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Post by kenjwright on Mar 6, 2020 22:33:08 GMT -5
Greetings! ddrum4edit v1.00.05 is now available.
As of version 1.00.05, ddrum4edit includes an experimental feature to provide your own samples. This however does have some limitations. The sample files must be only AIFF file type with 8 or 16 bit depth and a frequency of 44100Hz with no compression. 16 bit files must be in the standard Big Endian format. So far the only success has been achieved by down-sampling to 8 bit and bypassing all dd4 compression parameters so the quality of the sounds will vary greatly depending on the wave content. Some noise from quantization is inevitable so not all samples will bring great joy, but others may be acceptable and adjustments to the layer parameters may help. By including your sample AIFF filenames in the configuration file, with an extension of .aif, .aiff, or .aifc, the sample file will be processed as AIFF input versus .smp. Mixing .aif and .smp filenames in the configuration file is supported so you can mix & match to fit your sound file needs.
I have also included a new folder "Sample Files" on Dropbox where I placed the configuration and aiff files from sampling my Paiste 2002 24" Ride. The samples were captured as 8bit, 44100Hz and sounds surprisingly better than expected. Due to the lack of compression, sound files will obviously be much larger than native dd4 files.
Cheers! and Enjoy!
Ken
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Post by kjob3022 on Apr 14, 2020 12:26:14 GMT -5
This is an amazing volume of work that will open many more minds to the miracle this module still provides around the globe for all the future lucky people that will find it and expand on the incredible talent shown here, thank you so much and well done my friend, respectfully, Ken
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Post by kenjwright on Apr 15, 2020 3:56:59 GMT -5
^^^ Thanks Ken for your comments! ^^^ It has been lots of fun mixing my two passions; coding & drumming! And now digital audio added to the mix  . For those tracking progress, version 1.00.07 just uploaded and available. Changes are noted in the Release Notes portion of the PDF document (ddrum4edit.pdf). Enjoy!! Cheers! Ken |
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Post by kenjwright on Apr 23, 2020 16:56:07 GMT -5
Greetings! ddrum4edit v1.00.10 is now available!
This version marks a significant milestone in that user custom samples are now fully supported. This is described in the updated Users Guide but to recap, by utilizing the ddrum4 module's support for MIDI Sample Dump Standard, custom wave files (i.e., AIFF, WAV) can be loaded into the module as normal, however they can also be exported back to SysEx files that retain the dd4 2:1 compression and sound quality. Although the export feature itself is not new (great for archiving), the SysEx file does not represent a complete and valid ddrum4 sound file. However, ddrum4edit can now read this SysEx file directly when included in a ddrum4edit configuration file and write the sample contents to a sound file (.mid). This includes applying any and all configuration changes, sample ordering, etc. that ddrum4edit provides. Also included in the Sound File Reference folder on Dropbox is dump.cfg which contains the exact configuration that the dd4 module creates when a custom sample is loaded via SDS. BTW, I am using C6 from Electron to do the initial SDS transfers of the WAV files to the dd4 module.
Cheers! and Enjoy!
Ken
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Post by Deleted on Apr 29, 2020 5:18:21 GMT -5
Awesome job!
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Post by angr77 on May 9, 2020 13:48:51 GMT -5
Hi!
I made some tests with the fantastic ddrum4edit tool...and managed to export an old *.mid file. (It was a Mel Gaynor kick) The CFG, DAT and SMP files are exported as they are supposed to. (on my Windows PC) - and I can read the cfg to understand the structure and layers etc....
Just a question - it is maybe obvious for everybody working with the ddrum4 SE...but is it so that the native SMP file format can't be viewed or opened for listening - i think you are mentioning something about in the PDF - but no in clear text. (I was trying opening it in Audacity - without any success)
But as I understand you can add your own AIFF or Wave files (Using the right format) + the CFG and store them into mid file format?
Best Regards
Anders / http://www.zourman.com
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Post by kenjwright on May 9, 2020 20:25:55 GMT -5
Hi Anders! The smp files are specific to ddrum4edit however the content is actually the native dd4 sample packets contained in its proprietary format. ddrum4edit simply extracts the complete samples into separate files that can be utilized further by ddrum4edit. The files contain sysex headers & trailers with the sample data formatted as 7 bit bytes packed into 8 bit blocks with the special dd4 compression parameters. So the smp files are not in a format readable by any audio editors. I have spend considerable time studying the compression format and compared to codecs of that time period but so far have not found any to be a reasonable match so I suspect this may be something rather non-standard. Maybe one day I'll receive some hints This is where I first found that I could pack AIFF & RIFF file content, but only as 8 bit, non-compressed. Quality varies depending on the source audio though so this was not a great solution but at least usable to some degree, albeit a bit noisy. The best way to include your own sounds with true dd4 quality is to use the latest feature that utilizes the ddrum4 module itself to load the wav files, then dump back out in sysex format so that ddrum4edit can then include in a .cfg file and build a new .mid file. This way you get the advantage of the dd4 proprietary format, with 2:1 compression, but most importantly, full control over layering, sequencing, velocity, and positioning. This is what is missing from just loading wav files into the DUMP category of the sound module, which results in just a single layer with little control other than some built in variations. If you check the frequency range of your own samples in an audio editor and find little above 11,000Hz, then these are perfect candidates for resampling from 44100Hz to 22050Hz files, which when combined with the dd4 2:1 reduction, will result in samples with a 4:1 size reduction which is comparable to the native dd4 compression of either 3:1 or 6:1. I was able to decode a good portion of the dd4 sample rate table so now ddrum4edit includes the sample frequency (Hz) index value in the dd4 format for custom samples, so at least one of the three dd4 unknowns is known ;-) Cheers! Ken |
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Post by angr77 on May 10, 2020 11:20:09 GMT -5
Hi Ken! Big thanks for the clearification! I am going to play around and see if I could post my onw snare samples...to my ddrum 4SE. :-) Best Regards Anders / www.zourman.com |
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2020 1:45:22 GMT -5
Could any of you guys possibly post a smp-file? Would be interesting to see if I could make any sense of it. I doubt it, but anyway |
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Post by kenjwright on May 16, 2020 3:21:15 GMT -5
Hi Krillo! The best way to get an smp file is to just use ddrum4edit -e which will produce a small default smp file named default.smp (which is actually KICK_119 RYkick).
