High sample rate drum machine options?

Link to good samples/soundfonts at http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/free_audio_data

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funkapus
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High sample rate drum machine options?

Post by funkapus »

Hi. I'm mainly a guitarist, mostly acoustic but a little electric. I'm just getting going with recording on Linux. My plan was to use Hydrogen to create a drum/percussion sequence; playback and record the track with Ardour; and then subsequently record guitar tracks sync'd with the drum track. When checking out the drum kits I have available for Hydrogen, just playing the drum sounds direct to the monitors on my interface, I noticed that as long as my interface (and thus jack) were set at sample rates of 44.1k or 48k, the drums sounded decent; but with the interface at 96k, the drums sounded absolutely awful. I'm guessing this is an issue with the sample rates of the instrument samples that the kits are built on: they were probably sampled at 44.1k or 48k, and at 96k I'm guessing there's some interpolation issues or something.

So assuming I'm on the right track, are there higher-resolution drum kits available for Hydrogen? If not, is there some route I should be using instead for laying down drum tracks for higher-resolution recordings?

Thanks!
rghvdberg
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Re: High sample rate drum machine options?

Post by rghvdberg »

Yeah, better watch this before going on a while goose hunt for HD audio sample packs (because that's a hoax actually)
https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM
CrocoDuck
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Re: High sample rate drum machine options?

Post by CrocoDuck »

funkapus wrote: I'm guessing this is an issue with the sample rates of the instrument samples that the kits are built on: they were probably sampled at 44.1k or 48k, and at 96k I'm guessing there's some interpolation issues or something.
I would find it very odd if resampling was lowering the quality at all. I think it is since 1992 that resampling cannot really produce any audible artifact. That said, I am not entirely sure where resampling is happening, If it is within Hydrogen, maybe there could be a bug or somethings.

Are you able to produce some kind of recording of the issue? At this moment it looks like the resampling issue is more guesswork rather than something confirmed.
funkapus
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Re: High sample rate drum machine options?

Post by funkapus »

rghvdberg wrote:Yeah, better watch this before going on a while goose hunt for HD audio sample packs (because that's a hoax actually)
https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM
Thanks. This was mostly stuff I'm familiar with already (I'm a physicist); but it's done really well and I'm sure it'll come in handy.
funkapus
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Re: High sample rate drum machine options?

Post by funkapus »

CrocoDuck wrote:
funkapus wrote: I'm guessing this is an issue with the sample rates of the instrument samples that the kits are built on: they were probably sampled at 44.1k or 48k, and at 96k I'm guessing there's some interpolation issues or something.
I would find it very odd if resampling was lowering the quality at all. I think it is since 1992 that resampling cannot really produce any audible artifact. That said, I am not entirely sure where resampling is happening, If it is within Hydrogen, maybe there could be a bug or somethings.

Are you able to produce some kind of recording of the issue? At this moment it looks like the resampling issue is more guesswork rather than something confirmed.
Well, this was interesting! I was trying to figure out how best to produce a recording of what I'm hearing -- right now I don't have monitor speakers installed yet, and have been using headphones off the interface's headphone out. I thought about sending hydrogen output to the headphone out in qjackctl, and physically patching that to an input on the interface with a cable; but I presume there'll be impedance matching issues. I need to scrape up a manual for my interface and check. As an interim measure, I connected hydrogen directly to Jack Timemachine in qjackctl, and recorded a drum demo with jack's sample rate set to 48k; then did it again with the sample rate set to 96k. When I listed to each of those files using SoX play from the command line, they both sounded just fine. But when I connected hydrogen directly to the headphone out on my external interface, things sounded fine in the 48k instance and awful in the 96k instance. So it would appear to be something having to do with my interface (Echo AudioFire 8).
CrocoDuck
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Re: High sample rate drum machine options?

Post by CrocoDuck »

funkapus wrote: Thanks. This was mostly stuff I'm familiar with already (I'm a physicist);
Ha! Me too! You will maybe find this stuff on my blog interesting.
funkapus wrote:Well, this was interesting! I was trying to figure out how best to produce a recording of what I'm hearing -- right now I don't have monitor speakers installed yet, and have been using headphones off the interface's headphone out. I thought about sending hydrogen output to the headphone out in qjackctl, and physically patching that to an input on the interface with a cable; but I presume there'll be impedance matching issues. I need to scrape up a manual for my interface and check. As an interim measure, I connected hydrogen directly to Jack Timemachine in qjackctl, and recorded a drum demo with jack's sample rate set to 48k; then did it again with the sample rate set to 96k. When I listed to each of those files using SoX play from the command line, they both sounded just fine. But when I connected hydrogen directly to the headphone out on my external interface, things sounded fine in the 48k instance and awful in the 96k instance. So it would appear to be something having to do with my interface (Echo AudioFire 8).
That's pretty intriguing. The first port of call would be to record the streams directly to file, as you did. Looks like the streams are actually OK. Then, something must getting weird on the interface side of things. As of impedance, as you know, if the input impedance of your soundcard is much bigger than its output impedance you should be good. Keep the volume down, so that you don't overdrive it.

Can you describe how it sounds like when it is wrong in the meanwhile? Maybe it will ring some bells.
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