February 2015 - chuck-users - lists.cs.princeton.edu

Re: [chuck-users] Heavy distortion/clipping in Windows (Kassen)
by Perry Cook 13 Mar '15

13 Mar '15

Kas/others, It's even a little stranger than one might think. On Mac OSX, it's really hard to clip at all. For example, this code: SinOsc s => dac; 8.0 => s.gain; second => now; runs and sounds fine. You might need to turn your master system volume down so it doesn't blow out your headphones or speakers, but if you do that, you will hear a pretty pure sine wave. The proper gain for this should be 1.0 (the default), but it works ok up to pretty large numbers, but only on Macs. I haven't tried this in a VM Windoze on Mac, and I'm not sure how the audio is virtualized in this case. BUT This very same code would cause hideous distortion on a Windows/ Linux machine, because those audio subsystems have a hard limit on the amplitude that can be sent into the dacs. Mac seems to have figured out a how to deal with this in a very different (floating point) way. PRC > 2. Re: Heavy distortion/clipping in Windows (Kassen) > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 19:44:05 +0100 > From: Kassen <signal.automatique(a)gmail.com> > To: ChucK Users Mailing List <chuck-users(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu> > Subject: Re: [chuck-users] Heavy distortion/clipping in Windows > Message-ID: > <CAK4G45dtCcjRuEwiVmcKRHnLcNe6S3me5__oqOOzfm20NErSsA(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On 19 February 2015 at 18:59, Perry Cook <prc(a)cs.princeton.edu> wrote: > >> Ack! This is a common problem, and I thought I had caught all of >> the clipping/distortion cases on Windows/Linux with our last >> passes on checking the source code. I'll check it all again and >> put it in our Errata file for future ChucK/Mini releases, and future >> printings of the book. >> > > Perry, now that you mention the OS's I'd like to share a thought. I wanted > to postpone debating OS audio infrastructure because debates on OS features > tends to lead to debates on OS preferences and the next step is likely to > be total war and so I thought I'd try to figure out what was going on on my > own. ;-) > > Am I correct in understanding that you are saying the files could have been > made on OSX with the system audio gain set to -say- 0.5? Then ChucK's > output could reach peaks of -say-1.5 , it's get attunated and be at .75 > when hitting the DAC; perfectly fine. In this case the audio reaching such > amplitudes at ChucK's output might go unnoticed by the file's author. Under > OS's with a audio infrastructure expressed in int's a output of 1.5 at the > ChucK dac would clip at 1 at hitting the OS's audio rating and the final > output (assuming identical system volume) would end up at a 0.5 amplitude > while being heavily clipped. Is that correct? > > Yours, > Kas.

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Any way to call an arbitrary function with some value
by Rich Caloggero 12 Mar '15

12 Mar '15

I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this already – its not a dynamic language... However, I can put a UGen method into a variable, but I cannot apply it: ... SndBuf2 input; input.gain @=> Object f; ... This compiles, but can I apply it to an argument? Am trying to find a way of modifying arbitrary parameters via osc that doesn’t include writing unmaintainable code: ... if (parameterName == “gain”) myUgen.gain (value); ... etc ... Am I missing something...? -- Rich

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Possible bug in chuck 1.3.5.0, beta 7, win32
by Rich Caloggero 25 Feb '15

25 Feb '15

/* Possible bug in chuck 1.3.5.0, beta 7, win32 the following is typical osc out -- see examples/osc/s.ck. The issue is that I want to simply send one packet, not a continuoue stream of data. If I remove the while loop, chuck crashes. If I break out of the while loop (uncomment the break below), chuck crashes. If I use any other block (if statement, or just braces with no leading clause), chuck crashes. Can someone explain this behavior; it makes no sense to me!!! */ "localhost" => string hostname; 9999 => int port; OscOut xmit; xmit.dest( hostname,port); while (1) { xmit.start( "/input/gain" ); xmit.add (2.2); xmit.send(); //break; 1::ms => now; } // while

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chuck --loop not working on windows
by Rich Caloggero 24 Feb '15

24 Feb '15

I’ve written about this before, but the problem persists even with the latest build: 1.3.5.0 (beta 7), win32 I’m running on 64-bit windows; might this be the issue? Using bash syntax here. I’ve run under cmd.exe and under git bash with exactly same results. If I say: $ chuck –loop & then say: chuck + otf_01.ck while in the examples directory, I get: -- chuck: remote operation timed out the shell tells me that the first process exited with code 23 windows does it’'s “unknown error” dialog box thing and offers to close the program. I click “close” or “cancel” ... I’ve used other permutations of “-p” with numberic argument on both invocations and –remote with hostname of 127.0.0.1, added –server (seems to be valid option but not described anywhere), and same result. However, if I start two terminals, cd to examples/osc, and in one say: chuck r.ck #with no trailing “&” so it stays in foreground and in second terminal say: chuck s.ck #separate vm invocation – no “+” here then things work fine – i.e. the two separate VMs communicate via OSC just fine. Any idea what’s going on here? -- Rich

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Re: [chuck-users] Problem building miniAudicle under EasyPeasy Linux
by David 23 Feb '15

23 Feb '15

I decided to ditch EasyPeasy, since nobody seems to be supporting it any more, and I installed a different distro (Peppermint Linux). It has a newer version of qtmake in its repositories, and I was able to build miniAudicle with no problem. You might want to add a note to the build instructions, though, telling people they need at least version 4.8 of qtmake. Thanks for your help. If you ever need someone to help test under Linux, let me know.

