Clarinet issue

[fabiolcati]

Gentlemen,

while making extensive use of GPO clarinet I noticed this issue:

When I re-trigger the same pitch it results in a phase-shifted sound at attack, generally when the previous tone is a long sustained one. It affects all clarinet players/pathches. Other instruments are fine.

It happens within Notion3, a little in stand alone mode and neither under GarageBand or Reaper.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[Surfwhammy]

Does this happen with only one GPO clarinet and no other instruments?

The reason I ask is that there can be a bit of background noise at the start of a sample, and when there are several samples being played simultaneously all the background noise accumulates or adds, which is bit of a problem in the digital music universe . . .

I do not have or use GPO, so this is just a thought, where it might be similar to some of the tuba artifacts that were discussed for a while, really . . .

Really!

P. S. Another experiment is to determine whether it happens when there is no Reverb, since it could be caused by the Reverb algorithms . . .

[pcartwright]

I cannot say that I've noticed this issue for all clarinet patches. I've seen phasing issues with the "generic" player patches (i.e. patches other than solo) when I usse the same patch for different parts. You may want to post this (with audio examples) in the Garritan forum if you haven't already.

Also, do you notice this more with legato passages (that is, when the legato pedal is used)?

Please provide a link if/when you post to Garritan's forum so we can follow the progress of the thread.

[fabiolcati]

I've seen phasing issues with the "generic" player patches (i.e. patches other than solo) when I use the same patch for different parts.

I'm less lucky than you. The phasing occours to me on all kind of Bb clarinet patch.
And there's only one clarinet in the score I'm working on.

You may want to post this (with audio examples) in the Garritan forum if you haven't already.

I will do it tonight when I will be back home from office. I will post the audio here too.

Do you notice this more with legato passages (that is, when the legato pedal is used)?

I will check this in depth. By now it is more audible when you retrigger the same note after a long sustained one at the same pitch, but I can notice the annoying effect even if last note and its next are of shorter values.

Please provide a link if/when you post to Garritan's forum so we can follow the progress of the thread.

Good point.

[fabiolcati]

Link to audio file:
http://www.box.net/shared/s5kcaogjc5

Link to thread at Garritan Forum:
http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php/73910-Clarinet-issue



All Bb Clarinet patches sound the same. The *Players* are a little worse than the *Solo*.

[Surfwhammy]

Link to audio file:
http://www.box.net/shared/s5kcaogjc5

Link to thread at Garritan Forum:
http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php/73910-Clarinet-issue



All Bb Clarinet patches sound the same. The *Players* are a little worse than the *Solo*.

I listened to the WAVE file, and there is a lot of reverberation on the clarinet, which is easiest to hear when you listen with studio-quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite) . . .

I set the volume level approximately at half-way on the Mac Pro and listened to the WAVE file over and over with iTunes as the player for a while, although I heard the reverberation instantly, since I am quite attuned to reverberation and echo . . .

[NOTE: The first record I purchased as a child was "Great Balls Of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis), and it has truly amazing reverberation and echo, for sure . . . ]

"Great Balls Of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis) -- SUN 78 RPM Record -- YouTube

For reference, I set the Preferences for iTunes so that none of the sound enhancer and other stuff is activated, and I am not using any equalizer stuff, either . . .

There is approximately one second of reverberation after a note ends in the WAVE file you provided, which is enough time to say "one thousand" at a medium speaking speed, which is a handy way to approximate one second . . .

Generally, there are two possibilities for the source of reverberation in Notion 3:

(1) The default Notion 3 Reverb VST plug-in is activated, where it will be set to 50 percent for the "Dry|Wet ratio"'; 50 percent for the "Room"; 0 for "Damping"'; and 25 for "Pre-delay" . . .



