Re: [Traverso-devel] Traverso audio backend & custom audio app

[Remon]

Hi,

> well, after playing around with traverso a bit, i must say that the
> interface
> is quite fun to use. i really like it, the whole application feels
> snappy.

Good, I like it too! :-)
The 'snappy' feeling is what I mean with 'lightweight'. .... 

> > I see.
> > Had some discussion some time ago about time line, and how
> > important it was.
> > From an application point of view, it's just frames (samples, but
> > everyone
> > calls it frames).
>
> yeah. but in other audio applications, the samples that are imported
> are tempo-analyzed
> and automatically stretched to the main-tempo. this comes especially
> handy when you
> have tempo changes within one song. tempo changes is something that
> should not be forgotten
> but there is a difficulty in visualizing this. usually there is a
> visible grid in the background
> of the tracks indicating bars or 1/4 bars etc. those usually have to
> be stretched or compressed.

The (snappable) Grid is on the TODO list...

> in ableton live, tempo changes are indicated by this and an envelope
> over the master channel
> which can be edited in realtime. so as soon as you dont work with raw
> sample-frames anymore but
> use tempo and beat measures, you are forced to implement a
> comprehensive, flexible visualization
> as well as general clip-tempo-annotation and interpolation to support
> the musical timing.

Hmm, that sounds a little difficult (to implement lol)
On the other hand, the Grid is something we 'need' anyway, making it 
stretchable, although not needed by me, it can't harm to look at it from your 
point of view.


> > The way how you display it to the user doesn't matter for the
> > application, so
> > it might be very easy to add other timeline formats, specially if it's
> > something that is used a lot!
> > Is it used commonly in audio editors?
>
> yes, of course.

Stupid question lol
What I actually wanted to know, as you indicated, you want things to be a bit 
more extreem then the avarage audio editing person.
So the question was more geared towards that, as in, does Traverso from 
a 'normal' editing program point of view 'need' it, or at least to a certain 
degree, so we can see where things overlap, what can be implemented right 
away in Traverso that suits 'our' needs, and how can it be done that it fits 
_all_ your needs as well.


> > In other words, you apply effects directly to your samples, and make
> > the 'effect' visible?
> > That would be lovely, though hard to accomplish (too much cpu power
> > needed) on
> > larger samples hehe.
>
> well it doesn't have to be visible in a way that you see for example
> the timing
> of a reverb added to an audio-clip. i think rendering the clip with
> applied f/x and adding it to the trackview is enough. having both
> time and frequency domain for samples visualized is enough.
> and as i said, most audio calculations dont have to be realtime.

Although it might not be 100% related, we just had (have?) some brainstorming 
on how to visualize effects (they are implemented as a Plugin), select, 
modify them, with the Traverso interface in mind [1]


> > I remember having written that somewhere long time ago. Where did
> > you read
> > that exactly?
>
> maybe that was an implication from my side ;)

:-)

> i dont think the traverso interface is particularily easy for
> beginners but i think it is

True, the plan is to make the contextual menus more versatile (hope thats the 
correct word for it), as well as adding an 'informational view', which shows 
all kinds of information of for example the currently loaded Song, playhead 
position, informational messages depending on user input, and so on.
The initial learning curve might still be a bit more steep, but as soon as you 
get the idea, it's simpel to use :-)

> astounishingly (?) powerful compared to the interfaces i used. i
> really like it.

astonishingly lol

Yeah, it's very powerfull!

>
> > In respect to not depending on external lib's, that's somewhat
> > true. But if
> > it's very usefull, why not ?
> > Traverso does depend now on slv2, fftw3, and as a result of those
> > to rasqal
> > libs and many more.
> > What I try to avoid is using lib's which functionality is allready
> > in Qt 4 for
> > example, or with minor effort it can be integrated into Traverso.
>
> well, clam is a _huge_ dependency, especially regarding the dependencies
> clam has itself. but maybe this can be solved by moving the
> dependency to
> traverso-plugins or something comparable.
>
> http://mtg.upf.edu/clam/

Seems like a huge dependency indeed, but it shouldn't be to hard to make that 
something like you suggest, a plugin or something similar.

> > It would be great if Traverso get more developers, and even more,
> > not yet
> > another sound editor that's just doing things slightly different,
> > but on
> > the 'core level' they are the same ;-)
>
> i agree, there are currently at least 6 sequencers for linux that are
> being actively
> developed which all do to a certain degree the same. the worst is
> that they all
> try to emulate the old skewl tape-deck style audio-editing from the 50s.

LOL, we love the 50's, no? (I've no idea about the 50's actually)

Remon

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/traverso-devel/2007-01/msg00014.html