Professional A/B Crossfader Mixing in Ardour with Mixxx

UPDATE May 6th 2013: Got talking to a guy on the #ardour freenode channel. Went back there a couple of hours later and this guy had *written a plugin for me* ! Here: https://github.com/x42/xfade.lv2 … Turns out he is a lecturer at the University of Paris in Media-Art – http://gareus.org/ – He contributes to many projects and co-organises the Linux Audio Conference. He really seems to have “got” what I’m innovating here, or at least that I’m doing something practical and worthwhile :) What a guy ! So, on with the set up !

Stereo DJ X-fade LV2 plugin in Ardour3

After finding out that my cheap turntables suffer from a massive amount of wow and flutter I have had to abandon mixing vinyl entirely until I get a pair of “Super OEM” DJ turntables. These are the Hanpin based Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) turntables that many manufacturers have taken up for their own products. Like this DJ Tech SL-1300MK6 Turntable …

 

Ain’t she beautiful ?

But until then I decided to go entirely over to digital mixing. I want to be able to play as live as possible but also be able to record in Ardour as much of the mix as I can. This is essentially an identical process to recording an acoustic session in a studio to a multi-track recording. However here we are recording the tracks, with crossfades that can be edited later, as well as all the samples and effects. I became frustrated with Mixxx’s implementation of mixing using Jack. This is still in development. For example only a master output contains cross-faded mixes. The crossfader does not change the volume of the separate Jack outputs for each deck, as it probably should do if you think about it. I started examining Jack Audio Connection Kit and Ardour. The entire point of Jack is to solve these kind of studio setup problems. Then I had a HUGE revelation ! Too many people seem to think of Ardour and even Jack Audio Connection Kit as a kind of glorified sound card output routing mechanism. They could probably be forgiven for this if they have not made practical use of Jack. This is not something that can be explained unless you have really worked with Linux audio. The entire system is one HUGE mixer and the Linux audio world has made huge breakthroughs in this area that are really revolutionary when it comes to digital audio mixing and studio work.

Ardour is really no different to a DJ mixer. There seems to be a number of myths and misconceptions that separate “DJ Mixing” from “Studio Mixing” like Ardour. They are really based on all the same principles. For example look at this Pioneer DJM-850 mixer …

 

Notice the A/Thru/B buttons. These determine which channels the Crossfader controls. A/B mixing should be familiar to any Studio Engineer and is the same concept that is used in vision mixing. What we can’t see is the “Bus” that’s under the front panel that routes the audio depending on the A/B settings. I managed to get an initial setup of this working in Ardour.

Linux Magazine called Ardour a “Super Mixer” in its June 2013 issue, so I’ll take up this term. Here is Mixxx doing its thing. However I am using Ardour to actually do the crossfading …

The Super Crossfader

How is this achieved ? Well Ardour is using a Crossfader plugin. To get this working I needed to setup a Bus much like it is in the Pioneer mixer above …

QJackCtl Connections

Notice how the Mixxx decks are routed into Ardour. Then they are routed into a 4 channel (2 x stereo channels) Bus. Here a LADSPA Crossfader plugin cross fades between these two sets of channels. The result goes straight to master out. Notice the monitor channel as well. This can be used to do what DJ’s usually do with headphones when they are mixing :) Here is the main Ardour window …

Ardour Tracks

Here is the Ardour Mixer. Notice the 4 channels on the bus …

Ardour Mixer

Here is the Crossfader plugin in action (animated GIF). Keep an eye on the channels in the bus as they switch from hard left (Mixx deck 1 is audible) to centered (both decks mixed together) and hard right (only Mixx deck 2 is audible). Of course the slider can be placed anywhere on its path just a like a normal DJ crossfader :)

Ardour Super DJ Mixer

SEE THE ANIMATED GIF HERE

This is a major breakthrough for my DJ mixing as this means much better control over multi-channel mixing. Obviously we can pull in more than just the two channels from Mixxx here ! Plus, just as in a traditional studio, the mix can be recorded for later editing and fine adjustment, including the cross fades !

