Group Project 9

Man, i'm sure ready. I'm still pissed about not being able to do the last one.

as i recall from the last one, only a few folks chimed in on how & what they did to the song.

It would be truly more of a learning experience if more participants followed through with their observations & signal chain.

ed

I would love to participate if you'd have me. It would be a great learning experience for me. Getting a new D/A converter in a couple weeks as well.

I'm in - I think...

Count me in again. I've been swamped with work (mostly the day job) but have been intending to write up what I did on my session - although since everyone (except me) thought mine was the low point, I didn't see much point. :cry: (in good humor)



I learned quite a lot in the last round - I'm up for another black eye.

I think we should do it. Again i'm swamped for the next couple of weeks (damn people trying to give me money). If someone wants to take the lead, then by all means go for it.

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: Again i'm swamped for the next couple of weeks (damn people trying to give me money).

I have heard your room & work first hand......I like.

Ed

Why thank you Ed. Can't wait to see more progress pics on your new room.

I'm probably out. I've got all the stuff backed up from my injury, and we're due for kid #2 5 weeks. I could master it, but wouldn't have enough time to listen and comment on others work well enough.



Wish people would GIVE me money and I didn't have to work so damn hard for it!

Oh I see, wait for me to do it. thanks guys. Ok, I'll post when I'm ready.

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: I think we should do it. Again i'm swamped for the next couple of weeks (damn people trying to give me money). If someone wants to take the lead, then by all means go for it.

Well, if it's such a problem then throw them at me!!



I'm also in.

Could we do a modern Rock/pop tune this time??



Best Regards

Ed Littman wrote: [quote=Michael Fossenkemper] Again i'm swamped for the next couple of weeks (damn people trying to give me money).

I have heard your room & work first hand......I like.

Ed


Me too 8-)

I have to see Michaels studio sometime...

I would also love to be able to do this when everyone is ready.

this seems great. :D sign me up when you're ready....Steven

My goodness, what a fascinating avatar...

Massive Mastering wrote: My goodness, what a fascinating avatar...

very kewl 8)

I'm new to this site so have to ask - what's involved with the Group Project? Is this a similar idea to the WOMP that happens at Brad Blackwood's site? If it is I'd be game to participate also.



love that 3 d yin yang thing too! Was staring at my screen for a few minutes - hope I didn't get alien instructions implanted in my brain while I was in a trance!



Best regards,

Steve Berson

Hey Steve -



Yeah, it's a "everyone gets the same file" and then listens and comment on them all when done.



Then the curtain is raised and the wine flows. :o



Here's a rundown on the last one...



(Dead Link Removed)

loooook innnnnnnto myyyyyy avvvvvatar... :shock: seeend meee looooots offfffff moooooney...

Digitonic wrote: loooook innnnnnnto myyyyyy avvvvvatar... :shock: seeend meee looooots offfffff moooooney...

Not very Daoist of you.

I'm interested in participating in this.

Here's an up-to-date list:



1. TrilliumSound

2. David French

3. lucidwaves

4. Massive Mastering (he thinks)

5. zemlin

6. Michael Fossenkemper (will post when he's ready)

7. Ammitsboel

8. FIMseth

9. Digitonic

10. TotalSonic

11. Sckid Marq



And for god's sake let's use some data compression this time! Using RAR compression, we can reduce the size of the files by 33%. For the masters, we could use mp3. :shock: WIth a constant bitrate of 320kbps, we can get files that are only 23% of the original size. I personally believe that you can judge most masters with even lower and variable bitrates, but who will argue that you can't judge a master by a 320 kbps CBR mp3?

I apologize for not being able to wade through 15 or 16 pages of posts on the last project ( ;-) but in a few words or less, what does this involve?



Mixing a tune, working from stems, or simply "Mastering" it (as such.)



Is there an FTP site with real wav files involved (24bit?) etc? Just curious. I"m not sure I'd have the time this time around, but it does sound interesting....



Thanks!

Last time is was just plain old mastering, 16 bit, from FTP. The masters are numbered annonymously. We all listen and comment, then the names are revealed.

Hey David -

I'm really against using mp3 compression - even at 320kbps it's going to do some (subtle) coloring that might not do some people's work as much justice. How about FLAC?? It's totally lossless, has a decent 2:1 compression ratio, and is completely open source - and there are freeware tools to use it on pretty much every platform.



http://flac.sourceforge.net/



Best regards,

Steve Berson

I must admit that I haven't heard of this yet. I have some reading to do.

Not very Daoist of you.

Laozi would be proud.

We are doing SRC right? so the file is going to be 24/96k. We will then SRC and listen to it at 16/44.1. We will all use the same dither and we won't compress. This is detailed intensive and it won't do us any good to introduce variables. I will choose a file and upload it to my server. you will then download it into your computer and do the SRC and upload it back to the server. No EQ, No Comp, no nothing. JUST SRC and a predetermined dither. This isn't a competition, we just want to hear the effects of different SRC's. Between all of here, we should have just about every kind. I will post a menu and you choose the kind that you have. This will probably be the most listening intensive project and the differences will be small. So clean out your ears and dust off those tweeters.

