audio -- some MIDI / Quicktime resources in Revolution

MisterX b.xavier at internet.lu
Tue Mar 1 11:18:23 EST 2005 

MP3 looks like, eh, sounds like your best choice. 

But not to be short on words, here's the story on it...

Unless the spoken text in WAV form is not too big to fit in your
distribution media go with WAV. Much easier... Can Macs play wav without QT
though?

Wavs have the advantage of playing everywhere (presumedly in RunRev) without
QT being installed. But it does take more space (X10) than mp3s - but that
depends on the sound quality you need too (more details below). WAVs are
recommended for samples in music making - mp3s have more quality loss and
take more processing... But mp3s can have better quality for less space -
better for a sample library which is usually 100's of GBs...

MP3 bitrates from 96 and up to 192kbps should be fine for voice (except
lyric voices like opera or bel canto... those would require 192-320 or
more...). 

22Khz should be fine for voice with even "mono-encoded stereo" if possible
(to be tested if Revsupported - test everything!). But 11KHz is also half
the file size and can also work fine as far as quality requirements -
telephones give you 5.5KHz and it's not too shabby. 

You do not need 24 bit encoding either (except for Lyric...), stick to 8
(1/3rd the size) or 16 (usually the default - 2/3rd the size of a 24 bit
file size). 8 bit, 5.5KHz, 96bps would be lots lots smaller than 48 KHz, 32
bit 96KHz stereo, but it would be ugly to hear... A good compromize is
22KHz/16bit/128bps

Just for the trivia:
KHz is the number of samples per 60th of a second (a hertz)X1000. 

KHz to quality translation is this: Phone: 5.5, LP: 11-22 (no DACs - Digital
to Audio Converters), CD or DVD: 44KHz, DAT or Record to disk=48-96KHz.
Crystal amplifiers= infinite quality (at the same KHz) ;)

Lowering KHz is ok to save space, but dont go up with lowered quality sound
file - is not going to improve the quality - if anything it will sound lots
worse - it's not hard to manipulate sound 

MP3 Variable bit rate encoding should be of great use here as well... Make
sure you use it - up to 50% gains on some sounds - more processing intensive
decoding though...

MP3s are compatible everywhere - and mp4 may not be supported by older QT
clients. Forget AIFF, BPM, AU, etc... Antiquated and usually incompatible
somewhere down the food chain...

WAVs can be used on a system that doesnt have QuickTime... That's why I
mentioned it. Also there's a small incompatibility for some wavs with low
bit rate encoding but the bugzilla could be fixed soon. Just watch it when
recording the voice files to the final format - make sure it's playable in
RunRev before commiting to a format. 

A superb sound cutting (for rapping) software is built-in FruityLoops
(flstudio.com, PC only (build with Delphi!) 32bit 96KHz sound
editing/slicing/tracking/sampling/live perf/recording studio included - eh,
I missed a couple features surely - yes, mp3 or wav easy exports). They have
a standalone tool called BeatSlicer (but no longuer available ;() which is
now built in 5.0. It allows you to assign any midi keyboard key to part of
the "auto-cutted" speech - and it cuts to the beat! You can change the beat
slicing anyway you want it too ;) 

This could be another way of layering the text for your fields - But I guess
you're not doing a rap history stack ;) Just idea sprouting... (Watch my
next mail about external request). 

Nonetheless, I mentioned Fruity because, it's cheap, made in belgium (best
possible quality built in our minds [usually]), it could help you do all
sorts of sound file arrangments (like Premiere for video but much more
possibilities with it - time squeezing without pitch shifts is now in FL5.0
- just that is great for fitting something in a short or longuer time frame
- for example.) There's also a built in wav editor... And even a bitmap to
sound generator if you wanted to know what your face sounds like ;) You can
also put in sound in one channel so beeps sound in the other, have fade-ins,
mixes, background music, etc... It also has a cool GUI and IDE for making
your own sound control panels! So it's the definite cousin of RunRev for
music production or sound development and production! 

Alas it only runs on PCs and no scripting it AFAIK...

But it has excellent speech generation from simple text files and vocoder
possibilities!!!

More wacky audio info
http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/papers/uses-math/music/

PsychoAcoustics is interesting...
The higher the KHz, the lower the sound will be to your hears...
Remember that! 

