whatever.

Brian

[John Harrison]

15 is ok but for an ASIO card not fantastic. I was reading that Pd
doesn't do ASIO as efficiently as it might so your results make sense.
For you, ASIO4ALL doesn't make sense since you already have an ASIO card
w/ drivers. For non-ASIO cards, ASIO4ALL can make a big improvement over
the standard Windows WDM (Weapons of Destruction Mass?) drivers.

-John

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