Cheers!
Ken
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Post by angr77 on May 17, 2020 4:31:52 GMT -5
Hi Ken! Big thanks for launching nice and exciting tools! I saw that the 1.00.16 was launched also! I took a journey into this exciting area...and picked one of my samples released on www.zourman.com. A snare called 101 White Diamond. I picked 8 layers from this sampling data consisting of 80 layers. I followed your descriptions and examples on how to create a nice ddrum4 mid file, but I seems to have been running into problems in the last step. When running the ddrum4tool and opening my created mid file...the ddrum4tool just quits. (Works fine with any of your examples). I used several layers so I am guessing the SAMPLE DATA section needs to be updated with the right blocks etc. Just for testing I was stealing the SAMPLE DATA from an old exported Mel Gaynor Snare...but this is probably not right. See the readme + cfg + mid file, in the attached dropbox for details. What do you think? :-) (Exporting back my file from the mid file using -e parameter it looks the wave files are missing…) Best Regards Anders / http://www.zourman.com |
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Post by kenjwright on May 17, 2020 13:10:59 GMT -5
Could you send me the source wav and syx (syx produced by ddrum4edit) files as well? Something ddrum4edit is definitely not happy about ;-) The export crashes when creating the first wav file, but 1.00.12 (no wav support) exports fine. But the mid file is not good either so would help to be able to reproduce. You can also try using the default SAMPLE DATA block which always(?) work.
Checked a bit further and the smp sound content is corrupt which explains the crash during wav creation. So being able to reproduce your workflow will help find where the corruption has occurred.
HaHa! Our messages crossed over the wire ;-)
Cheers!
Ken
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Post by angr77 on May 17, 2020 15:55:15 GMT -5
Hi Ken!
I just sent you a PM with all details. :-) Strange...I made some new tests - going back to the default sample data block...No luck here. I wonder...is there any problems with the Syx file which came back from my ddrum? But, anyway is has so far been extremely fun - I really like the opportunity to be able to post samples to DDRUM4.
Best Regards
Anders / http://www.zourman.com
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Post by kenjwright on Sept 7, 2020 20:00:07 GMT -5
Greetings! ddrum4edit v1.00.18 is now available!
This version is mostly a feature cleanup from 1.00.16. Please see the release notes in the user guide for the complete reference. Notably there is now a distinct difference between .syx and .dd4 file types. Originally the .syx extension was shared between the ddrum4 dump files and the SDS files produced by ddrum4edit, which ultimately was confusing so now the .syx extension is specific to the SDS files that ddrum4edit creates for loading into the ddrum4, and the .dd4 is used for files dumped from the ddrum4 module.
This version also now creates .aiff files for each sample packet when using the -b switch to break the samples into the individual packets (.pkt) that make up a complete sample so the smallest unit of a sound file can be viewed/listened to in an audio editor.
Cheers! and Enjoy!
Ken
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Post by kenjwright on Oct 9, 2020 0:48:33 GMT -5
Greetings! ddrum4edit v1.00.19 is now available!
ddrum4edit now includes the -l switch to listen (play) the sample sounds contained in the Soundfile similar to what ddrum4tool does (minus the gui) without needing to first extract the wav files via the export (-e) function. This should work on all versions of MacOS 10.x (Intel-x64 and PPC) and was tested on Windows 2000, Windows 7, and Windows 10 as well (all 32bit). Please let me know if you experience any issues.
Internally, to have consistency across platforms without needing to consider multiple evolving versions of sound libraries, ddrum4edit simply creates temporary wav files of each sample and executes a small local player. For MacOS the standard console player afplay is used which should be present on all versions of MacOS 10.x. For Windows, the tiny (4k) gplay.exe from UnxUtils is embedded within ddrum4edit.exe. gplay utilizes the DirectSound libraries so should cover all versions of Windows from Win98 through Windows 10.
Cheers! and Enjoy!
Ken
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. For those tracking progress, version 1.00.07 just uploaded and available. Changes are noted in the Release Notes portion of the PDF document (ddrum4edit.pdf). Enjoy!!