Modartt user forum - "Room tones" from Krilloud?

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-18T15:13:29Z

I also think that we need to model the interior of the piano and then play the Pianoteq in it. Need to try

with&respect
Simona, Brown
https://www.worktime.com/

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-17T12:43:29Z

As I get used to the programme, I like it more and more... adding string resonance to my yummy Yammy p120s is just delicious!

Also, I note that you can assign MIDI to the microphone placement so you can have great fun moving the keyboard around the room in real time as you play... Here's a pseudo example using a free plugin called "dearVR MICRO".

Handel's Variation I from Air and Variations in Bb (Binaural Rendition)

Mix this with room tones and you've got yourself a flying clavi...

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-16T06:31:14Z

Well, if there is way to get audio into the program, I think that would mean that we could model the inside of a piano, and then play Pianoteq into it. Or am I wanting too much?

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-16T00:25:12Z

I'll keep digging. I found a few forum pages at Unreal, and I do know that Unreal supports microphone input for voice chat functions in games: so for music there should be a virtual port/audio capture utility hidden in there somewhere. I don't think it will support global clock, ASIO, etc. but there's bound to be some way to jury-rig it. Some people say that with Mic inputs there's not latency at all, which is promising for PTQ, etc. I wish I knew more people who had more experience with Unreal for this kind of thing. I only use it--very occasionally--for 3d modelling/world-building/rendering/game environment testing, never anything like this...

I know I've seen people use a microphone input in the node editor/blueprint window, but, again, I haven't tested directly. The "Media Framework" built into 4.26 and later is supposed to allow for codeless integration of external audio and video sources, so that's at least a place to start.

Here are some links that talk around the issue to one extent or another. Some require more C++ knowledge others are (supposedly) much easier to test:

https://couchlearn.com/the-easy-way-to-...ne-4-game/
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/confu...-19/106081
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/hey-i...ace/105171
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Wor...index.html
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-c...ase/105413
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/micro...int/133618

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-15T13:08:05Z

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the Unreal Engine seems to only work on recorded audio. The user opens a wave file and then applies effects, from what I understand from reading the documentation:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Wor...index.html

There is a plug-n that allows the user to visualize live audio, so there is a way to let the program register input, but that seems to be the limit. (I hope that I'm wrong about this.)

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-13T18:23:16Z

Jake Johnson wrote:

The Unreal platform looks interesting. It's only available as code for developers, however? There doesn't seem to be a stand-alone version.

You can work with it without compiling code, and as far as I'm aware the audio engine in built in. You'll need to install the Epic Games Launcher and then you install Unreal Engine from there. I don't know how exactly to run external audio to it, but there should be a simple way to route a virtual port to it in most operating systems. How practical it will be is another question, but Unreal Engine can function as a standalone.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Bas...index.html

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-11T22:19:21Z

The Unreal platform looks interesting. It's only available as code for developers, however? There doesn't seem to be a stand-alone version.

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-08T21:10:01Z

I think it's sounding pretty good. I honestly wouldn't expect an earth-shattering improvement between a nice-sounding Quad file of a large space and a binaural impulse. The distance between each ear and the distance between a stereo pair is quite comparable. The biggest difference between live performance, speaker playback, and headphone playback is usually what the human body does to subtly change or filter EQ, add slight delay, and increase some resonance of select frequencies at select times. Something that technology can't presently simulate across all three approaches.

Unless paired with some yet-to-be-invented audio-influencing haptic tech that goes with headphones, headphones will never be truly immersive. Also, as PTQ lacks the ability to know exactly where you are relative to the keyboard surface, if you turn your head or move around the room, the sound won't change, which it would in a real acoustic environment. Maybe someday, we'll at least get something akin to the old Wiimote or Xbox Kinnect that could in some way detect where you ears are relative to a midi keyboard and send that information to an audio engine or directly to PTQ and make a real-time compensation for our movement relative to the sound. Perhaps that's even within reach of particularly adventurous DIYers now...

As it is presently with how the technology is implemented in PTQ (and basically everywhere but select VR-based gaming engines), a high quality Quad impulse file which is fixed in space will act almost identically to a binaural impulse response for realism, and the binaural impulses will likely be lower quality as there are fewer good options to choose from. In time, technologies like the ambisonic support in Unreal Engine that allows far simpler control of noise directionality and convolution (functioning presently a poor-man's VR-friendly Dolby Atmos) could open up easier or more novel ways of creating a more immersive experience with PTQ or any number of other applications.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cgN5pLG8Rs

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-04T22:22:55Z

Here is the result of mixing two of the mono files in Audacity. Each mono impulse file was hard-panned before being mixed into the stereo file:

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...cana3b.mp3

I also reduced the reverb decay envelope in Pianoteq and slightly reduced the contribution of the reverb using the Mix slider. This sounds a little better, I think, but it's nothing to write home about. Not sure why. Theoretically, it should sound better. In any case, I must admit that I am listening through a relatively poor sound system right now. My music room is undergoing some revision, so I'm listening through my computer's sound card.

I tried to upload the wav file that resulted from mixing the two mono binaural files, but the Shared Files page doesn't accept wav files.

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-04T19:11:13Z

In looking at the project, they seem more oriented towards use in MATLAB, which makes the WAV files something of an afterthought. I can confirm that these are mono files; my guess is that the file names hint at which channels are right and left by the "air_lecture_X" where the 0 is left and the 1 is right, with the following numbers indicating which sample the pair was from. Though it could also be the second number field that indicates stereo.

