I'm trying to think if I could use the Organelle to free up some audio tracks in Octatrack/OP-1. I'd like to play long audio tracks (backup tracks, field recordings etc) on the Organelle, and add some FX. Link or MIDI sync would be nice too, but I don't know what would be a good solution. Select a track on Organelle keyboard, and then wait for a MIDI play command from the OP-1 or the Octa? If you have any ideas re how to patch that, I'd really appreciate that!
And thanks for the monotron delay, can't wait to try that too!
Sorry, just getting round to doing this, see link to patch below, is this what you were after?:
Well, I have some unfortunate news. Development on my patch has hit a major roadblock. At the very least I need to take it much much slower, but I might not be able to release it at all.
Here's the problem: At low notes it causes tinnitus after a few seconds of exposure. So far it's been temporary, going away after a few minutes or a few hours, but I'm afraid of having a pulsing bass note in my ear for the rest of time.
I have a theory about why it is so effective at this, but no good plan to fix it. I don't want to be responsible for damaged hearing, so releasing it and hoping someone else fixes the problem is out of the question. I deleted the samples I posted too, just in case they are problematic. I didn't notice any issues at those frequencies, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
I have other ideas for FM, so I'll probably work on those instead. Some of them are similar to this, but shouldn't produce such a massive phenomenon around the fundamental.
Wow, sorry to hear that mate and thanks for considering our ear drums / hearing. Is it a frequency rather than a decibel thing then?
I believe tinnitus is very personal.
Thank you for taking care of this lovely community, but first of all take really care of your ears, dear !!!
Avoid headphones (especially in noisy spaces), always bring some ear protectors when attending to a concert, and be very cautious about the volume at which you play !
And get some rest !
Wow, thanks for cooking up that patch @ghostly606 – I’ll try it over the weekend!
And really sorry to hear about the tinnitus @anomalous! I hope you can work that out somehow. Maybe putting limiter at the end of the patch would ease up things?
I think it’s a combination of frequencies and their relative power. What’s going on here is there is a bunch of bass around the fundamental that are uninteresting, with a lot of crisp character at other frequencies. So the brain naturally filters out the boring stuff. Now hear me out while I speculate: every audio filter I know of (analog, digital, acoustic) is made of feedback + delay and I don’t think the brain is any different. Somewhere in the audio regions of the brain, the unwanted signal is getting fed back and it even reaches the cochlea (turning the eardrum into a speaker, where it can be measured with a mic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlea#Otoacoustic_emissions - even with subjective tinnitus.) You get permanent tinnitus when this never stops. Connections formed in the brain create a natural resonator that, when stimulated with anything, even noise, produce the offending tone. Phase-lock with the offending incoming tone, but at 180°, and you get cancellation.
Anyway, that’s the what and why of what I thnk is happening. The uninteresting part of the signal actually has a lot of volume, but it’s down in the bass, so cancelling it out involves a strong signal. I’m pretty confident this would affect just about anyone, it’s got that tinnitus classic cause built right in: ignore this frequency, but not others. The mad thing is getting it at bass frequencies, since to me tinnitus has been a very high frequency phenomenon.
As for equipment, I’ve got a pair of monitors in the standard triangle setup. I have been considering setting up some crappier speakers and using those to debug the patch. I did discover yet another issue with some frequencies not properly matching the notes played (the character of the sound gradually changes as you change pitch), so that could be the cause, but I’m out of ideas for where that might be coming from.
Anyway, this is going on the back burner for a while. I’ll come back to it when I have some crappier speakers hooked up, and better analysis tools. I’m going to try to post an image of the spectrum in a sec.
So this is what I have, note the log scale. Additionally, I’ve pitched it up two octaves just to show how deep that bass goes. (The blip in the first note is my sound card screwing up.) It’s not such a problem for the last few notes, so it’s probably caused by whatever bug I have.
Anyway, those bass notes… you can pretty much tell that’s something you don’t want to listen to. Oddly, it sounds nice, at first anyway.
This moment when you try to help someone like he’s a newbie and he shows you he’s extremely well versed in the subject…
#WhereToHide
Haha, don’t feel bad. Half that was speculation to fit the facts. It’s a sound idea, but I don’t think it’s been neurologically confirmed.
But yeah, I’m a total nerd when it comes to brain stuff and to audio.
Anyway: good news! Since I can’t stop thinking about stuff I’ve been bouncing this around in my head constantly since making my last post. I guess explaining it helps (see: rubber duck debugging.) I realized that I’ve got two feedback loops going into the same delay line. I just inverted the signal on one of them in hopes of phase-cancelling the bad stuff. It worked! Unfortunately the bass is no longer smooth like it was, but at least it doesn’t break your ears.
So development is back on. I still have a weird problem with the modulator wimping out at higher frequencies. I might leave it with controls to compensate just for the sake of having a dynamic instrument. Still loads of work to add more modulators to it and assign all the parameters.
Wow sorry for this story. Have you recovered from this bad sound ?
I finally sold my organelle, and feel bad about it… I had the feeling I could not invest the time it deserved to learn puredata, and prefer to focus on the op1 and its wonders.
That tinnitus stuff sounds fascinating in the kind of way where you sound like you know your stuff, and also that I hope it gets better! Also, I live with tinnitus, and have done for many many years, I mostly have good hearing I think, I hear stuff that others cannot who don’t have tinnitus, but in loud places, I have trouble understanding soft talking people.
I’ve found for me that whenever I look into trying to make my tinnitus less bad, it gets worse! If that makes sense… The best treatment has been acceptence, for me.
Yeah, the low-frequency tinnitus was temporary. I still have the dying CRT sound from back when, but I don’t notice it. The bass one I could practically feel though, so it would probably be unbearable.
Yep, rest is important. Stress, blood pressure, hunger and all sorts of things can make it worse. As long as I keep that in check it doesn’t bother me, even though I can still hear it if I listen for it.
rest isn’t so much of an option for me as a full time working musician. But I get what I can