The next stage is to setup a quick way of switching the various channels into the crossfader plugin, just as is done with the Pioneer mixer A/B buttons (see above). The crossfader can also be controlled with MIDI and OSC.

But there is one small problem here. The plugin I have used is very simple and does not have any way of controlling the cross fader curve. There is noticeable fluctuation of volume as the channels are mixed together. So I’m gonna find a better plugin or contact the plugin author.

Bottom line here: Jack Audio Connection kit and Ardour are well worth learning as they open up HUGE possibilities to the 21st century DJ. Mixxx is a great way to start with digital DJ’ing, however it’s worth understanding that Jack and Ardour are not just for traditional studio or music composing and recording work, although they do that very well. Combinations of Mixxx, Jack and Ardour can create what is a Super Mixer. We are now entering the age of the Linux audio SUPER MIXER !!! Ma ha ha !

TED Furore Highlights Necessity of Freedom in Scientific Research

Graham Hancock posts about TED developments

An article about this in The Independent

Letter from Deepak Chopra and other eminent Scientists (The University of Arizona, Harvard University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, ad more)

Excerpt from the TEDx letter showing why all this is important

Proper unpolluted nutrition and non-abusive natural health are desperately needed as well as clean technologies based on Cold Fusion like the e-CAT. Its fine if you are “in the know” but what about so many people who naturally take recommendations on trust from authorities ? Access for them to legitimate science that can cure diseases – without extra health damage – and to clean energy technologies is (was?) being blocked by these self-appointed gate keepers of “scientific truth”. Now we have reached this turning point lets peacefully, with respect, and without anger (but anger at being damaged by faulty health technologies is understandable) take this forward and build a world – a Star Trek like world – where Science can be practised in the light of true human potential, a marriage of the material and the spiritual. Where Science is in the service of wo(man)kind that will allow an extraordinary flowering of human potential, light, life and love. A’men !

Right click to save copies of the above articles …

http://files.djbarney.org/Stunning%20intervention%20in%20the%20TED%20controversy%20by%2019%20leading%20scientists.html.maff

http://files.djbarney.org/TED%20conference%20censorship%20row%20-%20News%20-%20Gadgets%20and%20Tech%20-%20The%20Independent.html.maff

http://files.djbarney.org/Deepak%20Chopra%20-Dear%20TED%20-%20IIs%20It%20Bad%20Science%20or%20a%20Game%20of%20Thrones.html.maff

http://files.djbarney.org/TEDx%20%e2%80%94%20A%20letter%20to%20the%20TEDx%20community%20on%20TEDx%20and%20bad%20science.html.maff

View full page archives with http://maf.mozdev.org/

NHS FUKITOL

Thankyou NHS for taking the care and time to poison us half to death with your scientifically unproven drugs developed in endless torture of animals while you ignore and suppress natural medicine that is non-abusive, scientifically proven medicine that you have stamped upon over the last few decades closing down the natural health clinics we used to have while YOU drug old people with dementia into pain filled hell. While you drug people in hospitals and carry out unnecessary operations and surgery. You drug people, cats, dogs, the birds in the trees, everything must be drugged until we live in darkness and death …

You are as mad as hell ! You are as mad as hell !

Thankyou NHS, for all the wonderful things you did for me, a final thankyou …

FUCK YOU VERY MUCH

The End.

This production was bought to you by 4XXX’ed off former victims of the NHS who have been through decades of hell and agony and are currently recuperating on a beach in Hawaii sipping a nice cocktail thankyou very much …

Posing figures in Blender. An Amazing Project from Argentina. BlenRig !

I just discovered an amazing project from Argentina … BlenRig !

This is truly a monumental and massive piece of work. I’ve never seen the human body so well represented, even with facial expressions ! I’ve used a few other “posing” packages but this project wins my prize, and this one is “free” ! Every bone and joint is represented using Inverse Kinematics and a rigging/bone system. This means that the model responds to movements imposed on it in real time in a realistic way. It also another great example of the power of Blender. Its a unified way of working with software so we don’t need to have endless separate applications all with different ways of doing things.

My figure above is a work in progress.

