Some comments on Kontakt and LMSO

I have been using Kontakt and LMSO for a while now, and have found the
combination to be flexible and to sound very good. Complaints about
Kontakt's polyphony seem to come in three varieties: "clipping," "CPU
overload," and "disk access too slow." In all of them, the sound
breaks up and distorts, and it's not always obvious which one is
occurring. Clipping happens when the volumes of the individual sounds
adds up to something louder than 0 db. It's easy to fix -- turn the
volume of the instrument down, and then when they add together the bus
no longer overloads. Try this first. One reason the sound breaks up is
when the CPU isn't fast enough. This often happens when there are lots
of effects applied, espcially the convolution reverb, which can\
overload any CPU in short order. The fix is to remove (turn off) the
effects and perhaps apply them later during mixing. The other reason
the sound breaks up is that the access to the sample isn't fast
enough. This occurs especially when using the direct from disk
feature, and can be fixed by forcing Kontakt to load everything into
RAM (assuming you've got enough).

The final thing that causes the sound to break up is greed. I can do 5
voices, why not 10? I can do 10, why not 15? Eventually, you can make
any system fail. Like all musical instruments, you need to understand
it's capabilities and to work within them.

For example, the piece MysteryX was sequenced using a drum controller
or percussion (the Roland handsonic) and a wind controller for
everything else (Yamaha WX). The piece is here:

http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/demos/mysteryX.mp3

All lines can be played simultaneously on my G4 laptop (1.6 GHz - 1
gig ram -- OS 10.4 -- a bit less than 2 years old now). All the sounds
are from the "VSL Kontakt Orchestra" though with the timbres mapped to
match the tuning, which was done by LMSO (the "X" stands for 10-tet).
I know from experience that if I tried to add too much more the sound
would begin to break up. When this happens, the solution is to record
some of the lines to disk (in my sequencer this is called "freezing
the virtual instrument") and then proceed. Using this approach you can
get nearly unlimited polyphony.

As for LMSO vs. Scala: while they do overlap in some functions, they
do differ. The similarities: both will generate scales, both will save
to a variety of formats, both are written by dedicated people who have
done a lot to make it easier to explore microtonality. Strengths of
Scala: many analysis features, huge library, available on all
platforms. Strengths of LMSO: easy to use with a large variety of
synths and softsynths, great manual (clearly written and easy to
follow). For my personal taste, I think of Scala as better for
analysis and LMSO as better for performance. With specific reference
to Kontakt support, both work by writing a Kontakt script file that
can be added into any instrument. Scala's implementation is limited to
a single scale at a time (I know -- I helped Manuel debug the Kontakt
scripts). LMSO can have many tunings available instantly in a single
script, and you can switch between them slickly and easily. It's
biggest liability is that it is Mac-only.

The link in the previous post was incorrect. It should have been:

http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/MysteryX.mp3

Sorry about that!

-- Bill

Hi all,

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 Bill Sethares wrote:
>
> The link in the previous post was incorrect. It should have been:
>
> http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/MysteryX.mp3

Bill,

Truly Xenophonic! Sounds like an ethnomusicologist's
field recording of [insert favourite alien culture here].
Nice sounds, clear structure; there's a lot to like here.
My guess is that most listeners would not really know
that the tuning was unusual.

Thanks once again for sharing your music with us.

Regards,
Yahya

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.3/298 - Release Date: 30/3/06

Thanks for the really clear delineation, Bill. I was getting vague related suggestions, but no
one else broke down the issues into three separate problems. I now feel like I have some
hope, and I'll give it another try. (Greed certainly wasn't the problem - I was just trying to
get *one* sound!) I may also quote your Scala/LMSO comparison on my blog.