[NOTE: I really like the Notion 3 Reverb and consider it to be a truly fabulous reverberation effect at a level on par with the the classic Elvis Presley reverberation and so forth and so on. There are lots of reverberation and echo units, but the Notion 3 Reverb is stellar. However, since it is not available as a separate VST plug-in for use in Digital Performer 7, I remove it before recording Notion 3 generated audio via ReWire in Digital Performer 7, since I prefer to work with dry sounds in Digital Performer 7, because it is easy to add reverberation, echo, and other effects in Digital Performer 7 but it is virtually impossible to remove effects when they are included in the raw soundbites. The Notion 3 Reverb is very melodic, and it is smooth, which is a stellar combination. It might be a variation of the IK Multimedia reverberation, but perhaps not. If Notion Music packaged the Notion 3 Reverb as a standalone VST plug-in, I would buy it for $50 or so with no hesitation, at all . . . ]

(2) Many samples of orchestral instruments are recorded in concert halls, and this maps to having intrinsic or natural reverberation in the raw samples. Sometimes there also a intentionally dry studio samples, but it depends on the library and instrument . . .

I did a quick experiment with the Notion 3 bundled Clarinet playing the same notes using the default Reverb settings, and it sound pretty much the same as the WAVE file you provided, except that the Notion 3 bundled Clarinet is doing vibrato. The important thing is that the reverberation sound virtually identical with respect to decay or release time, which leads me to think that you have the Notion 3 Reverb activated at its default settings . . .

Nevertheless, regardless of the origin of the reverberation in the Clarinet sample, the fact of the matter is that reverberation will change the sonic characteristics of the instrument, including pitch and phase, although pitch changes are more focused on harmonics and overtones, unless the instrument actually is moved as it is played and you are listening to a stereo recording, at which time the so-called "Dopler Effect" can occur, and it definitely alters pitch . . .

As you know, a note typically has three time-based components (attack, sustain, and decay or release), and when reverberation is present, what happens at minimum is that the decay or release of a note is extended and altered by the reverberation, so even though a note in music notation ends at the ending of a measure, the reverberation effect sustains the tail of the note into the next measure or subsequent note(s), and this without doubt will change the way the start of a new note (the "attack" part of a note) sounds, because there actually are two things happening when the next note begins playing:

(1) There is lingering reverberation of the previous note . . .

(2) The "attack" of the new note is starting . . .

Even if you are not using the Notion 3 Reverb, when the raw sample was recorded in a concert hall there will be natural reverberation, and depending on the way the recorded notes are digitized, the natural room reverberation can be significant, which is one of the problems that happens in the digital universe . . .

In the analog universe of magnetic tape machines, each time a recorded track is recorded to another magnetic tape machine, there is a "generational loss", which is significant, but in the digital universe there is no "generational loss" . . .

Instead, what happens is that background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation accumulate with each additional track that is added to a song, and even though the background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation present in each track is small, it can become large when there is enough of it in each individual track . . .

For example, if there is 5 percent background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation in a single track, then it typically is not heard, but when there are 20 such tracks, what happens is that a spurious track of background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation is created (20 tracks multiplied by 5 percent equals 100 percent or 1 track), but there is no such actual track on the mixing board . . .

It is there, but controlling it requires an entirely different set of techniques, none of which are the least bit easy and simple . . .

Partitioning or "slicing" notes with a brickwall limiter can be useful, and there are other techniques, as well, including a special type of brickwall equalizer that makes it possible to exclude specific ranges of frequencies or to control their levels respective to the primary frequencies of the note . . .

For the most part, the goal is two-fold:

(1) You want to hear notes . . .

(2) You do not want to hear background noise, hiss, and with a few caveats natural reverberation, where the primary caveat regarding natural reverberation is that you need to be able to control it, which is a bit of a paradox . . .

For example, if there is a Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal, DISCO, or Pop concert somewhere locally, then drive to the parking lot of the concert hall and find a location outside where you can hear something, which might require walking to the sidewalk outside the concert hall . . .

For Classical music, I think that you probably need to go inside the concert hall at least into the foyer or lobby, since orchestral music tends to be at lower overall volume levels most of the time, but the same background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation stuff happens, although not so much in the booming low frequencies, where instead the booming is more in the midrange . . .

What you will hear will be a vastly booming melange of low frequencies and a lot of blurred midrange and high frequencies, all of which is the residual background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation of whatever is being played by the musicians and sung by the singers, and this background noise, hiss, and natural reverberation is that antithesis of clarity . . .

