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DSND files from Superior Drummer

Started by Slap the drummer, May 20, 2011, 07:17:14 PM

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Slap the drummer

As requested here is a simple outline of how SD 2.0 can be used to generate DSND files for the 2box, for folks
like myself who are not familiar with this kind of gear.  I barely know what I'm talking about  8) so please feel
free to correct me, make suggestions etc etc.  It's just really to give people a feel for how easy it is to do,
and maybe to get you started.

YOU WILL NEED:

SD 2.0 installed on your computer along with Solo and EZplayerPro, the last two come free with SD.
The DSoundTool which Louis built, available from shortestpath.de.
And that's it, nothing else.

First of all use the DSoundTool to export a midi file, any note, any channel, doesn't matter.
Then:

1) Open Solo and choose SD.

2) In main window ("Construction") right click an instrument, eg snare, to select it --blue highlight
indicates selection.

3) Bottom right, make sure you have the correct "articulation" (ie the one you want) selected, eg Centre Hit
maybe for a snare, or eg Closed Tip for a hat.

4) To left of that, in Voice & Layer, may as well choose "Unlimited"

Tune up the instrument to sound how you want it, for instance -

5) Play around with "Envelope" (on right side of the Construction window)

6) Use EZ mixer or go to Mixer page, tune in ambient levels, overheads, etc

7) So drum is set up (roughly).  Open EZplayer [Solo menu bar, Play style button, click].

8. In top half of EZp window, browse to locate the midi file.  Don't fret about
which note/instrument/channel it is, see below.

9) Make sure you can play it, and get some sounds coming out.  Stop it.  By default the
SD randomizing function(s) are on - the number of samples, the dynamic range, the amount
of variation at a given level, these are all things we're all going to want to decide for ourselves
further on.

10) Construction window, bottom right, activate "Learn" - and now the next midi note
it receives will be assigned to the currently selected instrument (sweet!).
So click "Learn" then shift to EZP and play the midi file.  Now in the Instrument section bottom
right you should see that the KEY for the chosen sound is now whatever note the midi was playing.
At the moment I just stick with the one midi file from DSTool and vary it like this.

11) Stop playing.  Press Bounce/Record.  Start playing - it will loop if you leave it.
Stop both.  Check you have recorded a number of samples (in window next to R button).

12) Select "bounce thru mixer" - this gives you 2 channel file, easy for now.

13) Click bounce, choose path.

14) When that's done locate the WAV and use DSoundTool to create a file.  End  8)

((I havn't checked it all out yet, but Louis's set up seems to give a midi file with hits
in groups of 3 at same velocity - so thirty sample file will be 10 different velocities,
with three 'variation' hits per velocity level.  Max output seems to be 99, still to check
is if 2box will play a file of more than 99 hits)).

Now you're in business.

Jman

It sounds like a huge process, but it really is not a big deal after learning the process the first time.  I have tried Midi files with 33 hits, steps, and let it run 3 times then stopped and bounced .... I have also done 49 twice = 98 files that will work for a dsnd ...  .... but to test the 99 limit I did one with 99 and let it run twice ... making it 198 files in the MIDI and that was promptly rejected from DSoundTool when trying to create a dsnd .... 49 three times was rejected also ... So stick with something that has 99 repetitions or less. You could do one file with 99 ... run it once ... (I like the idea of having more horizontal layers though that can be randomized... So I prefer doing multiple passes ... at least so far .. )
Step 12 "bounce through mixer" very important, otherwise you will end up with a bunch of individual WAV files for all the different mic positions and bleeds, etc ... pretty useless for creating a dsnd easily.
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

edcito

Great! thank you very much for your mini tutorial. I will run some tests this weekend and report back.
Just one quick q, when generating the midi file, which is the recommendable setting for "Seconds between 2 samples"?
I'd say 2?

Jman

Quote from: edcito on May 21, 2011, 12:36:23 AM
Great! thank you very much for your mini tutorial. I will run some tests this weekend and report back.
Just one quick q, when generating the midi file, which is the recommendable setting for "Seconds between 2 samples"?
I'd say 2?
It varies. When you make the MIDI's what I did, just today.... is make more. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

The reason is with some instruments like larger toms and lots of mics, bleed, etc... even if you use 5 sec it is not enough ... the tail of the sound gets cut off.... But on some others that have little effects ... smaller toms 3 sec is fine ...
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

edcito

Ok, first try and got some weird results...
I took a snare and recorded and bounced to 24 bit, 44.1 KHZ,stereo from a midi file with 99 layers.
The resulting wav file was 134 mb and when I tried to generate the dsnd file I got the "insufficient memory error"

Second try, I bounced it to 16 bit and the wav size was only 13 mb, this time dsnd tool accepted the file and generated the dsnd, but dnsd generated only 57 layers... and when I clik on the loudest layer, it plays like 24 hits ???
The rest of the layers play only one hit each....

nonoduweb

Hi

perhaps that you didn't let enough space between each hit, or bouncing the file added some noise, so Dsndtool recognized only one layer in the last 24 samples?

You don't need to have 99 layers to make a good sound, try just with 60 layers max, 24 bits, 37khz or 38khz (with this sampling value, you will be able to pitch the sound up with the module, not if you use 44Khz. The 2box editor recognizes differents sampling values).


edcito

Quote from: nonoduweb on May 22, 2011, 08:17:18 AM
Hi

perhaps that you didn't let enough space between each hit, or bouncing the file added some noise, so Dsndtool recognized only one layer in the last 24 samples?

You don't need to have 99 layers to make a good sound, try just with 60 layers max, 24 bits, 37khz or 38khz (with this sampling value, you will be able to pitch the sound up with the module, not if you use 44Khz. The 2box editor recognizes differents sampling values).



thanks nonoduweb. I tried with 60 layers for a snare and it was much better. Now I have a nice 7x14 Noble & Cooley/Zildjian Snare Prototype :rock:
But the only thing that buggers me is that if I bounce to 24 bits I get the insufficient memory error in dsndtool. If I bounce to 16 then it goes well.
And the only value accepted by dsoundtool is 44.1 Khz. so changing to 38Khz or something different wont work.
I wonder if it's better to turn off "all bleed on" when bouncing in solo because I'm afraid I will get a very processed and unbalanced kit.. I want to try first a raw sound without bleeding, since I might like a Snare from Custom and Vintage but a kick from Metal foundry, so I'll end up with different bleedings...


Jman

Quote from: edcito on May 22, 2011, 10:09:57 AM
thanks nonoduweb. I tried with 60 layers for a snare and it was much better. Now I have a nice 7x14 Noble & Cooley/Zildjian Snare Prototype :rock:
But the only thing that buggers me is that if I bounce to 24 bits I get the insufficient memory error in dsndtool. If I bounce to 16 then it goes well.
And the only value accepted by dsoundtool is 44.1 Khz. so changing to 38Khz or something different wont work.
I wonder if it's better to turn off "all bleed on" when bouncing in solo because I'm afraid I will get a very processed and unbalanced kit.. I want to try first a raw sound without bleeding, since I might like a Snare from Custom and Vintage but a kick from Metal foundry, so I'll end up with different bleedings...



Whatever the problem is with "Not Enough Memory to Perform this operation" I just started getting it too.... and it isn't because you can't make big 24Bit dsnds.... I made a 760MB HH out of NDK ... with it .... now I can't open that dsnd in DSoundTool .... or even the early dsnds that I made .... I did lots and lots of dsnds yesterday, since late last night its a no go ....
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

logihack

slap, thank you for this...
i did a quick test with just snare sample yesterday but im not quite happy with the results...i dont know how can i create a bigger file(i guess better quality sample)...i made some snare, but its just 36mb...how can i increase the quality of samples?

Baby Samus

#9
Quote from: Jman on May 22, 2011, 02:21:45 PM
Whatever the problem is with "Not Enough Memory to Perform this operation" I just started getting it too.... and it isn't because you can't make big 24Bit dsnds.... I made a 760MB HH out of NDK ... with it .... now I can't open that dsnd in DSoundTool .... or even the early dsnds that I made .... I did lots and lots of dsnds yesterday, since late last night its a no go ....

I think there are command line parameters you need to change to allow Dsoundtool to access more RAM:

Quote from: Louis on May 30, 2010, 04:38:38 PM
Hi Claes,

What happens if you edit the .bat file with a text editor (like Notepad) and change the contents from:

start "" javaw -Xms100m -Xmx400m -jar "dsoundtool.jar"

to

start "" javaw -Xms100M -Xmx600M -jar "dsoundtool.jar"


This will allow DSoundTool to use a maximum of 600 megabytes of memory (and perhaps the "m" on must be an "M").
If that is not enough, increase the number after "-Xmx".

Hope this helps!

Louis

Try increasing to 1024 (1GB of RAM) and see if that works.  As long as your PC has enough RAM free of course...

Quote from: logihack on May 22, 2011, 03:37:55 PM
slap, thank you for this...
i did a quick test with just snare sample yesterday but im not quite happy with the results...i dont know how can i create a bigger file(i guess better quality sample)...i made some snare, but its just 36mb...how can i increase the quality of samples?

You cannot increase sample quality over the original file you are using unless you intend to add ambience and FX to clean it up - in other words you need to start with larger higher quality samples rather than trying to improve samples which are say a lower bit rate and quite small in size.  For example, if create a DSND file with 16-bit snare samples which are say 1mb in size, if you have 32 layers then your snare file is going to be roughly 32mb.  If however you used a 24-bit .wav samples which were 20mb each (higher quality files will usually be a lot larger than low quality - it also depends on the sample length) and you had 32 layers, you'd end up with a DSND file around 650mb or so.  I think thats how it works anyway!


edcito

Quote from: Baby Samus on May 22, 2011, 08:55:07 PM
I think there are command line parameters you need to change to allow Dsoundtool to access more RAM:

Try increasing to 1024 (1GB of RAM) and see if that works.  As long as your PC has enough RAM free of course...

I increased to the max allowed by my installed memory 4096 with only dsndtool running but still get the not enough memory error.....
So it might be something else..?

Baby Samus

Dunno I think you'd have to ask Louis on that one!  4gb is plenty RAM for the job, so not sure why its not recognising the extra assigned RAM...

Louis

I will have a look as soon as I have time. In the mean time I would recommend starting dsoundtool from the "launch" link on the web site because that will automatically allocate quite a lot of space; please let me know if that still gives problems, or use the Xmx parameter in the bat file.


edcito

Quote from: Louis on May 22, 2011, 10:13:18 PM
I will have a look as soon as I have time. In the mean time I would recommend starting dsoundtool from the "launch" link on the web site because that will automatically allocate quite a lot of space; please let me know if that still gives problems, or use the Xmx parameter in the bat file.



Great, thanks. Launching from the website it's working now.
Off to a nice zildjian hihat! :rock:
But the question now arises: How many articulations in SD? What's the maximum zones a dsnd can accept? I read somewhere else that 7? 

Jman

I never worked out the memory problem ... had to compromise and build a couple dsnds smaller than I would have liked .... But I am really happy with my BIG sounding kit  .... put a vid up in the General forum .... J
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/