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Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 1:19 pm
by magmavander
Chinese Sine Contest

Starts 31/12/2013 / Ends 31/01/2014 (Chinese new year).

- A wav/mp3 sample of a sine wave at 440 Hz

- Only sample trackers are used (Matilde/UnwieldyTracker/etc) and peer machines

- All buzz fx are allowed

- The bmx and wav are uploaded at BuzzTunes.org

- Start and end pure sample

- Besides all sine aberrations permitted.

EDIT : A wav sample will be uploaded at BuzzTunes tomorrow I hope. It's a 2,5 seconds sine wave sample at 440 Hz.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 12:29 pm
by magmavander
It's all here now :

http://www.buzztunes.org/contests/chinese-sine-contest

Please can you say here in this thread if you will participate ? I hope there will be more buzzers than the previous contest (which was difficult I admit). This contest is simple I guess so please people, come to play :)

PS: please prefix your titles with a "CSC" or "Chinese Sine Contest" so that they could be added to the contest automatically.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 4:28 pm
by vinnie pine
Cheers mag, I'll try and get something done for this comp.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 12:06 am
by nathansnider
Ah, now this should be fun! So it's a sine tone sampled at 440 Hz? Very interesting...

Trying to tune the sample reveals that it's about 1.5 semitones flat when loaded and used as-is, or 1.5 semitones sharp if root note is set to A rather than C in the wavetable. After a little math and a lot of playing around, I found the following parameters in the wavetable layer will give you a fully tuned and loopable sample:

Root note: C-9
Rate: 15349
Loop End: 1023 (or any multiple of 11, really)

If you are using Matilde, you may need to change the "filter" (really more like interpolation) attribute if you want it to loop smoothly. Matilde does not handle loops with very low playback rates gracefully when the "filter" type is set to spline (2), which appears to be the default. The loop points get choppy and erratic. Setting it to linear (1) or turning it off (0) will make the sample loop smoothly, but then of course the sound is a lot less sine-like.

Anyway, after flaking out on the last contest, I suppose I'd better do this one!

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 3:09 pm
by magmavander
Great info nathan!!! Thanks a lot 8-)
Do you mind if I copy and paste it at BuzzTunes Contest's page ?

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 6:13 pm
by nathansnider
Sure, feel free to re-post the info however you like. I did realize, though, that this might not be an ideal solution for everyone, since below a certain pitch (C-5, I think), this tuning method will cause Jeskola Tracker to break. This appears to have something to do with the sample root note being so high, but due to some weirdness with the wavetable*, the root note can't be set much lower. For anyone wanting to use Jeskola Tracker, there are certainly ways around this problem (like, say, using a different tracker with a recorder machine to re-record the tone to a new wavetable slot for use by Jeskola), but they're not exactly simple.

UTrk seems to handle this kind of slow-playback sample rather well, avoiding both the interpolation issues of Matilde and the root note issues of Jeskola. The sample sounds sine-y, even though there are still some non-harmonic frequency artifacts from the low sample rate.

I guess all of these complications could be avoided if the original sample was a regular old reference tone recorded at a regular old sample rate, but perhaps that would be too easy?

*Manually setting the sample rate to anything lower than 8000 appears to produce an error in the "new" wavetable view. A little red exclamation point appears next to the sample layer, and if it's not changed to a value 8000 or greater, that layer disappears (the sample will still play; you just can't edit any of the wavetable parameters for it). The only way to get it back appears to be to reload the sample. If you switch to the "old" wavetable view by hitting Ctrl-W, you can still see the layer there, but no matter what you enter in the rate box there, it defaults to 200000(!) and can't be changed without reloading the sample. So anyway, for the sample we're dealing with here, the lowest usable sample rate would be 8131, with a root note of C#8, which wouldn't even let you play C-4 using Jeskola.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 6:51 pm
by magmavander
nathansnider wrote:I guess all of these complications could be avoided if the original sample was a regular old reference tone recorded at a regular old sample rate, but perhaps that would be too easy?
If you have a better sample, please upload it 8-) And if it can avoid complications, it would be better. The one I did is a 440Hz done with the freeware I have given the link before.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 10:58 pm
by tinga
440_1s.zip
(64.98 KiB) Downloaded 625 times
Maybe something like that, a looped 440Hz sine from Audacity. no klick.
A sine has to be a sine.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 10:59 pm
by nathansnider
Ok, sure! Here's a 1-second, 440Hz sine tone generated by a Bass 3 playing A-5. I converted to mono in Soundforge, but the source material is all Buzz.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 11:15 pm
by nathansnider
Ha - it looks like I was just barely beaten to the punch!

My version should loop click-free. Since it's exactly 1 second long, and there are exactly 440 cycles in a second, the phase is aligned at the beginning and end of the loop. Root note still needs to be set to A-5 for it to be in tune, though.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 11:21 pm
by tinga
Ive replaced the wav.
and yes one sec is just time for no click.

Re: Chine Sine Contest

Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2014 8:18 pm
by mcg
'Chine' apart ;) plain Sine Contest rules look promising. I get down to choping, hacking, crushing, squeezing, squashing, crumpling, wringing, sweeping, stretching, shrinking, scattering, battering and whatever this pure sine sample. :twisted:

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:21 am
by syphilissauna
im down to try and do a Syphilis Sauna track .. one question maybe im reading this strangely "Start and end pure sample" does that mean it needs to start with just the sine and also end with just the sine (you know like a "round" ) ? any other criteria (length etc ) ?

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:15 pm
by magmavander
syphilissauna wrote:im down to try and do a Syphilis Sauna track .. one question maybe im reading this strangely "Start and end pure sample" does that mean it needs to start with just the sine and also end with just the sine (you know like a "round" ) ? any other criteria (length etc ) ?
In the final rules that you can find at BuzzTunes this one have been removed.

http://www.buzztunes.org/contests/chinese-sine-contest

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:07 pm
by Jay200MPH
I can't run Buzz at the moment as I no longer have a Windows machine. Since we're using trackers anyway can I enter this with Impulse Tracker? :mrgreen:

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:18 pm
by magmavander
Jay200MPH wrote:I can't run Buzz at the moment as I no longer have a Windows machine. Since we're using trackers anyway can I enter this with Impulse Tracker? :mrgreen:
YES, of course... ;)

Xin nian kuai le!

Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 7:23 pm
by Joachip
I'm gonna give it a quick go. :)

Edit: Okay done.
Where do you send the bmx afterwards? Just upload it to buzztunes.org as a normal song? Or is there a special way to upload compo material?

PS: My song uses only matilde tracker with tinga's 440_1s.wav and buzz effects.

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 5:56 am
by nathansnider
Do the contest rules allow for the use of recorder machines to write to the wavetable in-song? I'm not talking about saving anything extra in the .bmx here, but rather writing it live. I'm thinking of using WhiteNoise Recorder for some feedback loop stuff, but before I start down that rabbit hole, I just want to check and make sure that's alright.

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 2:57 pm
by magmavander
nathansnider wrote:Do the contest rules allow for the use of recorder machines to write to the wavetable in-song? I'm not talking about saving anything extra in the .bmx here, but rather writing it live. I'm thinking of using WhiteNoise Recorder for some feedback loop stuff, but before I start down that rabbit hole, I just want to check and make sure that's alright.
I dont think it's a problem as far as you use the sine sample provided ;)

Re: Chinese Sine Contest

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 4:57 pm
by elekt
I'm in.