Yet, I am not suggesting that reverberation, artificial or natural, arbitrarily is bad, because reverberation can be very melodic, and reverberation can make an instrument and singing essentially "come alive", but there are rules, and the entire thing is a bit beyond complex . . .

Toward the goal of explaining and demonstrating what reverberation does, I created three WAVE files of the same notes in your example, where the instrument is the Notion 3 bundled Clarinet . . .

[NOTE: These are the Notion 3 generated WAVE files, and I did not convert them to MP3 with iTunes or do any additional processing, so they are larger files, but so what . . . ]

(1) This is the Notion 3 bundled Clarinet with no added reverberation, so it is the "dry" Clarinet:

Notion 3 Bundled Clarinet -- DRY -- WAVE file (2.8MB, approximately 16 seconds)

(2) This is the Notion 3 bundled Clarinet with Notion 3 Reverb in its default settings, so it is the "wet" Clarinet:

Notion 3 Bundled Clarinet -- WET -- Notion 3 Reverb (Default) -- WAVE file (2.8MB, approximately 16 seconds)

(3) This is the Notion 3 bundled Clarinet with IK Multimedia CSR reverberation in the "Large Organ Church" setting, so it is the "very wet" Clarinet:

Notion 3 Bundled Clarinet -- VERY WET -- IK Multimedia CSR Reverb (Large Organ Church) -- WAVE file (2.8MB, approximately 16 seconds)

SUMMARY

While there might be some nuances in the GPO Clarinet samples, I think that this primarily is a matter of (a) reverberation and (b) the particular characteristics of woodwinds with respect to attack, sustain, and decay or release of notes, where the reality is that the start of a clarinet note will be similar to the start of an electric guitar note picked with a Herco Flex50 guitar pick, although a skilled clarinet player can soften the initial attack, as can a skilled guitar player . . .

Lots of FUN . . .

P. S. As an example of controlling reverberation and echo ruthlessly, this is the "basic rhythm section" for the new Surf Whammys song, "(Baby You Were) Only Dreaming", which will be on the upcoming "Electric Underpants™" album, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: There is very specific reverberation on the snare drum rimshots and the Hofner "Beatle" Bass tracks (far-left and far-right), as well as on the Dubstep-style growling sounds during the interlude, where an especially interesting technique is to add a particular type of echo to one track of a pair of Hofner "Beatle" Bass tracks, which spreads the bass and gives it sustain. All the instruments are IK Multimedia virtual instruments with the exception of one guitar, which is the Notion 3 Bundled Electric Guitar that does highly specialized guitar tab articulations (a personal favorite). This is a headphone mix, and it is mastered with T-RackS 3 Deluxe (IK Multimedia). Everything is done with music notation in Notion 3, but there are 31 "heavy" instruments, so it requires two Notion 3 scores, and the Notion 3 generated audio is recorded in Digital Performer 7 via ReWire as soundbites, where I then add special effects and do the mixing and so forth . . . ]



[NOTE: This is a surreal song, and it is "inspired by" a combination of "Not Myself Tonight" (Christina Aguilera) and "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" (Beatles). I had some lyrics from a silly bit of paraphrasing of the Beatles song, but the direction was not entirely clear until last weekend when I decided to roast a goose, which of course requires a rather large amount of anise, except that the local grocery store did not have any anise, so I used Australian licorice, which eventually led to recalling that there is a spirit that is made using a variety of herbs, including anise, with the result that it has psychedelic properties, which then led to the determining the focus of the lyrics, which specifically is that it is a dream, hallucination, or illusion caused by absinthe, as explained in the first part of the first verse, which follows the "Baby you were only dreaming" chorus . . . ]

[CHORUS]
Baby you were only . . .
Baby you were only . . .
Baby you were only dreaming!

Yeah, baby you were only . . .
Baby you were only . . .
Baby you were only dreaming!

[1ST VERSE]
Absinthe in camera
Sailing the seas
In search of green auras
As much as I please . . .

©2011 RAE Multimedia

"(Baby You Were) Only Dreaming" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (9.2MB, 281-kbps [VBR], approximately 4 minutes and 23 seconds)

Fabulous!

