by Kris Van Hout -

Impulse #6 – Why we all need subtitles now?

Nowadays I watch almost everything with subtitles but why is that? I can understand conversations when I talk to people when there are no subtitles.

Microphones
All sound used to be recorded at one track, that means that actors had to speak in a curtain angle so the mic could pick up their lines otherwise you couldn’t hear a thing.
But Microphones got better and they don’t impede performance as much anymore. They became smaller, better and even wireless. And we use more of them to be use the performances are getting captured. That would imply that everything is audible?

Editing
In earlier movie productions when lines were not able to hear on the recording actors had to come back and rerecord their lines (ADR). That is still be done today but it also costs a lot of money. So, editors nowadays need to try to make the sound that is recorded sound better. the microphone pickup almost every sound.

But even after the sound editing it is still hard sometimes to understand what the actors are saying.  You can’t just turn up the dialogue otherwise it will be in contrast with the Dynamic Range: The range between your quietest sound and you loudest sound. As the dialogue is as loud as an explosion that follows that dialogue, the explosion is not going to feel as big. Also turning up the dialogue can cause distortion.

What also causes the problem of not hearing the dialogue on your phone, laptop or Tv is that the movies we are watching are edited for big surround sound like Dolby Atmos. And all those 128 tracks have to come down to one or two tracks to match our device we are watching it from. (downmixing)

When you combine not great speakers, mumble performances, dynamic range with bombastic sound over dialogue and a flattened mix. It is not a surprise that we have trouble understanding what is going on.

Solutions:
1. Buy better speakers
2. Worry a bit less about picking up every single word that gets said
3. Keep the subtitles on

Vox. (2023a, Januar 20). Why we all need subtitles now [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8

by edwin.lang -

Impulse #8 – Granular Synthesis

For this blog post I took a tutorial class about Max MSP integrated MC objects and their capabilities for programming granular synthesis. The tutorial series consists of 5 parts and was held by Federico Foderaro who has the YouTube channel Amazing Max Stuff.

Granular Synthesis
Granular synthesis is based on the same principle as sampling, however with samples split into many pieces of around 1 – 100 ms of duration.

First, he gave an introduction to MC objects which allows us to send multiple channels of audio in a single patch cord. So, in general we have the possibility to operate on many channels of audio at the same time while preserving a rather simple patch environment.

First we build the core structure of our audio playback system. Therefore, we need an audio file which is being loaded into a buffer Object and get information about playback time with the info Object.

The following MC objects in Max MSP can process multiple channels in one object:

  • mc.traget – takes on the left side a message which is passed on to the mc.line object and on the right side a channel number to which the message is send.
  • mc.line – counts from 0 to 1 in a given time.
  • mc.play – reference to the loaded buffer and plays the audio file at the triggered channel number.
  • mc.stereo – converts the audio signal into a stereo signal.
  • mc.dac – sends the signal inputs to the audio hardware.

Now we want to be able to play multiple smaller pieces of the audio file at different positions and with different pitch.

For this we will create a random number between 0.001 and 1.000 and multiply it with the audio file length. Then we define the end of our playback by adding for example 50ms to the start and play the file with the same speed of 50ms.

To play multiple samples at the same time we now replace the toggle with a metro Object that sends a bang every 10 ms. To avoid a clicking produced when a file has not finished playing and gets replayed we first duplicate MC target and MC line and then apply an envelop to every sound being played which gets later multiply with the corresponding channel of the audio playback.

Later we can add a parameter to adjust the playback start position with a slider and randomize it with a knob. The pitch variations will be also realized with random number that can be controlled with a second knob and controls the playback speed per channel.

Granular synthesis is characterized by sample lengths of 1 – 100ms, however I found out that for my recording of cracking ice this duration is too small. I still want some sound characteristics of the original file while being able to play multiple versions with different pitch to produce a controllable intensity of cracking ice. Therefore, I adapted the parameters and added a second slider to be able to define a custom playback length that gives the opportunity to incudes important parts of the sample.

The final patch looks like this: