Omnisphere is out in about 12 hours!!!

[moondad]

Yeah, this 'Psychoacoustic Sampling' thing is obviously just a hype mechanism to draw attention to the fact that they've gotten all creative with their sample source material. The light bulb was obviously a good idea, as the end results were very impressive and even useful - the burning piano idea pissed me off a bit though, really.

 

I can't see that deliberately destroying something like that was worth the frankly pathetic results that the video implied. At the end of the day, unless it was an absolute nail that was beyond any hope of restoration, that piano still had the potential to inspire creativity and beauty way beyond anything some overblown plugin could ever hope to achieve.

 

However good Omnisphere might be, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be lying completely untouched on 90% of the hard drives it gets installed to in 5 years time, while everyone's getting all hard over whatever the latest software happens to be at the time.

[StompBoxLover]

I can't see that deliberately destroying something like that was worth the frankly pathetic results that the video implied. At the end of the day, unless it was an absolute nail that was beyond any hope of restoration, that piano still had the potential to inspire creativity and beauty way beyond anything some overblown plugin could ever hope to achieve.

:blah:

[soundwave106]

I can't see that deliberately destroying something like that was worth the frankly pathetic results that the video implied. At the end of the day, unless it was an absolute nail that was beyond any hope of restoration, that piano still had the potential to inspire creativity and beauty way beyond anything some overblown plugin could ever hope to achieve.

 

 

I could see shedding tears over a beautiful grand piano set on fire, I suppose, but it looks like they set some crappy upright piano on fire. It's probably the type you can find free on Craigslist.

 

It's all marketing, anyways. I really see little need for burning piano sounds in my future compositions. Spectrasonics is just wanting to be !!!EXTREME!!! or something.

 

 

However good Omnisphere might be, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be lying completely untouched on 90% of the hard drives it gets installed to in 5 years time, while everyone's getting all hard over whatever the latest software happens to be at the time.

 

 

For Hollywood soundtrack types, sure.

 

Still, although its old hat now, Atmosphere still finds its way onto a composition here and there. The sounds are very useful to me and there's just enough editing flexibility to keep things from being boring.

 

I think Omnisphere is going to be a bit more future proof thanks to its synth engine. I have a D-50. DigitalNativeDance excites no one these days. But the synth engine in the D-50 keeps things interesting.

 

I'm honestly interested in finding out if (like the D-50) the synth engine in Omnisphere is where the coolest sounds will come from. I suspect it will be.

[suitandtieguy]

OH MY GOD THIS SOFTWARE CHANGED MY LIFE.

[The Audacity Works]

However good Omnisphere might be, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be lying completely untouched on 90% of the hard drives it gets installed to in 5 years time, while everyone's getting all hard over whatever the latest software happens to be at the time.

Yeah, but to be fair, that could be said about almost anything

[urbanscallywag]

For The Matrix , lead sound designer Dane Davis sampled everyday items at super high sample rates (up in the MHz range) and then pitched them down to 48k. The result was all sorts of unique techy-sounding ear candy.

 

 

I've been thinking about this for a while and here are my thoughts.

 

Sampling a microphone at MHz range* isn't going to do much but sample white noise. The transducer is only good for audio-ish range, 20 Hz - 20 kHz, maybe some ultra-sonic (undesirable I think) so after that you won't have much to sample. If you did have a transducer (antenna) that went into MHz range you'd probably be picking up AM broadcasts.

 

If someone wanted to experiment try up-sampling a signal from 48 kHz 1:50 to 2.4 MHz without using an interpolation filter. Then play it back at 48 kHz. Copies of the spectrum will be distributed from 48 kHz to 2.4 MHz, but during playback the spectra will be scaled to "fit" into 48 kHz.

 

*assuming sampling in MHz range doesn't mean DSD or sigma-delta converters which actually are converting at ~1 bit/sample @ MHz range

[Don Solaris]

 

Sampling a microphone at MHz range* isn't going to do much but sample white noise. The transducer is only good for audio-ish range, 20 Hz - 20 kHz, maybe some ultra-sonic (undesirable I think) so after that you won't have much to sample.