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Re: [chuck-users] Heavy distortion/clipping in Windows
by Perry Cook 19 Feb '15

19 Feb '15

Ack! This is a common problem, and I thought I had caught all of the clipping/distortion cases on Windows/Linux with our last passes on checking the source code. I'll check it all again and put it in our Errata file for future ChucK/Mini releases, and future printings of the book. As others have noted, the solution is to scale the output gain of all of the components, but just by the amount necessary to get rid of the clipping. I'm also going to give you a non-state-approved but useable quick solution. I really don't recommend that people get in the habit of doing this, but it's possible to set the gain of the global dac object. 0.4 => dac.gain; is legal, and works. It's also global and persistent, so you only have to do it once in one place and it sticks for all other, and subsequent code that goes through the dac. This is a really quick way to get rid of clipping if you have it. Set it to 0.8 or 0.6 or 0.5 or whatever gets rid of the distortion. Once you've figured that out, I'd recommend going back and scaling the output of all of the contributing components (the different players in the jazz band in this case) by that amount. Then you can set dac gain back to 1.0 where it's supposed to be and delete the line that sets it to anything other than 1.0. You could also delete the line that sets dac gain, then stop/restart the VM. That resets it to 1.0 as well. Another possible solution if you have only one file that's clipping a little is to put a Dyno object just before the dac. It's set up by default to help limit output to try to avoid clipping. But in this case where you have multiple instruments, putting a Dyno on each one wouldn't help, because their aggregate outputs mixed inside the dac would still clip. Hope this helps, and sorry for the confusion. PRC

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Re: [chuck-users] Problem building miniAudicle under EasyPeasy Linux
by David 18 Feb '15

18 Feb '15

I think you may be right. I don't have qt3 installed, but the version of qt4 I have is even older than 4.7. Here's what I have: QMake version 2.01a Using Qt version 4.6.2 in /usr/lib In Synaptic Package Manager, it tells me I have "4:4.6.2-Oubuntu5.6", which is the latest version available in the EasyPeasy repositories, it seems. I might be better off installing a different distro, but EasyPeasy is supposed to be optimized for the ASUS EeePC. Is there some work-around to fix the problem? Thanks. > Do you know what specific version of Qt is being used? This can be checked > with: > $ qmake-qt4 --version > > There is some evidence through googling that it could be a problem with Qt > 4.7-4.8 compatibility. I develop miniAudicle on Qt 4.8 and don't normally > test with 4.7, so I could see that being an issue. > > spencer

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Problem building miniAudicle under EasyPeasy Linux
by David 18 Feb '15

18 Feb '15

Hi! I noticed that you and Kassen replied to my question about building miniAudicle (for some reason, they weren't included in the daily digest). I don't think the problem is the wrong version of qt. I installed all the dependencies (at least the ones that are mentioned in the installation instructions), and I believe I have qt 4 installed correctly. I installed all the packages below: Full list of required packages ------------------------------ These are the packages which, along with each package's subdependencies, are required to build miniAudicle on current Ubuntu systems; on other Linux systems these packages likely exist with the same or similar names. make gcc g++ bison flex libasound2-dev libsndfile1-dev libqt4-dev libqscintilla2-dev libpulse-dev (linux-pulse only) libjack-jackd2-dev (linux-jack only) The only reason I mentioned qt 3 was that I saw some references to differences between qt3 and qt4 when I googled the error message. Doesn't the error message indicate that I have qt4 installed? *qmake-qt4* "RTAUDIO_BACKEND=ALSA" -o makefile.qt-alsa miniAudicle.pro uic: Error in line 51, column 41 : Unexpected attribute alignment uic: Error in line 189, column 41 : Unexpected attribute alignment Isn't 'qmake-qt4' part of qt4? I'll check again when I get home, though. Thanks.