[pcartwright]

With all due respect Surfwhammy, I don't think the issue Fabio is experiencing has anything to do with the type or method of reverb. I use GPO frequently, and (as noted in the Garritan forum) this issue is most likely a difference in tuning between the note attack and note sustain patches being used by Aria. Garritan's libraries tend to do this on purpose (changing the intonation between notes) to avoid the "machine gun effect" found in samplers.

I recommend tweaking the var 1 and var 2 controllers to see if that makes any difference.

[Surfwhammy]

With all due respect Surfwhammy, I don't think the issue Fabio is experiencing has anything to do with the type or method of reverb.

Overall, I tend to be agnostic with respect to the cause of the phenomenon fabiolcati is observing, which basically maps to making an effort to be unbiased, which I think is the best way to investigate something using the perspective of science . . .

I like these types of puzzles, and the only presumption I made was that what fabiolcati was hearing in fact was real, which I think is a reasonable presumption, since at the time there was no way for me to hear it . . .

And there generally are two possibilities to explain the phenomenon:

(1) the sampled sound as it is rendered . . .

(2) effects . . .

In my first reply, I was focused more on (1), since there definitely is more to a sampled sound than just the notes played by an instrument, even when the instrument is recorded in a generally dry studio or even in an anechoic chamber (which is completely and totally dry in the extreme) . . .

For a recording of a real instrument, there always will be some amount of background noise, hiss, and intrinsic or natural reverberation, although at least in theory this will be reduced significantly in an anechoic chamber, but even then the fact of the matter is that the human body generates sounds (breathing, heartbeat, and so forth) as do motions of clothing . . .

And there also is the matter of the recording being stereo, where two microphones are used, although some recordings are made with one microphone (monaural), and as a more specialized technique there also are binaural recordings, where there are two microphones mounted to an object shaped like a human head and having similar sound absorbing and reflecting characteristics, where there is a microphone at the approximate location of each ear, which is quite fascinating . . .



As best as I have been able to determine, all the instrument tracks in Notion 3 are stereo, and for example nearly all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, including Miroslav Philharmonik are stereo or two-channel, although there are some studio recorded orchestral instrument options in Miroslav Philharmonik that are a bit more dry than the concert hall recorded stereo samples . . .

And when two microphones are used, it becomes entirely possible to have phase issues . . .

Nevertheless, once fabiolcati provided a WAVE file and I listened to it, my perspective changed to focusing on reverberation, since there clearly is reverberation in the WAVE file that fabiolcati provided . . .

As a bit of acoustical physics background, the basic rule on this is provided in Ohm's acoustic law, which includes some elaboration provided by Hermann von Helmholtz, as follows:

A musical sound is perceived by the ear as a set of a number of constituent pure harmonic tones.

The quality of a tone depends solely on the number and relative strength of its partial simple tones, and not on their relative phases.

[SOURCE: Ohm's Acoustic Law (wikipedia) ]

Georg Ohm (wikipedia)

Hermann von Helmholtz (wikipedia)

And while Ohm's acoustic law might appear to remove phase from all consideration, it is important to understand that physicists are a bit strange and tend to focus on absolutes, where what actually is explained is the fact that a human being cannot distinguish among, for example, (a) a "Concert A" (440-Hz) pure tone, which by definition is a sine wave, and (b) a "Concert A" (440-Hz) cosine wave, where the only difference in a sine wave and a cosine wave is phase . . .



If phase did not matter, then intuition strongly suggest that there would be no wah-wah pedals, phase shifter pedals, flangers, and so forth and so on, really . . .

Really!

So, the simple perspective is that when one is focused on highly isolated sounds, phase does not matter, but when one focuses on complex sounds, then phase certainly matters . . .

And this the way reverberation becomes relevant, where it is useful to understand that reverberation is a highly specialized type of what generally is called "delay", which also is the case with what colloquially is called "echo" as contrasted to "reverberation", where "echo" tends to be a subset or specialized type of reverberation . . .