In a post benefit cuts and Theresa May Britain …

 

“You have abandoned Roman”, Linear Stories in Non-linear Open World Games

So, this is a contradiction in terms. A huge open world game with a … linear story line. I’m talking about GTA IV which came out in 2008 so this bad approach may already have been tackled by now in some more recent game. What piqued my interest was this. I reinstalled GTA IV because I like the open world environment which is done very well. At the beginning you are supposed to be driving Roman back home. I parked at the beach and ran off, ostensibly to check my frame rate while looking back at the city. But, hilariously, the screen fades and says “You have abandoned Roman”. Maybe this is why your character turns to a life a crime. How ever hard he tries, he simply cannot escape his annoying cousin and live a life a freedom in the city of Freedom, New York. But I digress.

Why do these kind of games have linear story lines at all ? Far Cry 3 has the same join the dots story line. Dot’s that only make a single line. Where can I really do something like run away from Roman and actually change the story as easily as I can effect the interacting elements in the open world ? Game designers talk of story lines in high faluting terms, especially evident in the Far Cry 3′s supposedly “meta” story line. A story line that is still linear. Why are game designers still writing linear stories ? There are ways of procedurally generating story events depending on what the player does. I seem to remember there’s a whole branch of mathematics devoted to this kind of thing. A bit like calculating all the possible permutations of connections in a computer chip in order to work out what actually has to be laid down in silicon.

So this is how it should have gone. I start GTA IV. Roman revolts me so much in his badly acted moaning about everything that I immediately jump out the car and run off into the Big Apple (isn’t this what everyone really wanted to do in that game any way to begin with?). Then the scenario might go something like this. I wander through the sensory overload that is a big city. Some schmuck walks up to me and wants me to do something for him. I refuse. Then down the street I over hear someone talking about his corrupt boss and how he suspects that he is running cocaine through his warehouse. I go up and make out that a friend has told me that he works on the docks and that I’m looking for work. That night I start snooping out the joint. If anyone gets suspicious then I can bug out and find another procedurally generated story item somewhere in the city. Maybe all these items add up eventually to make a story arc. Maybe you eventually create a unique GTA story through you own actions. Maybe you don’t care about a story and just want to go on missions. But whatever creative chaos the interacting procedural elements make, at least you won’t be forced to hang around with Roman.

Only those still with the underground will understand this post / A Rave/House/Techno Manifesto

Liberation by Liberation 2. Injected with a Poison by Praga Khan … and all the rest, have extensive social commentary and political sloganeering in them. They are made by people living on this planet. Much of what is on Proton Radio may as well have been made by an alien life form on another planet. The incessant bliss obsessed, trance sleep inducing over production. Filter chains. Badly timer sourced MIDI syncing. Muddy mix production. Too many things in the mix. Badly set-up synths. Lost in software music production. Along with a myriad of other problems. While the original SHIFT music from early 90′s onwards has an honest sound. Everything is crisp and mixed up front. The other music is music from a toothpaste advert. The psychopathic soundtrack to a machine, made to make rave’a'tron zombies feel like they are being told the truth. “What revelatory music this is!“. “Listen to radical samples!“. “This musician has their finger on the pulse!“. Then we go back again and listen to Liberation by Liberation 2 and Injected with a Poison, and the hideous fakery is revealed. Are these people all on Prozac ? To go back to Liberation, it has a sample from a speech by Jesse Jackson in it for craps sake. When do the “electronic dance music people” ever mention things like that ? Do they even know who he is ? It reminds me of Jeff Mills and his “Are you with the underground. Are YOU WITH THE UNDERGROUND !?“. The underground appears to be a place which is quite difficult to actually stay in, and with. Absolute identification with it seems to be something that the Blue Meanies really can’t stand for. Is this because it is a statement of 100% authentic humanity WHICH THE BLUE MEANIES DO NO STAND FOR OR REPRESENT. They aren’t “it”. They haven’t got “it” however much they strut and pose and deceive. Delude. Infiltrate. Copy. Pretend and self deceive they still have not got “it”.