 

 

The goal, why he did that was to achieve a slow down effect, as in high speed recorders. If you sample something at 1.5 MHz, you can slow it down 68 times by playing it at 22 kHz (which is still good quality). For a voice this probably wouldn't sound interesting, but klangs and clicks turn into very interesting impulse tones once slowed down that much.

 

For example here is a normal (radioastronomy) recording of a storm on Jupiter. But there is another type of receiving system that is capable of recording at high speeds. The same type of storm you just heard, sounds like this when slowed down 128 times.

[Son of HuHefner]

The goal, why he did that was to achieve a slow down effect, as in high speed recorders. If you sample something at 1.5 MHz, you can slow it down 68 times by playing it at 22 kHz (which is still good quality). For a voice this probably wouldn't sound interesting, but klangs and clicks turn into very interesting impulse tones once slowed down that much. For example here is a normal (radioastronomy) recording of a storm on Jupiter. But there is another type of receiving system that is capable of recording at high speeds. The same type of storm you just heard, sounds like this when slowed down 128 times.

 

 

impressive knowledge

 

But you still need to sell your 5080 for $95 and recycle all your samples

[pogo97]

Maybe OT, but I've been on bat walks (go out at night and learn about bats) where the leader had a doodad that pitch shifted the bats' ultrasonic echolocation to frequencies we can hear.

 

The woods, which seemed quiet, were full of sounds. There's a world of sound out there that we simply can't hear, and some of it is either useful or interesting.

[Son of HuHefner]

Maybe OT, but I've been on bat walks (go out at night and learn about bats) where the leader had a doodad that pitch shifted the bats' ultrasonic echolocation to frequencies we can hear.

sure, sure,

[urbanscallywag]

The goal, why he did that was to achieve a slow down effect, as in high speed recorders. If you sample something at 1.5 MHz, you can slow it down 68 times by playing it at 22 kHz (which is still good quality). For a voice this probably wouldn't sound interesting, but klangs and clicks turn into very interesting impulse tones once slowed down that much.

 

 

So a 20 kHz tone will playback at 294 Hz. Yeah you better have some really high frequency content in the original signal or you'll just end up with a big rumble.

 

Still, I can't see a need for sampling at an excessive rate like 1.5 MHz. This could be done with a 44.1 or 48 kHz input signal, up-sampling (with interpolation filter), and playback at original sample rate.

[Don Solaris]

So a 20 kHz tone will playback at 294 Hz. Yeah you better have some really high frequency content in the original signal or you'll just end up with a big rumble.

 

 

I suspect he used ultrasound mic which records up to 200 kHz. This would give him 10 kHz of bandwidth when slowed down 20 times which is a fair quality. A 400 kHz sampling rate was adequate. Pushing it up to 1.5 MHz would make no bandwidth gain, but i believe it would give more smooth recording, than to use upsample / aliasing method.

[urbanscallywag]

I guess an ultrasonic microphone is possible, but like Doug mentioned there is a lot more than you'd expect going on up there like animals and sensors.

 

Up-sampling and filtering would probably give smoother results, you have control of out of band noise level.

[The Audacity Works]

And of course, Spectrasonics makes no mention of ultra high-frequency sampling anywhere, so most likely, "psychoacoustic" means even less.

 

But again, that doesn't mean Omnisphere doesn't sound amazing. It most certainly does.

[Swami Digital]

A sound library based on actual psychoacoustic studies would be very interesting. I've attended a few seminars on studies like these and they are fairly interesting, though generally inconclusive. After all, we don't even know how sound is represented upstream of the auditory nerve, in contrast with our good understanding of how vision is represented in the brain. Everything in psycho-acoustic research focuses solely on either subjective perceptual studies, or how sound is processed until it gets to the auditory nerve.

Hindustani classical music is in fact entirely based on observed psychoacoustics. The concept of a raga and it's associated color and mood is based on observations regarding how the brain reacts to sound and associates aural perception with visual.

Like others, I am somewhat confused as to how sampling odd sources has any bearing on the mental perception of sound? Unless they have done some kind of subjective perceptual study? I agree it sounds like marketing spin.

-D