[NOTE: Being primarily an electric guitar player, I tend (a) to use "reverberation" or "reverb" to describe what a basically is the sound of a Fender spring-based tank reverb and (b) to use "echo" to describe the sound of an Echoplex magnetic tape delay unit, although in the digital universe these things in some respects are more generalized, even though there continue to be separate "echo" VST plug-ins and "reverb" VST plug-ins . . . ]

SUMMARY

The instant I heard the reverberation in the WAVE sample fabiolcati provided, my focus shifted to reverberation, since without hearing the non-reverberated GPO Clarinet, this is all I can address . . .

Since I already described and explained some of the things that digital reverberation algorithms do with respect to altering the characteristics of what one might call "native" sounds, my general perspective is that doing the experiment where the artificial reverberation is removed is an excellent strategy for determining the cause of the phenomenon fabiolcati is hearing . . .

And it is useful to understand that there is a lot more to reverberation than I have described and explained, some of which I simply presume that everyone in the known universe understands, although this is not such a great presumption to make, since I learned a lot of the information about reverberation during the time I was researching the best strategies for designing and building the sound isolation studio, which for reference is a room within a room within a room where the the innermost room sits atop a fully-floated floor comprising a combination of thick rubber mats made from ground truck tires and several layers of 30 lbs. tar paper, which is what I could afford at the time, even though it is not nearly so stellar as a floor floated on heavy springs with a hydraulic damping system, and it was during this time that I devoted great attention to understanding Helmholtz resonators, Helmholtz resonating panels, various diffusion devices, and so forth and so on, as well as discovering (a) that something so apparently trivial as a steel nail or screw connecting two otherwise isolated walls will act as a conduit for acoustical energy and (b) that low frequency waves can be as long as 16 to over 50 feet, which is the reason that you can hear the booming bass of a Hip Hop song played in a high-power audio system several blocks away, which creates a special sound isolation problem for which a floated floor is somewhat helpful, as is a lot of other stuff, including having the room within a room within a room mounted on piers raised several feet off the ground so that the low frequencies have a path of least resistance that goes underneath the sound isolation studio rather than through it . . .

The fact of the matter is that digital reverberation algorithms create artificial time delays of the original sound, and by definition some of the artificial time delays result in phase changes, and depending on the specific digital reverberation algorithm being used, there also can be artificial pitch changes, filtering of harmonics and overtones, and so forth and so on, all of which certainly affect the overall sound of an instrument, which I think should be obvious by listening to the three WAVE files I provided in my previous post, where at the extreme range of massive reverberation if one were standing at one side of the interior of the Taj Mahal listening to a real clarinet player at the opposite side, then I think the notes played on the clarinet would be vastly blurred to the point of simply being a melodic texture . . .

"Inside The Taj Mahal Vol. II" (Paul Horn) -- YouTube music slideshow

"Inside the Great Pyramid 1976" (Paul Horn) -- YouTube music slideshow

As an example, some friends of mine recently decided to build an indoor swimming pool inside a steel building with concrete floors and glass windows with no curtains, and there is so much reverberation that having a conversation with someone who is three feet away requires shouting and basically is a bit painful, which of course from the perspective of playing electric guitar makes this a virtual candy store of potential for doing a bit of recording, since it is possible to control the level of reverberation by placing microphones and guitar amplifiers at different locations . . .

I use GPO frequently, and (as noted in the Garritan forum) this issue is most likely a difference in tuning between the note attack and note sustain patches being used by Aria. Garritan's libraries tend to do this on purpose (changing the intonation between notes) to avoid the "machine gun effect" found in samplers.

I recommend tweaking the var 1 and var 2 controllers to see if that makes any difference.

As noted, I do not have or use GPO, but this makes intuitive sense, and it fits with the one of the possible explanations for the phenomenon that fabiolcati is hearing . . .

Nevertheless, I would like to hear the GPO Clarinet example without the added reverberation, since hearing it without the added reverberation will provide clues to something that might be important, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

[Surfwhammy]

Link to audio file:
http://www.box.net/shared/s5kcaogjc5

Link to thread at Garritan Forum:
http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php/73910-Clarinet-issue



All Bb Clarinet patches sound the same. The *Players* are a little worse than the *Solo*.

The WAVE file was helpful, but it has reverberation . . .

Can you post a WAVE file of the GPO Clarinet without the added reverberation?

Lots of FUN!