3 ms·
> That is, can’t all these sounds simply be digitally produced rather than relying on circuitry? Even for an almost fully digital synth like the DX7 a bit-accu
by ssalazar 5y ago
> That is, can’t all these sounds simply be digitally produced rather than relying on circuitry?
Even for an almost fully digital synth like the DX7 a bit-accurate emulation is difficult (there is a rich discussion of this in one of the other threads here).
For analog synthesizers, there is a lot of character and nuance in the individual circuits that are difficult to capture in a digital model, across all possible configurations.
In the mix of a full song though, its not often that people can notice the difference.
Aliasing--the introduction of extra unwanted and generally non-harmonic frequencies--is also really hard to avoid in digital systems.
For more esoteric instruments like Eurorack modules or Moog modular synthesizers, the physical interface is an integral part of the instrument--software versions of these exist but are obviously very different to interact with using a mouse or touchscreen.
> Why aren’t all new keyboards (or those other things DJs have on stage) simply software, maybe with a custom input device for easier live use?
For live use this is very common nowadays, though physical single purpose keyboards (even fully digital ones) still are used widely.
In a fast moving stage show you may not want to mess around with the complexity of a full personal computer setup.
In modern operating systems, even with 100s of processes competing for CPU time, real-time audio may rarely drop out (the result of which is audible clicks and pops), but even this is too risky for a big professional live show.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y agoI honestly dont understand why none of the main consumer operating systems are optimized for low latency. outside servers, I feel like I would gladly take an OS that made my computer 2x slower, but never had a pause of more than half a ms or so.
- jerrysievert 5y agohalf a ms is still 2 samples missed: 44000 / 1sec / 1000ms hopefully we have better latency than that!
- jacquesm 5y agoHalf a millisecond is 20 samples missed. 44000 * .0005 = 22 But that's not what he meant, he meant that non-real time (soft real time, not even hard real time) OSs pause pretty frequently for relatively long periods. You might not miss any samples at all due to hardware buffering, but the effect on UI is tremendous.
- jacquesm 5y agoCount me in.
- thulle 5y agoA while after OpenZFS implememted ZSTD compression I started using it for backups, opting for the highest level of compression and scheduling it very early in the morning so it'd run when I wasn't by the PC when it ran. Occasionally I'd be awake around then anyway, and I would experience 5-30second UI-freezes. After fiddling around a bit I decided to try the MuQSS CPU scheduler and was blown away. Not only was the scheduled backup unnoticeable, on top of that I could throw a 16 thread compilation job on my 8core/16thread CPU and I'd not notice the system being under load. I might've lost a few frames per secone when occasionally playing some FPS games, but possibly lowered throughput be damned, this was bliss. Unfortunately it seems to not be updated anymore. So I tried the newcomers on the block, BMQ and PDS. With BMQ I would start dropping iSCSI connections since my PC wouldn't manage to reply to a ping in five seconds. PDS fit better. While MuQSS could handle a load of 40-45 before I started noticing UI-latency, PDS tops off at around 20. And when it starts to stutter, it's worse than with MuQSS, but since it's not that often that I'm at those loads I'm quite OK with the current situation. All this with untuned schedulers, they might behave very differently with some tuning.