Thanks!,

Kyle

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Sethares" <sethares@...> wrote:
>
> I have been using Kontakt and LMSO for a while now, and have found the
> combination to be flexible and to sound very good. Complaints about
> Kontakt's polyphony seem to come in three varieties: "clipping," "CPU
> overload," and "disk access too slow." In all of them, the sound
> breaks up and distorts, and it's not always obvious which one is
> occurring. Clipping happens when the volumes of the individual sounds
> adds up to something louder than 0 db. It's easy to fix -- turn the
> volume of the instrument down, and then when they add together the bus
> no longer overloads. Try this first. One reason the sound breaks up is
> when the CPU isn't fast enough. This often happens when there are lots
> of effects applied, espcially the convolution reverb, which can\
> overload any CPU in short order. The fix is to remove (turn off) the
> effects and perhaps apply them later during mixing. The other reason
> the sound breaks up is that the access to the sample isn't fast
> enough. This occurs especially when using the direct from disk
> feature, and can be fixed by forcing Kontakt to load everything into
> RAM (assuming you've got enough).
>
> The final thing that causes the sound to break up is greed. I can do 5
> voices, why not 10? I can do 10, why not 15? Eventually, you can make
> any system fail. Like all musical instruments, you need to understand
> it's capabilities and to work within them....
>
>
> As for LMSO vs. Scala: while they do overlap in some functions, they
> do differ. The similarities: both will generate scales, both will save
> to a variety of formats, both are written by dedicated people who have
> done a lot to make it easier to explore microtonality. Strengths of
> Scala: many analysis features, huge library, available on all
> platforms. Strengths of LMSO: easy to use with a large variety of
> synths and softsynths, great manual (clearly written and easy to
> follow). For my personal taste, I think of Scala as better for
> analysis and LMSO as better for performance. With specific reference
> to Kontakt support, both work by writing a Kontakt script file that
> can be added into any instrument. Scala's implementation is limited to
> a single scale at a time (I know -- I helped Manuel debug the Kontakt
> scripts). LMSO can have many tunings available instantly in a single
> script, and you can switch between them slickly and easily. It's
> biggest liability is that it is Mac-only.
>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Sethares" <sethares@...>
wrote:
The piece is here:
>
> http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/demos/mysteryX.mp3

Doesn't seem to be.

Thanks for the info, Bill. I find this to be one of your most
musically-rendered pieces, and also the most consonant 10-tET
piece I think I've ever heard!

-Carl

At 09:25 AM 3/30/2006, you wrote:
>I have been using Kontakt and LMSO for a while now, and have found the
>combination to be flexible and to sound very good. Complaints about
>Kontakt's polyphony seem to come in three varieties: "clipping," "CPU
>overload," and "disk access too slow." In all of them, the sound
>breaks up and distorts, and it's not always obvious which one is
>occurring. Clipping happens when the volumes of the individual sounds
>adds up to something louder than 0 db. It's easy to fix -- turn the
>volume of the instrument down, and then when they add together the bus
>no longer overloads. Try this first. One reason the sound breaks up is
>when the CPU isn't fast enough. This often happens when there are lots
>of effects applied, espcially the convolution reverb, which can\
>overload any CPU in short order. The fix is to remove (turn off) the
>effects and perhaps apply them later during mixing. The other reason
>the sound breaks up is that the access to the sample isn't fast
>enough. This occurs especially when using the direct from disk
>feature, and can be fixed by forcing Kontakt to load everything into
>RAM (assuming you've got enough).
>
>The final thing that causes the sound to break up is greed. I can do 5
>voices, why not 10? I can do 10, why not 15? Eventually, you can make
>any system fail. Like all musical instruments, you need to understand
>it's capabilities and to work within them.
>
>For example, the piece MysteryX was sequenced using a drum controller
>or percussion (the Roland handsonic) and a wind controller for
>everything else (Yamaha WX). The piece is here:
>
>http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/demos/mysteryX.mp3
>
>All lines can be played simultaneously on my G4 laptop (1.6 GHz - 1
>gig ram -- OS 10.4 -- a bit less than 2 years old now). All the sounds
>are from the "VSL Kontakt Orchestra" though with the timbres mapped to
>match the tuning, which was done by LMSO (the "X" stands for 10-tet).
>I know from experience that if I tried to add too much more the sound
>would begin to break up. When this happens, the solution is to record
> some of the lines to disk (in my sequencer this is called "freezing
>the virtual instrument") and then proceed. Using this approach you can
>get nearly unlimited polyphony.
>
>As for LMSO vs. Scala: while they do overlap in some functions, they
>do differ. The similarities: both will generate scales, both will save
>to a variety of formats, both are written by dedicated people who have
>done a lot to make it easier to explore microtonality. Strengths of
>Scala: many analysis features, huge library, available on all
>platforms. Strengths of LMSO: easy to use with a large variety of
>synths and softsynths, great manual (clearly written and easy to
>follow). For my personal taste, I think of Scala as better for
>analysis and LMSO as better for performance. With specific reference
>to Kontakt support, both work by writing a Kontakt script file that
>can be added into any instrument. Scala's implementation is limited to
>a single scale at a time (I know -- I helped Manuel debug the Kontakt
>scripts). LMSO can have many tunings available instantly in a single
>script, and you can switch between them slickly and easily. It's
>biggest liability is that it is Mac-only.