Converting a sound from 22KHz to 11KHz usually makes it sound twice
as slow! (change the pitch one octave up to fix)

Made with fruityLoops by tutti yours fruity

KountFuMaster - Rev game samples - More sound effects to come (still waiting
for a second comment from anyone - maybe I just should scrap it and no one
has the balls to tell me ;)

http://www.monsieurx.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=73 

- MP3s in beta testing - made purely with Fruityloops - takes a while to get
used to it - I admit Im not the conventional music author - definitely not a
musician either (yet)

http://www.monsieurx.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=4

sorry for the extra length bla bla bla

Cheerios
Xavier
--
http://monsieurx.com - me RevOila!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com 
> [mailto:use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf Of 
> Mark Swindell
> Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 16:00
> To: How to use Revolution
> Subject: Re: audio -- some MIDI / Quicktime resources in Revolution
> 
> Xavier,
> 
> Here's a set of wonderings I posted a couple of days ago directed to 
> Dan Shafer.   My current specific project involves a narrated eBook 
> where text hiliting (line level) would essentially follow the 
> recorded voice.  There would be multiple fields on any given 
> card that would require real audio to be read in support of them.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark
> 
> > Questions that I have would involve:
> >
> > Audio formats:
> > What's the best for working with Rev under different 
> circumstances?  
> > MP3, MP4, AIFF (huge files), M4B, etc.   What are the trade offs in 
> > terms of fidelity, file size, ease of manipulation, compatibility.
> >
> > Benefits/drawbacks of the different formats:
> > X-platform issues, standards that can succeed across them?  
> Example: 
> > Books on tape use the m4b format which apparently includes 
> striping of 
> > some sort which allows a user to resume listening at a 
> place he left 
> > off.  It may not to be compatible with Rev; at least when I 
> tried to 
> > import such a file into a stack it was howlie garbage.
> >
> > Audio/text synchronization:
> > How can I synchronize a longer audio file with real-time 
> text hiliting 
> > features?  Example: I want to have the narration/reading (real 
> > recorded voice, not text-to-speech) of a book playing while 
> > corresponding text is hilited on screen.  Not word by word, 
> > necessarily, but at least paragraph by paragraph. How might 
> the audio 
> > drive the hilite feature in a text field (and vice versa)?  
> Can audio 
> > files somehow be tagged so as to trigger corresponding text events, 
> > call handlers that would import new text, scroll fields, etc.  Or 
> > would this have to occur in reverse.  It would be nice if 
> audio could 
> > have markers that would be linked to text lines and trigger 
> handlers.
> > But that may be fanstasy.
> >
> > Playback of multiple streams:  Can more than one audio 
> event play back 
> > at once?  Music synched with voiceover located in different files?
> >
> > Audio File Storage/retrieval/loading:
> > How would one anticipate and pre-load audio audio files so 
> that there 
> > is seamless playback from file to file?  Where are the 
> files kept, and 
> > how can they be queued so that the user hears no gaps or 
> clicks, etc.?
> >
> > Memory requirements:
> > How much memory needs to be allocated to achieve a seamless 
> > integration of on screen visuals and supplemental audio?  How would 
> > this happen?
> >
> > These are just some ideas that pop up off the top of my 
> head.  The m4b 
> > format seems like it might have great benefits if Rev knew 
> how to read 
> > the files and somehow access the markers via script.
> >
> > All this said, I am fully aware of  being 99% ignorant of 
> any of this, 
> > and that's why I need help and education.
> 
> 
> On Mar 1, 2005, at 6:20 AM, xbury.cs at clearstream.com wrote:
> 
> 
> > Mark,
> >
> > Could you be more specifc?
> >
> > recorded audio knowledge (in FruityLoop talk) means anything!
> >
> > Purpose? Usage? Requirements?
> > Space or bandwidth limits, user audio level...
> >
> > Just wondering what you want to hear (pun intended!)
> >
> > Xavier
> >
> > On 01.03.2005 14:48:31 use-revolution-bounces wrote:
> >> Eric,
> >> Do you know of any resources dealing with recorded audio 
> implemention 
> >> (not midi)?  Midi could provide a great solution for 
> certain stacks, 
> >> but I'm in need of some recorded audio knowledge.
> >> Thanks,
> >> Mark
> >>
> >> On Feb 28, 2005, at 10:30 PM, Erik Hansen wrote:
> >>
> >>> --- Dan Shafer <revdan at danshafer.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I've been doing a bit with sound lately and there are a 
> couple of 
> >>>> serious experts on this list. Maybe we can put something 
> together.
> >>>
> >>> MIDI in Revolution
> >>>
> >>> WINDOWS:
> >>>
> >>> http://flexiblelearning.com/xtalk.htm -- mci 
> >>> http://www.hyperactivesw.com/shakobox.html
> >>>
> >>> MAC:
> >>>
> >>> http://www.hyperactivesw.com/shakobox.html>
> >>> http://homepage.mac.com/udi/
> >>> Kurt Kaufman's SMF stack bundled with RunRev
> >>>
> >>> Erik Hansen
> 
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
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>

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