The original Rave/House discovery creates a Religious/Spiritual experience akin to to Tribal Trance Dance. The kind of direct embodied creation of God, The Spirit and The Force that the Vatican has been trying to keep away from people for hundreds of years. The pretenders and followers try to make that into “the radical” or political but it is really what we (what are we really called as a species because I don’t think it’s “humans” ?) have been doing for millennia. The intended effect of Rave/House/Techno is IMPOSSIBLE to mistake for anything else once it happens. It is overwhelming and totally irresistible … the irresistible force, like Volcanoes or The Sun. Identical at its base level to the electrically charged Lava that comes exploding out of a Volcano. The Blood, meridian Chi flow of the Earth, of Life itself, just like human emotion. I’ll tell you a secret. Human emotion is so intense that only a real human can survive feeling it. Same with Rave/House/Techno music.

~~~

Technical analysis: I’m at this very moment listening to “ScottHenry_EastCoastScience1_SideA.mp3“. The mix is using a Normaliser. Probably some kind of rack unit or something built into the PA seeing as this is from the early to mid 90′s. This got me thinking of WHY music from this period sounds so stripped down and up front in the mix. Just as with the usage of the Normaliser this is for a reason. Let’s take the Normaliser first.

The Normaliser

Loud PA’s are difficult beasts. The force of the bass beat can easily overdrive some PA’s. Then the “quiet bit” comes in which is often too quiet on some PA’s. The DJ is tempted to turn things up at this point. Then the beat comes in again and it could be too loud. The DJ turns it down. Hence the wisdom of using a Normaliser on a large PA. When you are right in front of the PA it’s not that obvious that Normalising is going on. It’s more obvious if you listen to mix tape at home that was recorded from a feed on the other side (PA side) of the Normaliser. “Quiet bits” are suddenly mixed in loud. Obviously louder. There is a reason for this. The original source mix was mixed/sound engineered for a big PA, not your home sound system.

Stripped Down Composition

There is a reason for this is well. Many of the fine details you hear in Trance or Progressive “dance music” are completely lost on large PA’s. In fact the entire mix becomes muddy because all the various mixed in elements are fighting for attention. Hence the lack of such elements in music actually produced for the dance floor. I wonder who is really listening to many House/Trance/Progressive tracks out there ? I suspect they are really made for lounge music or in car sound systems. Personal stereos and the like. They are often very good tracks, but strictly speaking they are not Dance Music because they don’t follow tried and tested sound engineering principles for amplifying music at large venues. Any experienced live rock musician already knows a lot of this.

The Experience of the Listener/Dancer

Authentic Dance Music does not follow traditional music composition techniques. Traditional classical music is very cerebral and intellectual. The audience are all sat down. Their bodies are not engaged, only their minds. This is what makes authentic Dance Music so visceral and I would say balanced. It brings into involvement all aspects. Mind, body, sexual, and something else. A Factor X that happens when all physical and non-physical aspects are engaged. Something larger than the sum of the parts of muscles and Chakra Points. Traditional waltzes and jigs as well various tribal rhythm based music are much closer to what Dance Music really is.

Being a musician I have learnt to listen to authentic Dance Music when not dancing. I have to sit still (or stiller) in front of my music making equipment. Maybe I should use some kind of wearable device and dance around while composing ? Anyway, I found that listening to authentic Dance Music without dancing can have some interesting effects. It can take one to place where there is no thought in the traditional meaning of the word. This is probably due to brain wave entrainment creating a meditative state. Over produced non-authentic “dance music” does not do this. It introduces too many subtle elements that the mind starts grasping on to and using which takes the listener out of a meditative state. Ironically, the silky soft over synthed and over mixed so called “dance music” actually increases anxiety levels because it makes the mind too active.

Indignez-vous! Or … Fuckoff Traitors !

Ninety-three years. I’m nearing the last stage. The end cannot be far off. How lucky I am to be able to draw on the foundation of my political life: the Resistance and the National Council of the Resistance’s program from sixty-six years ago….

The motivation that underlay the Resistance was outrage. We, the veterans of the Resistance movements and fighting forces of Free France, call on the younger generations to revive and carry forward the tradition of the Resistance and its ideas. We say to you: take over, keep going, get angry! Those in positions of political responsibility, economic power and intellectual authority, in fact our whole society, must not give up or let ourselves be overwhelmed by the current international dictatorship of the financial markets, which is such a threat to peace and democracy….

