High Pitched Buzzing Sound?
I am quite new to the world of midi and software instruments/samples. Indeed, until recently I was more or less exclusively a guitar player. But, the advent of instruments such as The Trumpet and a few others convinced me to purchase a midi keyboard, expression pedal, and a handful of excellent programs. At any rate, the point is that I am new to this and I hope you all will forgive me if my questions/concerns come across as a bit silly. Okay, with that caveat in place, let me get on to my questions/concerns.
So, I am quite impressed with The Trumpet so far -- it is an amazingly expressive instrument. That being said, I find that the tone of the trumpet quickly starts to gain a rather loud and high pitched, artificial buzzing sound as I press down on the expression pedal and advance towards fff playing. I am just wondering if this is normal.
If this is normal, It seems to me that the best tones occupy a relatively limited and small spectrum of The Trumpet's range. Is there a way to adjust the expression pedal settings so as to slow down the progression from ppp to fff? Right now, when I push down a relatively small amount, the tone rapidly goes into the buzzing loud sound. Perhaps I am not yet coordinated enough to use the pedal properly and in small doses.
At any rate, sorry if these are all silly questions/comments.
So, I am quite impressed with The Trumpet so far -- it is an amazingly expressive instrument. That being said, I find that the tone of the trumpet quickly starts to gain a rather loud and high pitched, artificial buzzing sound as I press down on the expression pedal and advance towards fff playing. I am just wondering if this is normal.
If this is normal, It seems to me that the best tones occupy a relatively limited and small spectrum of The Trumpet's range. Is there a way to adjust the expression pedal settings so as to slow down the progression from ppp to fff? Right now, when I push down a relatively small amount, the tone rapidly goes into the buzzing loud sound. Perhaps I am not yet coordinated enough to use the pedal properly and in small doses.
At any rate, sorry if these are all silly questions/comments.
Comments
What you're reporting is quite puzzling. My first hypothesis points to some kind of saturation. Are you using independent CC7 volume control?
Anyway, let's do the following: Please reply on the forum, adding an attachment with a simple crescendo (CC11 from 0 to 127) as a .wav file (not mp3). Please notice that this .wav file should be compressed by zip or rar to be accepted as an attachment.
Best,
Giorgio
So, two problems: buzzing tone (which is specific to The Trumpet) and incorrect play back (which is not).
Any suggestions? I can use all the help you can give.
(PS --- I note that nothing is peaking.)
Best,
Giorgio
i can´t help you with the buzz as i think this is a result of mic distortion at recording time, easy to handle (less c11 values) and at least for me a desireable effect which i am missing in a different brass vsti at lower registers.
"Unfortunately" you´ll have to have to keep care by yourself that a long note, and then maybe the buzz, don´t sound too sterile by varying c11 randomly in a narrow range.
Concerning your other problem... i maybe have experienced a related problem using Cubase4. Either C4 or the Kontakt player seem to be overstrained with too many overlapping controller events. For example, if i draw a constant c11 line with value=100, c4 would sometimes set a loooot of c11 events with value 100 over the desired time (this depends on the c11 material which has been on place before...however).
So, i have a c11 sequence which repeats value 100 every few milliseconds and a note starting to play. This trumpet would only sometimes sound with the desired clean attack, but mostly with some kind of distorted attack resulting in frog-like "cuaa cuaa cuaa" attacks.
I found out that using the "Delete double notes" function which apparently also deletes overlapping c11 events solves the problem.
I would suggest you try to set the desired c11 start value slightly before the note event, and you delete all overlapping c11 events... maybe this would sove your problem (no guarantee ;-)
Regards
Rudi
thank you for posting your impressions. In this post I would like to refer to your "buzz" problem. I listened to the examples and even asked Giorgio to analyse them with some advanced tools. I must say we do not hear or detect any problems at all...
I think we need a closer definition of what you call a "buzz". But first we must exclude any side effect of your monitoring system or D/A converters. If you are sure they are perfect, there might be another reason for your impression. Please note:
- I´d like to emphasize that it´s not a "distortion" at all. It would be really a bad job to accept any type of distortion in the recording chain. Apart from that - todays high quality microphones can capture 150 dB without any problems (!) The trumpet can produce maybe 120... No, no distortion here. And a vast majority of our customers is very happy with the sound.
- The high frequency content at the highest dynamic range of a trumpet is completely normal, even very desirable. We didn´t use distant microphone placement, typical for classical recording. We used rather close micing, which is necessary to get a bright, "punchy" sound, necessary for the most applications - and still applicable for orchestral sound, as our tests have shown.
- Your "buzzy" impression can be explained like this: imagine you are listening to a real trumpet playing fff and your ear is just 1,5 meter away from the bell. The sound pressure will be so high that your hearing will activate some protecting mechanisms and reduce the perceived high frequency content, i.e. you will hear somehow "muffled" sound, without any "buzz". But having a virtual trumpet in your hand, you can listen to the full fff at much lower level - something what is impossible in the reality: there is no trumpet player who can play fff softly... :-). So - what you hear is a kind of "psychoacoustical conflict": you hear a very loud sound at low level, what´s impossible in the real situation. If you have a good monitoring, listen to that fff sound at, say, 115 dB, as if it were in a studio - and you will probably agree, that the sound is great... :-)
- however - please don´t do it many seconds long; you have to avoid any (unnatural) static sound; consider, that this fff sound is produced by the real instrument only as a short maximum - like an accent, short note, or the climax of a crescendo. It never lasts long as a static note.
- On a different note, I suspect that your pedal might be of a wrong type. Could it be that you bought a pedal with a logarithmic response? These pedals are used as volume pedals inserted in the audio chain (for example for electric guitars). But they are useless as a midi controller. You must be sure that a linear potentiometer is inside, leading to a smooth CC11 change along it´s whole excursion.
- please consider that the vast dynamic range of a trumpet is spread across a relatively short pedal excursion. Some exercise is necessary...
- A very obvious problem is also evident in your example: a kind of "flutter" during the crescendo. This corresponds to a stepwise increase of the dynamics, and this is plainly wrong... Please have a look at my attachment - it´s approximately the same crescendo, done quickly in the Cubase. As you can hear, it sounds much smoother, no steps here. How did you perform/program your crescendo?
Best
Peter
Thank you for analyzing my problem. I understand what you are saying about the trumpet's tone and also understand that it is not distortion that I am hearing.
I am using a Roland EV-5 expression pedal, which, as far as I know, is the correct kind of pedal to use. I have this pedal hooked up to an M-Audio Keystation 88 Pro. It is hooked up to the volume input and I have assigned that input to CC11.
I recorded the sample I posted using this set up. I played the crescendo live just pushing down on the pedal. There shouldn't be any sort of flutter. It seems that Logic/Kontakt is either not recording or not playing back the midi information correctly. I have no idea why this would be.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let me know.
yes, your pedal should be the right one - I´m using the same. I wonder, whether the knob placed aside it may help (my setting is at "0"). This pedal behaves completely linearly on my system. However, the example you´ve sent shows some problems within your host application, since a smooth movement performed with the pedal must create a smooth CC11 curve - thus a smooth crescendo.
I wonder how will it sound if you draw a straight CC11 line in your sequencer.
Best
Peter