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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

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?

How many individual samples is that?

When I bounce 30 samples at 24bit via Mixer to a stereo file it comes out at roughly 35Mb.  That feels about right because I shd think
that the individual hits in SD are not that big (file size) or it wd grind to a halt.  A ride hit in the stand alone type of sample set might be
2mb or 3mb but imagine that in SD with multi miking options!

The DSoundTool will then shrink this single WAV down to less than 10MB.  Not sure I get this.  So far I've been making files up from
many individual WAVs and I've never noticed the file size to shrink like this.  Cd be converting down to 16bit maybe?

NOT necesssarily linked to file size, but also I'm not completely happy with the results either - yet.
Things sound fantastic in SD but what I'm getting out of the module in the end, that's not so good.  Main thing I wd point my finger
at is a loss/damping of hi freq - cymbals really show this up.

But I havn't really had time to play with it all yet - so ongoing............

Jman

#16
Quote from: Slap the drummer on May 23, 2011, 09:49:25 AM
How many individual samples is that?

When I bounce 30 samples at 24bit via Mixer to a stereo file it comes out at roughly 35Mb.  That feels about right because I shd think
that the individual hits in SD are not that big (file size) or it wd grind to a halt.  A ride hit in the stand alone type of sample set might be
2mb or 3mb but imagine that in SD with multi miking options!

The DSoundTool will then shrink this single WAV down to less than 10MB.  Not sure I get this.  So far I've been making files up from
many individual WAVs and I've never noticed the file size to shrink like this.  Cd be converting down to 16bit maybe?


I just did a quick addition on the last HH I did .... All the WAV's added up to about 390MB ... the resulting dsnd was 234MB .... so it is shrunk .... but it is about 40% smaller in that example...


Woooops ... I forgot to add in the ft splash WAV ... so the WAVs added up to 430MB and the resulting dsnd 234MB ... so shrunk about 45%
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

logihack

today i did some more samples...i tested ad and sd...it sounded good thru headphones, but i will test this kits at the end of the week, playing with band...
i also made some tests with ride and the file for one zone was around 120mb, but dsnd file was exactly 100mb...so the wave was shrunken on a third of the size-even more...
and today i did this with 30 samples...i didnt notice any difference between 30 and 99 samples...but i notice one thing...no matter how many samples(hits), the first one was always at velocity 28...why not 1 or even 10 would be better...but im to lazy to change it manually

Jman

Quote from: logihack on May 23, 2011, 05:03:59 PM
today i did some more samples...i tested ad and sd...it sounded good thru headphones, but i will test this kits at the end of the week, playing with band...
i also made some tests with ride and the file for one zone was around 120mb, but dsnd file was exactly 100mb...so the wave was shrunken on a third of the size-even more...
and today i did this with 30 samples...i didnt notice any difference between 30 and 99 samples...but i notice one thing...no matter how many samples(hits), the first one was always at velocity 28...why not 1 or even 10 would be better...but im to lazy to change it manually
Did you bounce the WAVs to 24bit or 16bit?
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

Jman

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.



I still get the Not enough memory message even if I disable my firewall (won't launch unless I shut down the firewall) and launch from the website. I can't open dsnd's that I created previously. I'm pretty well out of business till I can figure out how to fix that ... J
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

logihack

Quote from: Jman on May 24, 2011, 12:25:03 AM
Did you bounce the WAVs to 24bit or 16bit?
i bounced the wavs to 24bit, but i worked in logic8 with ad samples and maybe i did something wrong...can you tell me velocity for your first hit in midi file

Jman

Quote from: logihack on May 24, 2011, 05:24:27 AM
i bounced the wavs to 24bit, but i worked in logic8 with ad samples and maybe i did something wrong...can you tell me velocity for your first hit in midi file
Can't really say, I'm just using EZplayer and Toontrack Solo and I don't see any digital values on the vu meters ...

I am thinking that one difference in the trimming down of WAVS to dsnd's is possibly the amount of seconds being used on the MIDI files ... some of the ones I've made had very little dead space between samples, some were pretty tight ... so maybe DsoundTool trims the dead space and the results reflect that... just guessing
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

edcito

You can see the velocity for each sample in dsoundtool. Just click a layer and it will display a list.

Jman

#23
Quote from: edcito on May 24, 2011, 06:08:17 AM
You can see the velocity for each sample in dsoundtool. Just click a layer and it will display a list.

Thanks Ed ... didn't know that ....

So my velocity starting points vary a huge amount ... some toms and snares start at 10 or below ... kicks over 100 .... same with some cymbals, splashes... sure would be good to know what is going on with that ...

Edit .... I don't feel so bad now.... I just looked at some of my stock 2Box dsnd's and the velocity layers are similar .... HH velocity layers starting at 150 for example.
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

Jman

Quote from: Jman on May 24, 2011, 05:07:16 AM
I still get the Not enough memory message even if I disable my firewall (won't launch unless I shut down the firewall) and launch from the website. I can't open dsnd's that I created previously. I'm pretty well out of business till I can figure out how to fix that ... J
I finally figured out how to get into the batch file ... I upped the MB's a bunch and now all is well again ....  8)
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

Louis

Sorry for not having replied earlier on questions about file size, but here we go:
when you have a wave file containing samples and you convert it to a .dsnd file, the dsnd file will become smaller.

This is because:
- dsnd files are 16 bit samples, so if the original wave file is 24 bits you lose 33% in size
- if there is silence between the samples, DSoundTool will cut this away. So if there is a lot of silence, the dsnd file will become much smaller.

About quality loss of sounds, I have not noticed myself, but my musical ear is not so good. Part of it can be that Superior Drummer plays samples at 24 bits, dsnd files use only 16-bit samples. And perhaps a little can be explained because DSoundTool uses a quite simplistic way to convert from 24 to 16 bits, perhaps there are smarter ways. Maybe I need to read again about fast fourier transforms and all that stuff I thought I would never use when I was a student..

Jman

#26
Quote from: Louis on May 26, 2011, 08:40:40 PM
Sorry for not having replied earlier on questions about file size, but here we go:
when you have a wave file containing samples and you convert it to a .dsnd file, the dsnd file will become smaller.

This is because:
- dsnd files are 16 bit samples, so if the original wave file is 24 bits you lose 33% in size
- if there is silence between the samples, DSoundTool will cut this away. So if there is a lot of silence, the dsnd file will become much smaller.

About quality loss of sounds, I have not noticed myself, but my musical ear is not so good. Part of it can be that Superior Drummer plays samples at 24 bits, dsnd files use only 16-bit samples. And perhaps a little can be explained because DSoundTool uses a quite simplistic way to convert from 24 to 16 bits, perhaps there are smarter ways. Maybe I need to read again about fast fourier transforms and all that stuff I thought I would never use when I was a student..
There is one sound quality issue with the tails of the samples being cut off abruptly. I know it is not associated with the original WAV recording because I have tried MIDI sequences with both minimum amount of gap/seconds between hits and extra long amounts of gap/seconds between hits. Listening back to the WAVS the sounds ring out without cutting out abruptly. It is there on all instuments in the finished dsnds, Ie, snares, toms, HH etc ... But it is most obvious on Cymbals .... rides, splashes, crashes. If there is any way to fix that it would be great. I never noticed anything like that when doing Many individual waves in one folder  ... but when doing MIDI sequencing type WAV conversion where everything is in the one WAV this happens ....

I think your conversion between 24Bit to 16Bit is working just fine ... I have bounced both and the resulting dsnd's are identical in every way.

Again, just giving feedback here .... and want to thank you again for your DSoundTool. It is the crucial part of the equation when building new dsnd sounds from samples!
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

edcito

I loaded my first samples from superior and I'm a bit disappointed by the results... with headphones from the computer they sound really good but once on the module they're just not there......
I don't know, many factors are involved, like mixer settings, envelope, bouncing to 24...
it's not just as straightforward as I thought :-\
I would gladly pay for toontrack and bfd samples ready to load on the orange box, but at this point, one needs a audio engineering degree to achieve a decent sound..in my personal case of course.


Jman

Quote from: edcito on May 27, 2011, 06:12:50 AM
I loaded my first samples from superior and I'm a bit disappointed by the results... with headphones from the computer they sound really good but once on the module they're just not there......
I don't know, many factors are involved, like mixer settings, envelope, bouncing to 24...
it's not just as straightforward as I thought :-\
I would gladly pay for toontrack and bfd samples ready to load on the orange box, but at this point, one needs a audio engineering degree to achieve a decent sound..in my personal case of course.



I've been pretty happy with several sets of toms, a few snares, and one HH I've built so far. The tails getting cut off the individual hits as I mentioned above has rendered my cymbals unusable so far. I have been going through the presets and using kits/instruments with the presets .... One thing I do when recording any toms or kicks is turn the bottom snare wire OFF before recording those.... at least so far, as I didn't like the resulting sound on the first few toms or kicks I did with that on ... I also check the panning in the mixer and pan the way I have things set up before recording.... I've recorded with all bleeds on ... bleeds off ... I'm still learning, but definitely not sorry about going this route. Once I can get dsnds with the waves in tact I know it can be killer .... I know this especially because of the NDK dsnds I have already built previously where the WAVs did not get cut short in the dsnds.
I could tell you where to stick that piezo! :D ;)
http://stealthdrums.com/

edcito

Quote from: Jman on May 27, 2011, 06:33:06 AM
I've been pretty happy with several sets of toms, a few snares, and one HH I've built so far. The tails getting cut off the individual hits as I mentioned above has rendered my cymbals unusable so far. I have been going through the presets and using kits/instruments with the presets .... One thing I do when recording any toms or kicks is turn the bottom snare wire OFF before recording those.... at least so far, as I didn't like the resulting sound on the first few toms or kicks I did with that on ... I also check the panning in the mixer and pan the way I have things set up before recording.... I've recorded with all bleeds on ... bleeds off ... I'm still learning, but definitely not sorry about going this route. Once I can get dsnds with the waves in tact I know it can be killer .... I know this especially because of the NDK dsnds I have already built previously where the WAVs did not get cut short in the dsnds.
Yeah, I might try NDK as well. I'm not sorry neither and I see a lot of potential but the learning curve is pretty steep for those not familiar with recording or mixing, like myself.