[PD] Sample loop - start and end point (WAV files)

[hans w. koch]

lets not start a war here on who decides what for whom…the reluctance for using mp3, ogg, wmv might just lie in the fact that working with compressed formats requires decompression first (that this is done “behind the scenes” in other softwares doesn´t mean its not happening) and adds a computational overhead, which might it make look unattractive to some (including me e.g.).

so i am inclined to follow johannes separation between "content delivery” codecs (mp3 et al) and “production codecs” (wav, aiff) and at no point read it as an attempt to block anything for anyone.
he simply stated that he didn´t understand the wish for it…if anyone would develop something to work with mp3 in PD, how could/would he be able to block it?
on the other hand he is under no obligation to develop it for others.

best

hans




> Am 12.02.2020 um 01:55 schrieb William Huston <williamahuston at gmail.com>:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 5:07 PM IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig at iem.at> wrote:
> 
> so *you* only need to implement whatever backend you want.
> keep in mind, that Pd doesn't depend on any external library for doing
> the encoding/decoding, and afaict it should stay that way.
> so you "just" need to implement mp3, ogg, wmv, flac,... from scratch.
> 
> good luck.
> 
> What is your personal vision for what PD should be, IOhannes?
> What would you say are the core values of PD? 
> 
> Frankly, I consider this attitude arrogant, rude and offensive. 
> Telling me what I "need to" do!!! 
> 
> One of my favorite language designers is Larry Wall (Perl). 
> Larry has talked about his design choices quite often, such as
> 
> 1: Users (Perl programmers) should not experience any artificial or rigid limitations 
> 
> 2: Perl should be flexible enough to adapt to a user's needs and programming style,
> and not vice versa.  He calls this approach "non-orthogonality". He relates it to 
> looking at an apartment quad, where the designer first watches the paths that people
> make getting around, the worn patches of grass, and then builds the sidewalks there. 
> 
> to be honest: while i understand that mp3 is super-nice to have in your
> DJ setup, it really isn't a production format.
> 
> Who said anything about a DJ setup? 
> As Christof said, there are many different uses for this tool. 
> 
> Who are you to be telling me which file formats I should use? 
> 
> YOUR particular sound aesthetics are fine...  FOR YOU!
> in how you use PD, make music, design sound, etc. 
> 
> But please don't force me to adopt YOUR aesthetics
> by crippling PD to enforce them!
> 
> The fact is, MP3 is probably the most common audio file format
> in use today.  It is very inconvenient to (outside of PD) convert
> any MP3 samples I want to use, to WAV before I use them in PD. 
> 
> This conversion BTW, DOES NOT ADD information, so the resulting
> WAV is guaranteed not to be better than the source. 
> 
> This is ALWAYS the case! 
> 
> Just because the file format is potentially uncompressed, does not mean that 
> it is a high-quality sample. 
> 
> So any arrogance, dogma, or demands made upon me based on the
> alleged superiority of the "WAV file aesthetic" seem misplaced to me. 
> 
> Again, PD should be like Perl:
> NO ARTIFICIAL LIMITATIONS. 
> Make it as flexible as possible. 
> 
> If users want to read MP3s, OGGs, or FLACs, 
> then lets make this possible. 
> 
> I understand there are licensing issues with
> MP3 (esp. writing them), but other FOSS tools
> seem to have found a way to make it easy to 
> speak MP3 despite this limitation. 
> 
> Even if it happens in an external which is easy 
> to find and load. 
> 
> The answer to the question,
> "Why doesn't soundfiler support MP3"
> being "because IOhannes doesn't like them"
> does not sound acceptable to me. 
> 
> Thanks,
> BH
> 
> 
> --
> William Huston:  WilliamAHuston at gmail.com
> Binghamton NY
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 5:07 PM IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig at iem.at> wrote:
> On 2/11/20 9:48 PM, William Huston wrote:
> > As long as we are talking about soundfiler,
> > > It sure would be nice if someone could make soundfiler read
> > any audio file type:
> > 
> > WAV MP3 OGG WMV FLAC AU AIFF etc
> 
> dan has recently done some refactoring of the soundfile-i/o backend,
> which should make all this much simpler.
> 
> so *you* only need to implement whatever backend you want.
> keep in mind, that Pd doesn't depend on any external library for doing
> the encoding/decoding, and afaict it should stay that way.
> so you "just" need to implement mp3, ogg, wmv, flac,... from scratch.
> 
> good luck.
> 
> 
> to be honest: while i understand that mp3 is super-nice to have in your
> DJ setup, it really isn't a production format. (same for ogg and wmv:
> these are all handy formats to deliver content to the end-user, but not
> something you want to use during production). flac is mostly an
> archiving format.
> which leaves WAV, AU & AIFF from your list, all of which are already
> supported.
> what your list is missing is CAF, and this is what motivated dans recent
> work (so once his PR is accepted, you can read soundfiles "like a pro")
> 
> gmsrda
> IOhannes
> 
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