You could sum two mono files and have a stereo impulse file, but I don't know that this is necessarily helpful, in that quad impulse responses should yield as good or better results as a binaural stereo impulse. I know I've never had a problem with good quad files providing realistic results, but that could just be a matter of taste (particularly as I rarely use the binaural function of PTQ).

You can definitely skip the "phone" files as they're an experiment in dereverberation for devolving VOIP call sources. My guess is that this is something of a dead project which was provided for free, because they could, not because they had a usable deliverable for music production or anything other than abstract analysis and research (hence it was abandoned).

I can dig up some links to the old quad files I use, if that helps.

Also, here's an interesting take on uses and disadvantages of binaural reverb: https://www.mattmontag.com/auralization/headphones/

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-04T01:37:36Z

There is a database of free binaural impulse responses, as it turns out--the Aachen database at https://www.iks.rwth-aachen.de/en/resea...-database/

Which has led me to understand that I know enough about binaural impulse responses to get myself in trouble. The knot that I reached: When I load one of the impulses into the Pianoteq reverb, the description that appears on the Pianoteq interface says that it is "one channel." A one-channel binaural file? Something is not right in my understanding of these files. (And there are many of them, although all are from 4-5 rooms, including an office and a lecture hall.)

However, I took the liberty of using this (mono?) binaural wav file in rendering the "Americana3B" MIDI file created, I believe, by Piet. I used the Bechstein DG Sweet, and added a short pre-delay in the Pianoteq reverb. Not sure what to make of it. Doesn't sound very good, to me. Is it because the wave files are mono files recorded from each ear of the dummy, so we are hearing the left or right ear recording "played" on both channels?

https://forum.modartt.com/uploads.php?f...mpulse.mp3

Does anyone have insights in how to better use these files? (They are available as both MATLAB files and .wav files. When you download the database, both are included.)

EDIT: The impulse file used was the air_meeting_1_1_5.wav file.

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-03T16:01:46Z

teacue wrote:

Jake Johnson wrote:
My interest, obviously, is in hearing Pianoteq with binaural impulses shaping the reverb.
You may be interested in reading this thread on the VI Control Forum:
https://vi-control.net/community/thread...ses.94550/
Here are two links to binaural impulse responses that can be used in a regular convolution reverb vst:
https://gumroad.com/l/ncRME
https://gumroad.com/l/oDDko
EDIT
I realize afterwords that you already asked in this VI Control thread!
Sorry.
But I let my answer here as it may interest someone else.

Both of those gumroad binaural recordings seem promising for someone wanting a big sound. A shame that they didn't do small spaces. But of course that's natural--a cathedral and a warehouse are going to have more reverb. I'm still hoping that someone will create similar recordings in studios and living rooms. And at a piano.

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-03T14:16:18Z

Jake Johnson wrote:

My interest, obviously, is in hearing Pianoteq with binaural impulses shaping the reverb.

You may be interested in reading this thread on the VI Control Forum:
https://vi-control.net/community/thread...ses.94550/

Here are two links to binaural impulse responses that can be used in a regular convolution reverb vst:
https://gumroad.com/l/ncRME
https://gumroad.com/l/oDDko

EDIT
I realize afterwords that you already asked in this VI Control thread!
Sorry.
But I let my answer here as it may interest someone else.

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-02T02:25:23Z

Thank you. I understand, now. I can see how audio edits need to be hidden this way. I'm not sure why so many of these files use server rooms for their background noise, though. I haven't seen many movies lately, but I would be surprised if many were set in rooms housing large numbers of servers.

In any case, I'm off to search for binaural impulse responses.

Edit: The search result was positive, and there are near-field and far-field impulses that can be downloaded, but I'm fairly sure that these can't be used directly in Pianoteq or a vst: http://spatialaudio.net/183/ This link takes you to an overview of the files. The files themselves can be reached by clicking on the small "Here" link.

They require another program that itself doesn't seem to exist as a VST, the open source Soundscape Renderer: http://spatialaudio.net/ssr/

Do you have knowledge about any way to use these in a vst host? Does anyone? My interest, obviously, is in hearing Pianoteq with binaural impulses shaping the reverb.

Re: "Room tones" from Krilloud?

2021-05-01T16:57:56Z

"Room tone" is more typical terminology in film production (another term is "set sound") where the audio technicians who work on a project will capture the ambient noise of a space--usually a looping tracking track of 1-5 minutes, or go into different environments to capture background noise that becomes the baseline for a production track. No room is perfectly quiet, so when editors need to hide a difficult cut or drop out, they'll replace the set sound with the room sound track, because the audience will notice dropout caused by silence. As best as I can tell, these are ambient recordings designed to supplement audio and video production for that purpose. Another trick is to use the ambient sound mixed with ADR or other SFX to make anything recorded outside of the original environment feel like it belongs in the shot or sequence.

I guess it is theoretically possible to algorithmically reverse engineer an impulse response from an ambient room tone track, but since the sound sources emit from different places at random frequencies and volumes, it would probably be at best impractical to try to create an IR. Since IRs are usually created either by specifically designed pops or sine sweeps, you will always get a better result from those. My guess is that their pointing out that the files are binaural to make them easier to use in either video game production (or by extension virtual-set film production) or with film/game technologies like Dolby Atmos--as opposed to the older stereo ambiance files that audio engineers need to cleverly (and slowly) juggle in 5.1, 7.1, or Atmos. As companies like Netflix require greater and greater standards compliance from independent filmmakers and producers, demand has probably greatly increased for better source captures of room/environment ambiance, as 1080p with stereo doesn't cut it anymore for everything from low-budget documentary shorts to large-scale indie films.