Re: [linux-audio-dev] Simple Jack mixing problem

On Friday 05 January 2007 01:44, florentberthaut@email-addr-hidden-log.org wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm working on a sampler and i have a really silly problem.
>
> I simply want to mix sounds in a stereo buffer within the
> jack "process" function.
> So for each frame i sum the samples from each sound but then the
> values go above 1 and i get clipping.
> So my first thought was to divide by the number of samples playing,
> but it ends up with a decrease in volume.
> I tried to limit the values between -1 and 1 but it 's also
> clipping -> distortion.

Well, that's what JACK is doing anyway - or there would be wrapping in
the float -> int conversion, which sounds a lot worse than clipping.
It's just not possible to represent larger amplitudes than [-1, 1] in
the integer domain (that is, [-32768, 32767] or whatever, depending
on resolution), which is what DACs deal with.

> I looked into some sources and it seems i would actually just have
> to sum the samples.

Yep, that's all there is to it, really - and it's the user's
responsibility to keep volumes low enough to avoid driving the output
into clipping.

This is true on hardware synths and samplers too. The only reason some
of them appears not to have this problem is that they use various
tricks to hide it.

For example, the old Roland JV-1080 had 18 bit DACs, where the two
extra bits were pretty much used for extra headroom above
the "normal" max amplitude of a single voice. Even so, it was pretty
easy to drive it into clipping by using resonant filters and/or lots
of loud voices.

I wouldn't be surprised if some synths and samplers use 20 och 24 bit
DACs for even more headroom, waveshaping to make the last 12 dB or so
non-linear (soft saturation, sort of), dynamic output gain control
and stuff like that.

Now, if you're dealing in digital, extra DAC bits and dynamic output
gain control is out, obviously. (Goes for plugins and JACK clients as
well as hardware devices with digital outputs.) So, either you set
your sampler's 0 dB level at -12 dB or something (allows mixing four
maximized samples at maximum volume without clipping), or you leave
that to the user.

If you really want to make the impression sqeezing in more than
there's room for, you'll have to add some dynamics processing. There
is of course no way of doing this without some sort of distortion,
but even a simple waveshaper to "flatten out" peaks above 12 dB below
clipping sounds a great deal better than hard clipping.

However, I'd rather see that kind of stuff left to the user. Those of
us who use 20+ bit sound cards would rather have it all linear and
undistorted right into the amplifier. There is always the option of
inserting some serious multiband compressor last thing in the JACK
chain. Might actually be a good idea anyway, if you like playing loud
and don't want to ruin your ears if some synth or effect freaks out.

//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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Received on Fri Jan 5 12:15:02 2007