I think you and I are probably interested in different things, but
I've been using Pure Data, and it's perfect. I just learned that,
when it does audio, if it overloads and breaks up, the audio files it
writes are unaffected, they still come out right.
Right now I use a JI sequencer I wrote in Pure Data to control
external MIDI, for which I'm very interested in Kontakt, but Pure
Data's synthesis abilities are awesome, and I hope to beef my program
up in that department this summer.

-Chuckk

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Sethares" <sethares@...>
wrote:
>
> I have been using Kontakt and LMSO for a while now, and have found the
> combination to be flexible and to sound very good. Complaints about
> Kontakt's polyphony seem to come in three varieties: "clipping," "CPU
> overload," and "disk access too slow." In all of them, the sound
> breaks up and distorts, and it's not always obvious which one is
> occurring. Clipping happens when the volumes of the individual sounds
> adds up to something louder than 0 db. It's easy to fix -- turn the
> volume of the instrument down, and then when they add together the bus
> no longer overloads. Try this first. One reason the sound breaks up is
> when the CPU isn't fast enough. This often happens when there are lots
> of effects applied, espcially the convolution reverb, which can\
> overload any CPU in short order. The fix is to remove (turn off) the
> effects and perhaps apply them later during mixing. The other reason
> the sound breaks up is that the access to the sample isn't fast
> enough. This occurs especially when using the direct from disk
> feature, and can be fixed by forcing Kontakt to load everything into
> RAM (assuming you've got enough).
>
> The final thing that causes the sound to break up is greed. I can do 5
> voices, why not 10? I can do 10, why not 15? Eventually, you can make
> any system fail. Like all musical instruments, you need to understand
> it's capabilities and to work within them.
>
> For example, the piece MysteryX was sequenced using a drum controller
> or percussion (the Roland handsonic) and a wind controller for
> everything else (Yamaha WX). The piece is here:
>
> http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/demos/mysteryX.mp3
>
> All lines can be played simultaneously on my G4 laptop (1.6 GHz - 1
> gig ram -- OS 10.4 -- a bit less than 2 years old now). All the sounds
> are from the "VSL Kontakt Orchestra" though with the timbres mapped to
> match the tuning, which was done by LMSO (the "X" stands for 10-tet).
> I know from experience that if I tried to add too much more the sound
> would begin to break up. When this happens, the solution is to record
> some of the lines to disk (in my sequencer this is called "freezing
> the virtual instrument") and then proceed. Using this approach you can
> get nearly unlimited polyphony.
>
> As for LMSO vs. Scala: while they do overlap in some functions, they
> do differ. The similarities: both will generate scales, both will save
> to a variety of formats, both are written by dedicated people who have
> done a lot to make it easier to explore microtonality. Strengths of
> Scala: many analysis features, huge library, available on all
> platforms. Strengths of LMSO: easy to use with a large variety of
> synths and softsynths, great manual (clearly written and easy to
> follow). For my personal taste, I think of Scala as better for
> analysis and LMSO as better for performance. With specific reference
> to Kontakt support, both work by writing a Kontakt script file that
> can be added into any instrument. Scala's implementation is limited to
> a single scale at a time (I know -- I helped Manuel debug the Kontakt
> scripts). LMSO can have many tunings available instantly in a single
> script, and you can switch between them slickly and easily. It's
> biggest liability is that it is Mac-only.
>