Doggiebox October 2003

doggiebox@lists.zygoat.ca

20 participants
36 discussions

Re: [Doggiebox] ns_kit notes
by Mike Carlyle 27 Oct '03

27 Oct '03

On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 11:55 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote: > At 13:07 10-10-03, Michael Carlyle wrote: >>> ps - speaking of custom kits, Mike C: do you have any notes on how >>> you put together your ns_kit version? I figure the next best thing >>> to a legally downloadable dbkit version of ns_kit would be a >>> "recipe" DB users could follow so that everyone could get themselves >>> more or less on the same page when swapping dbsong files that use >>> such kits. >> >> This is a good idea, although the details should really be no secret. >> I'll work on this later on when I get home and try to post something >> to the list. > > I'm just going to ask about this again :) Mostly because I've messing > around with kit-building and varying your version in different ways, > but am interested in knowing how you went about getting there in the > first place :) Thanks for the reminder, Carl Here's a synopsis: After downloading and inspecting the zipped files from ns_kit, I realized that the makings of a very nice Doggiebox project were there, although the files seem directed more towards midi instrument users. As I recall, I was immediately reminded about the true nature of velocity variances. As you know, the volume an instrument produces is only one of several complex variables that change with the velocity of the strike. The ns_kit sounds contain many recorded samples for each instrument, each one actually struck at a gradually reduced (or increased, depending on your point of view) impact strength. The ride cymbal, toms, and kick drums, in particular, sound almost completely different than each's loudest velocity strike. Since I was aiming to create lifelike fills and add subtle, human characteristics to my patterns, it seemed like the perfect set of sounds. Step by step, here's what I did: Unpack and inspect the sounds. I used mostly Amadeus (an unregistered shareware product I sometimes play with) and Bias Peak. to do my overview and editing of the sounds. This was quite time consuming, but I wanted to listen to everything. Select the sounds I wanted to use. Rather than create a kit that contained each and every sample provided by ns_kit, I thought I'd take a representative selection that covered the entire velocity spectrum. So, instead of having say, a ride bell that ranged from 1 through 8, I chose, perhaps, 2,4,5, and 7 or whatever struck my ear as being the most useful sounds. This took time. I didn't want to leave anything important out, tonally, but I also did not want to overwhelm myself with choices when using the kit. Also, as you may already have seen, a DB kit becomes larger in direct proportion to the number and length of the sampled sounds you feed it. Edit the sounds for length and volume. After a quick test-run with a new kit using some of the ns_kit sounds, I discovered that the volume on playback was very weak as compared to a similar instrument from Ben's Kit. I decided to pump it up a bit. I used Peak to open each sound I wanted to amplify, and I determined a volume increase through trial and error. After I figured out the volume I wanted to use, I simply applied it to each successive sound file without even listening to it as a time saving measure. It worked out OK, although there remains a slight imbalance with certain instruments, to my ear. (This is why I've repeatedly chimed in about the ability to export multi-instrument files so I can mix them later). I started to realize that some sounds had a very long decay that caused the file size of the saved kit to grow rapidly. I realized that I was reaching a point of diminishing returns. Would the very long, natural decay of a ride or a crash or a snare spring rattle really add to my sound's realism? I decided that much of this would be masked in a final mix, so I began to shorten and fade to zero on a lot of the longer sounds. I was able to radically reduce the file size of the final kit in the long run. To this day, it remains annoying that I have to wait for a ride cymbal to finish ringing on a pattern in order to get on with programming. Create kit graphics. Since my employment background includes the almost daily use of applications such as Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop, this wasn't too difficult for me. I think I decided to stick with PDF as the kit format. Organizing and deciding upon a naming convention for the files is essential in order to locate these as you're ready to apply one to a kit instrument. I used color to help me quickly identify a sound in the pattern window. I also used some bits of text to help me understand which velocity was used. Put it all together. I'm sure you know the mechanics of building a kit. It's pretty simple. I guess the key was my decision to create one instrument per collection of velocities, rather than a whole bunch of different instruments. It seemed a no-brainer to me. I chose the loudest one for the default, and named the others in such a way that their variance coincided with the velocity level of the ns_kit original sample (numbers ranging from 1 to whatever). The only tricky part was the hi-hat due to the inherent "muting" practice one must follow to get sounds to shut off when others kick in. I do have a situation where the ride cymbal gets muted by one of the hi-hats. I work around this for now. All in all, I'm fairly satisfied. I do adjust volumes and re-import individual sounds back into the kit now and then. I also want to play with the non-muted versions of the snare drum. He calls these rim-shot, but I think this might be a misnomer.

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Platform support (Mac OS X)
by Ben Kennedy 26 Oct '03

26 Oct '03

Hi all, First off, the good news is that Doggiebox seems to run fine under Panther. Secondly, I want to discuss Mac OS X support for moving forward. Results from the questionnaire I posted several days ago have shown some interesting things: - About 3% of respondents are running 10.1, and none of them plans to upgrade. - The remainder were running 10.2, and of those, 88% plan to upgrade to Panther. In the near future (by end of year or early next year), about 1 in 8 users will be running Jaguar (10.2) while the rest will be using Panther (10.3). I am actually a little surprised, and relieved, that so few people are still using 10.1. Accordingly, Doggiebox 1.1 and forward will require Mac OS 10.2 at a minimum. As I'm migrating the project into Xcode (the new developer tools for Panther), I've already become aware of one long-standing incompatibility with 10.1 which is probably responsible for the apparent hang at the end of exporting song to disk. My intent had been to complete 1.0.5 as the last 1.0.x version, with a few more bug fixes beyond what's already in the recent betas, but even now I am wondering if it is worth the effort to fix that particular issue for 10.1 compatibility. (If anyone on the list is using 10.1, speak up!) -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca

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some drumming posted as mp3
by Mike Carlyle 26 Oct '03

26 Oct '03

I was working on a song and realized I'd never finish it. So... I decided to just wrap it up as a Doggibox demo song and post it for you folks to check out. It's just drums, without any instrumental accompaniment. I hope someone finds inspiration here (inspiration that I, currently, sorely lack). http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=3268&alid=-1 Select the song called "dogdem".

