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TrilliumSound 29 January 2005

Hi everyone !

While I was relaxing, drinking a nice and fresh Belgium beer (Chimay bleu) 8) and reading some posts here at the forum, I asked to myself a silly question:

"Would it be a good time for the next GROUP PROJECT?"

Comments

zemlin Mon, 01/31/2005 - 20:03

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.

Ammitsboel Wed, 02/02/2005 - 05:05

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

anonymous Thu, 02/03/2005 - 09:51

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

David French Fri, 02/04/2005 - 10:29

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?

JoeH Fri, 02/04/2005 - 10:31

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!

anonymous Fri, 02/04/2005 - 10:54

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

Michael Fossenkemper Fri, 02/04/2005 - 19:46

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.

Ammitsboel Sat, 02/05/2005 - 11:06

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

anonymous Sun, 02/06/2005 - 12:56

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

Michael Fossenkemper Sun, 02/06/2005 - 21:48

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

anonymous Sun, 02/06/2005 - 22:13

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

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