[PD] Debugging sound
Derek Holzer
derek at umatic.nl
Sun Oct 19 00:13:58 CEST 2008
Hi David,
David F. Place wrote:
> I heard
> some acoustical artifacts that I hadn't noticed when I was working in
> front of my computer listening through speakers. This extra "buzzing"
> sound is quite annoying. It's hard to imagine how my patches are making
> it. Does anyone have any wisdom about how to track down and fix these
> kind of problems? Are there any usual things you check first?
I know you said you checked what happens when you increase the sampling
rate, but I would double check and make sure that what you are hearing
isn't aliasing. I've found the difference between using an oversampled
or otherwise bandwidth-limited oscillator and the normal [phasor~] or a
square wave derived from [phasor~] and [expr~ $v1 > 0.5] to be the
difference between day and night (or Stockhausen and Donkey Kong). Check
3.audio.examples/J07.oversampling.pd for one anti-aliasing strategy, or
better yet compare a normal, ugly, aliased [phasor~] with the
anti-aliased one in that example. List archives will turn up loads when
you search for "bandwidth limited" as well.
Remember that once aliasing gets into a digital signal, no amount of
filtering can remove it!
If aliasing isn't the problem, then you'd do best to tap a [dac~] into
each section of your patch one by one and see where the problem is. I
don't think anyone on this list is so psychic they can figure out it
long-distance ;-)
Other things I would check, however, from experience:
1) Any Amplitude Modulation, Frequency Modulation or other changes in
frequency or gain are done with audio signals, or via [pack 0 0] and
[line~] with enough interpolation time set on the [pack] to get rid of
any "stepping" or "zipper noise".
2) If you are using samples, that you haven't loaded such a large file
into a table that the precision drops. You might have to go fishing in
the archives to find out exactly how many samples it takes to do this, I
can't remember offhand...
3) That you aren't clipping your final levels. Open the file up in a
wave editor and see if the peaks hit 0dB. For some CD players even this
is too hot, and you might want to aim for something more like -1dB or
-3dB. Scout around on the internets for tips on mixing and mastering for
CD to get an idea of where people tend to peak their levels.
best,
Derek
--
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista
---Oblique Strategy # 156:
"The tape is now the music"
More information about the Pd-list
mailing list