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Re: Re: [Doggiebox] audio out
by dpwalsh6＠cox.net 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

http://www.m-audio.com/products/m-audio/mobilepre.php not entirely sure what you guys have been talking about but i saw a reference to the imic and had to give my 2 cents... the imic sucks, plain and simple. I've tried to put some guitar on a track in some audio program or other using my korg pxr4 out to the imic and it was almost 2 full seconds behind. latency in the imic is a huge problem on my ibook. i've been toying around with getting the new edirol 32 key midi-keyboard with a bunch of audio in and out options on the back of the unit. m-audio, which i've provided a link to has some great stuff. the link is to their usb pre which i've seen as low as $179 on the web would be as much as getting multiple imics and i'd assume lightyears beyond in audio quality. ============================================================ From: "Ben Kennedy" <ben(a)zygoat.ca> Date: 2003/10/24 Fri AM 11:34:38 EDT To: "Doggiebox List(s)" <doggiebox(a)lists.zygoat.ca> Subject: Re: [Doggiebox] audio out On 24 10 2003 at 11:30 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote: >Does anyone know anything cheaper and dumber (like, just lets you split >multiple audio channels via Firewire or USB into audio, and nothing more? >:) I've got plenty of mixing power on my VS-1680, though little output >power from my PowerBook (which only does Firewire through a PC card, but if >I save up to get my wife one of those new iBooks .... :) By far the cheapest device I've seen is the Griffin iMic... it's got a pair of stereo minijacks (one for in and one for out) and connects by USB. It's what I was using for too long before getting the "real" equipment. :) I haven't tried, but I imagine you could probably plug several of these babies into your computer if you had enough USB ports. Of course, the output quality is lesser (and input quality sucked, I kept having problems with noise and weird clipping and stuff, but I began to conclude it was crappy USB audio drivers in Mac OS X), and they only support 44.1khz at 20-bit. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Zygoat Doggiebox discussion list - <http://www.doggiebox.com> To unsubscribe, view archives or change your options: <http://lists.zygoat.ca/mailman/listinfo/doggiebox> ============================================================

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Audio inputs
by Frank Rubino 24 Oct '03

24 Oct '03

Hi- I am totally low-end here but find it is satisfactory to plug a Behringer Eurorack mx602a into my g4's line in. I use a separate mixer (another Behringer ub502) and powered speakers for monitoring. This is cheap (mixers total ~$150) and effective for capturing song ideas. I play guitar and sing and use Doggiebox for drums (aiff output) and Bias-Deck for recording/mixing. I don't use midi at the moment though would like to in future. Can someone give me an idea of what I would gain in sound quality using fire wire or usb audio interfaces? Thanks from a sound newbie- Frank

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OS X subject
by Jim Walter 22 Oct '03

22 Oct '03

I responded to the wrong subject...the last message was in responce to the OS 10.3 discussion Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

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Build 1A21 posted
by Ben Kennedy 22 Oct '03

22 Oct '03

Hey all, Grab at <http://www.doggiebox.com/distribution/Doggiebox-1A21.sit>. What's new in build 1A21 (20 Oct 2003): - Fixed the dependency on Arial font (among others) that would cause mysterious non-behaviour if unavailable. - Fixed a bug where selecting a different drum kit while editing a song would sometimes affect only some of the drums. Also, in an on-going effort to track down the mysterious crash-on-launch problems, I've added some diagnostic messages to the startup code. If and when you experience crashing on launch, please check the system log (using Console.app) and send me any relevant output logged from Doggiebox. In particular, it should now log a couple of messages similar to "willFinishLaunching begin" -- I want to see how far it's getting before the crash. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca

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Mac OS X and upgrades
by Ben Kennedy 22 Oct '03

22 Oct '03

Hi all, With Panther due for release at the end of the week, I would like to get an overview of where Doggiebox users will be standing on the Mac OS X landscape in the near future. As you undoubtedly know, 10.3 will make a slew of new features available to developers, and while exciting, will also bring with it the concerns of backward compatibility. Doggiebox is already limited in some ways due to the effort to support 10.1, and I want to re-visit compatibility goals for the future version road map. So... if you could take about ten seconds to answer the following two- question multiple choice questionnaire, I would appreciate it! Go here: <http://www.doggiebox.com/osquestion.php> Thanks, -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca

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Some more Doggiebox recordings
by Mike Carlyle 20 Oct '03

20 Oct '03

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=3268&alid=-1 The site above has songs that, with one exception, contain exclusively Doggiebox-played percussion sounds. Not all of them are described that way, but it's true, nonetheless. Please give a listen if you get time.

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Songs (with drums by Doggiebox) have been posted
by Jim Walter 17 Oct '03

17 Oct '03

Hello, I've posted some of the recordings I've created recently, using Doggiebox as my drummer :) http://jimwalter.zapto.org -Jim __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

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Doggiebox October 2003