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Heavy distortion/clipping in Windows
by Moisés Gabriel Cachay Tello 18 Feb '15

18 Feb '15

Hello! This might be a long post, so I apologize if it results a bit boring to read. First of all, I want to thank every single person behind ChucK: creators, mantainers and users, the work you guys are doing is invaluable! You all have my respect and admiration. I have posted a couple of answers in this list, since I was part of the Coursera introduction course. Because of (mostry work-related) some things that took most of the little time I had, I (sadly :() left ChucK behind. A couple weeks ago, however, I managed to get the ChucK book and 'regenerate' my interest in the language. I'm facing an odd problem during my journey. Following the examples provided in the book (and also writing my own pieces), sometimes the output sound gets heavily disorted as if the sound levels go far beyond the maximum and there's an extreme clipping sound. So I put a gain behind and set it's level lower of if there's an nRev, I set the mix down, everything resulting in a very quiet sound, in a strong contrast of what I would expect the sound to be. I'm attaching a sample of the distortion produced by playing the Listing 8.9 (Jazz Band) from the book [1]. The code running is unmodified. Set your headphones/speakers low since this can be very uncomfortable. The weirdest part of all this, is that this distortion only occurs when the code is running 'live'. If I use the 'Export' function in miniAudicle, the resulting sound is crystal-clear. I've also used a simple snippet to record the output to a file manually and the same good-sounding result occurs. I tried using another sound interface (as far as I know, the HDMI counts as another audio interface), and an external interface embedded into my Beringher UMA25S MIDI controller with the same results every time. I'm at x64 W7 with a Realtek HD embedded soundcard (it's a mid 2013 laptop). I'm not using any sound-boosting software (I found one that came with my laptop, disabled it and the same result shows). I'm using miniAudicle 1.3.3 (didn't tried the command line version since I guess the results will be the same) with pretty much the default settings: default input/output devices, 44.1KHz sample rate and 128 bytes buffer size (higher latencies doesn't make any difference). Since I don't know how to properly diagnose/solve this problem, I hope some of you can give me some insight to get over this and keep ChucKing :) PS: It seems my email got lost somewhere in time, due to the attachment so I'm replacing it to a direct download link: [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/spa3r6os1hgrb0i/distortion.mp3?dl=0 -- -Moisés

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Re: [chuck-users] chuck-users Digest, Vol 115, Issue 3
by David 17 Feb '15

17 Feb '15

Sorry to take so long to reply, been busy. Anyway, I downloaded the latest Linux versions of the source for Chuck and miniAudicle (1.3.5 and 1.3.3, respectively). I was able to build Chuck, and it seems to be working, but when I tried to build miniAudicle, I got the following error: qmake-qt4 "RTAUDIO_BACKEND=ALSA" -o makefile.qt-alsa miniAudicle.pro uic: Error in line 51, column 41 : Unexpected attribute alignment uic: Error in line 189, column 41 : Unexpected attribute alignment I googled the error message and found some discussions about differences between qt3 and qt4. Could that be the problem? I followed the instructions regarding dependencies, but maybe the instructions are out-of-date? Thanks. On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 12:00 PM, <chuck-users-request(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu> wrote: > Send chuck-users mailing list submissions to > chuck-users(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/chuck-users > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > chuck-users-request(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > chuck-users-owner(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of chuck-users digest..." > > Today's Topics: > > 1. miniAudicle mailing list? (David) > 2. Re: miniAudicle mailing list? (Spencer Salazar) > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: David <dfkettle(a)gmail.com> > To: chuck-users(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu > Cc: > Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2015 12:33:58 -0500 > Subject: [chuck-users] miniAudicle mailing list? > Hi! > > Has the miniAudicle mailing list been renamed, or merged with this > one? When I click on the link on the Community page > (http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/community/), I get a message "No such > list audicle". > > I'm trying to build miniAudicle for an ASUS EeePC running EasyPeasy, > but I'm getting some errors. I can post them here if the miniAudicle > mailing list is no longer in existence. > > Thanks. > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Spencer Salazar <spencer(a)ccrma.stanford.edu> > To: ChucK Users Mailing List <chuck-users(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu> > Cc: > Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2015 13:12:01 -0800 > Subject: Re: [chuck-users] miniAudicle mailing list? > Hi David, > > I actually don't know what happened to the miniAudicle list, but I would recommend posting any issues with miniAudicle or other chuck-related software here. > > spencer > > > On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 9:33 AM, David <dfkettle(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Hi! >> >> Has the miniAudicle mailing list been renamed, or merged with this >> one? When I click on the link on the Community page >> (http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/community/), I get a message "No such >> list audicle". >> >> I'm trying to build miniAudicle for an ASUS EeePC running EasyPeasy, >> but I'm getting some errors. I can post them here if the miniAudicle >> mailing list is no longer in existence. >> >> Thanks. >> _______________________________________________ >> chuck-users mailing list >> chuck-users(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu >> https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/chuck-users >> >> > > > > -- > Spencer Salazar > Doctoral Candidate > Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics > Stanford University > > spencer(a)ccrma.stanford.edu > +1 831.277.4654 > https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~spencer/ > > > _______________________________________________ > chuck-users mailing list > chuck-users(a)lists.cs.princeton.edu > https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/chuck-users >

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