We must realize that violence turns its back on hope. We have to choose hope over violence—choose the hope of nonviolence. That is the path we must learn to follow. The oppressors no less than the oppressed have to negotiate to remove the oppression: that is what will eliminate terrorist violence. That is why we cannot let too much hate accumulate….

To you who will create the twenty-first century, we say, from the bottom of our hearts,

TO CREATE IS TO RESIST.

TO RESIST IS TO CREATE.

An excerpt taken from the first English translation of Stéphane Hessel’s “Indignez-vous!,”

Exclusive Far Cry 3 Stills from Production, straight from the Director

So, we’re still awaiting the release of the new Far Cry 3 film production that promises to rock out across theatres this summer. Ubisoft Entertainment contacted me with some exclusive insider shots of the ongoing shooting at a secret island location. Who were they taken by ? Apparently, according to Ubisoft Entertainment, they were taken by the director himself.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Far Cry 3 – Next Gen FPS

The style of Far Cry 3 takes some getting used to. But they’ve really got it. It’s one of the games that really pays you back in terms of immersion. The graphics don’t immediately look “hey wow” until you’ve got used to the game and really immerse. Then I’m feeling an experience in a game I have not felt before. Far Cry 3 feels like a very new experience because the design is going for immersion in game, not screen shots for the front of glossy game magazines. I think I’ve captured some of that immersion in the stills on this page.

The creators of FC3 have obviously spent some time in previous instalments. This is really noticeable for fans of the series. There are ample references to the other Far Cry’s. The beached wrecks on the beach reminded me of the air craft carrier sequence in the original (the first) Far Cry and made want to go back and play it again which is always a good sign. Salt corroded hulls are smeared with atmospheric rust and colours. The creak and moan when you are going through their insides, promising to tell tales of previous sea adventures.

Dusk falls and a a thunderstorm rolls in creating a scene worthy of any Hollywood film. Then the storm passes and the stars come out (looking accurate rather than random).

Then the surprises start. Hang gliders can be held aloft for longer than expected compared to previous instalments. Were those thermals near the cliffs keeping me up ? Then my favourite. I’d looked for then had to imagine this in previous Far Cry’s. Wrecks ! Wrecks you can dive on ! FC3 suddenly becomes a free diving simulator.

But just when you thought you had escaped the island for some well earned peace of mind …

Vehicle handling is also fantastic. I’ve played quite a few car games and even a professional high performance car simulator so I immediately noticed what a pleasure the vehicles are to drive.

There are the much talked about animals and animal skins. Again this is another carry through from previous instalments. It was a much asked question about FC2 …. “when do I get to fight a Lion”. The tranquilliser rifle and the various game animals bought up some interesting possibilities that weren’t implemented in FC2. So the FC3 developers have been paying attention again. Not just “improving” on FC1 and FC2, both very good games in their own right. But using what is the main show here; applied creative imagination that lets the player run free with ideas and create their own storyline. There’s the usual GTA inspired game design like races and challenges but FC3 never loses sight of it’s Class A FPS origins. Where GTA was more knock about fun, FC3 has moments like the caged Tiger that I freed, initially attacking the bad guys but then, inexcusably, tracking through the middle of a ship and coming up behind me to my hiding place on that ship to kill me off ! Totally unexpected and never have I felt so deserving in my inattentiveness of being eaten by a Tiger !

So all in all FC3 seems to have broken through some kind of barrier or threshold. Where previous games played with interesting concepts to a certain extent they only went as far as the first generation of FPS video games could go. FC3 is the next generation of FPS made by developers who are prepared to really apply the technology and creativity at their disposal. Former games such as this, apart from some elements of the GTA series, often left me wondering if the developers were afraid to really see what the technology – and their creativity – could really do. This kind of game is really a God send in our current world that has reached almost fever pitch of social control and people embarrassed to be themselves. Something not uncoincidently reflected, I suspect, in the story line of finding tribal identity and one’s autonomous context in nature.