I had no idea SRC was the name of the game or else I would have never mentioned mp3.

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: We are doing SRC right? so the file is going to be 24/96k. We will then SRC and listen to it at 16/44.1. We will all use the same dither and we won't compress. This is detailed intensive and it won't do us any good to introduce variables. I will choose a file and upload it to my server. you will then download it into your computer and do the SRC and upload it back to the server. No EQ, No Comp, no nothing. JUST SRC and a predetermined dither. This isn't a competition, we just want to hear the effects of different SRC's. Between all of here, we should have just about every kind. I will post a menu and you choose the kind that you have. This will probably be the most listening intensive project and the differences will be small. So clean out your ears and dust off those tweeters.

Cool, I will load the file into Sound Hack and Hack the header and bits down to 16/44.1

SoundHack... now there's an app I don't often see mentioned on these forums. Word, man. Word. You wouldn't by chance be into MaxMSP or CSound also, would you?

I once played around with MAX/MSP. I think Csound was already old school at that time... image line is also great fun. I never got to try Super Colider, have you tried it?

Never tried supercollider. Yes, CSound is definitely old school in a way since it is a descendent of the Music N languages written by Max Matthews so very long ago, but it's still the most powerful sound creation and processing device in the world.



We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

Count me in, please =)



HB

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: We are doing SRC right? so the file is going to be 24/96k. We will then SRC and listen to it at 16/44.1. We will all use the same dither

Michael -

In the interests of making this test more scientifically sound I'd like to ask that we don't requantize for it, and instead simply ONLY do SRC in the interests of just judging the quality of the src solely by itself. Why? Because when you say "we will all use the same dither" my reaction is "how??". i.e. a lot of software src's will automatically use their own built in dither as soon as you set it to requantize. In the case of ReSample there are about 5 different dither algorithms and most have a number of additional options to choose from. Or if we're talking loop back many ADC's have built in dither options that can't be bypassed when recording at 16bit (i.e. on my Mytek you either can choose TPDF or its proprietary "Super Shaper" algorithm - but you can't just have it set to not add dither). And if we can surmount this problem then the question is "which dither to use" and even if we choose simple TPDF there are indeed different ways of the algorithm coder implementing it. Plus the isssue of having to find one that is cross platform (if we limit this test to software src instead of also including loop back or hardware src - but I'd prefer if we tested all options available to us instead) - and exactly the same on both platforms. To me it's just introducing a mess of more variables that clouds our judgements on the single focus of finding a good src. i.e. - what could do src great alone might not be a great word length reducer - but it's a simple thing to do a second step to requantize and add whatever your favorite dither. The problem is that there are so many options for dither that it makes testing these two steps together a nightmare. Please - let's focus this test on SRC alone and just leave the files at 24bit. I'd also really appreciate if we included conversion of a few test tones besides a music track in the test also.



Best regards,

Steve Berson

Well I was thinking pow-r since just about everyone has it. but we can leave it a 24bit. I'll just have keep the segment at a reasonable length.

Ok, here's the menu, pick your poison



1-Protools

2-sadie

3-sequoia/samplitude

4-saw studio

5-barbabatch

6-cubase

7-peak

8-spark

9-Sonic solutions

10-nuendo

11-weiss

12-apogee

13-behringer

14-lavry

15-quantum

16-?

17-?

18-?

19-?





Pick you choice, if you don't see yours here, then fill in one of the empties. If you have more than one, just pick one for now so others can join in if they have it. If we have any holes then you can fill it in.



I pick 12-apogee rosetta 200

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: Well I was thinking pow-r since just about everyone has it.

Ironically I have about 15 different dither options at the studio - but pow-r ain't one of them! Anyway - with a lot of the software src's or with loopback that would get you a file "double dithered" unless you did the requantizing as a second step.



I think we might be abe to discern some of the differences in the files a little better at 24 bit also.

but we can leave it a 24bit. I'll just have keep the segment at a reasonable length.

Again - I suggest using FLAC so that we can ftp a file half the size of the original with no fidelity loss whatsoever -



freeware PC FLAC encoder/decoder -

download dBPowerAmp Music Converter here -

http://www.download.com/dBpowerAmp-Music-Converter/3000-2140-10042534.html?part=dl-dBpowerAm&subj=dl&tag=button

and the FLAC codec for it here -

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codecs/dBpowerAMP-codec-flac.exe



freeware Mac (OSX) encoder/decoder -

download MacFLAC here - http://home.earthlink.net/~dgreuel/macflac/MacFLAC-2.1.2.dmg.gz



Best regards,

Steve Berson