Hey guys,

A customer of mine reported highly unusual sound issues with my Handy Drums plugins.
The sound is completely messed up, as if it came from the Transformers movies.

The issue happens only on his laptop computer, running W11. He tried a number of audio drivers and buffer sizes with the same results. He has no issues with other plugins.
The issue persists both in standalone apps and when used as plugins inside DAWs. The audio render below is from Cubase, but he had the same issue in Audacity.

He tried loading samples both on-demand (lazy) and all at once and toggled the fast SSD/ slow HDD, with no changes.

Please take a listen to the audio example. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this and how to fix it?

Before hitting play, turn down the volume, as the audio may be very loud!

@d-healey said in New feature: Release Start:

Wouldn't you just disable the release entirely for legato transitions and use a scripted fade?

You should still have release samples on the legato. That is actually a giveaway that an instrument is virtual and not real. Think about what happens in real world if you were playing a note, say in a concert hall, then played another one legato. As you are transitioning to another note, the initial note would be ringing around at the same time. So, if you want to keep the realism, you must include release notes when playing legato.

@Simon oh, sweet! Thank you for that. Then, the feature is truly wonderful

Stopping by to say hi! It's been a while.

@Christoph-Hart I'd like to point out one crucial detail regarding release notes, which I tackled in my software with the hi-hat open/closed release notes.

It is not enough to just have a release note for a sample. For the playback to sound natural, the gain of the release sample must match that of the main portion of the sample at the moment when a note is released.
So, if you release a note when the peak is at -15db, the release note gain should not be the same as when you release the note with a peak at -30db.

When I say that "it should match," I do not mean necessarily that the release note must be played at the same gain value as the main sample when released (eg. -15db sample peak with -15db peak of release note). I think that the overall balance (main sample/ vs release) needs to be adjusted by ear, as I have done, but a simple formula can get a good ratio between main sample and release note. Adjustment by ear is to get an overall loudness of all release notes in the sampler.

When done properly, any released note sounds natural.

@Christoph-Hart said in iOS Export:

@weezycarter yes iOS is pretty much abandoned.

I find the above statement highly concerning @Christoph-Hart .

If I may, I want to make a prophetic statement here so we can refer to it months and years from now.

iOS and mobile music production is the new frontier. Platforms and developers who seize on this shift early on and adapt will reap the riches. Others will either be left in the dust or play catch-up.

I've had countless interactions with customers and potential customers that strongly indicate this. Most people here have not yet caught on to that, but they will eventually. I think it is a terrible idea not to actively maintain the iOS support, and I urge you to please dedicate some time to keeping it up to date. It would be far more valuable to successfully port to iOS all the amazing things HISE currently offers than to keep adding new things to the current platforms. Now is the perfect time to enter the new frontier.

@Lindon Is it playing samples? I've experienced this when I accidentally had 2 samples (of the same sample) layered on top of one another. So, if you are using samples, double check all your sample maps. It would explain the 6db increase, as that is the double gain of the same sample duplicated.

@clevername27 Sick!

@Christoph-Hart Thank you very much! I will check this out.

@Christoph-Hart said in CC controller data delayed slightly when coming from the MIDI player:

// 2. if they have the same timestamp, prefer notes over CC

Did you mean to comment, "prefer CC over notes"?

@Christoph-Hart Good point. I checked it: in the MIDI file, the notes are written before the controller. When the MIDI file plays on a MIDI track connected to the plugin in Cubase, the controller and note play at the same and thus, the controller affects the note. But, when the MIDI is loaded directly into HISE MIDI player, that is not the case.

So, I guess a solution would be to sniff out if a note is artificial and if so, delay it by a sample, right?

When a CC controller value change happens precisely at the same time as a note is played, everything works as it should when played from a DAW.

However, if the same MIDI performance is exported from DAW as a MIDI file and played in the HISE MIDI player, the CC data is delayed slightly, causing the note played simultaneously not to be affected by the CC value change.

This is problematic in instances of using CC to control hi-hat openness.

If I move the CC by 1pp earlier (so that it happens a hair before the note) and re-export the MIDI file, then import it into the HISE MIDI player, the CC plays in time to affect the note.

I am using HISE from January 10, 2024. @Christoph-Hart, is this something that may have been fixed since January 10th?

@Dominik-Mayer Wow, man! That's brilliant, and it's a really great concept. I am sure this will be hugely helpful to a lot of folks. Thank you!

Please make HISE fully compatible with screen readers before adding new fancy features or releasing v4, so that blind users can properly use our existing software.

@ustk yeah, that's what she said.

@d-healey For you, if you are already on S3 and set up, there would be no advantage.
For somebody new, the advantage of it is that it is a lot simpler and easier to use.

I use both for a couple of websites I run, so I am able to compare them.

@ustk A CDN is not going to compensate for other shortcomings. It should be used in conjunction with and as part of the overall optimization process. I recommend running the tests and checking out the recommendations in browser dev tools.

I've done a fair amount of this over the years. The most critical things that make the biggest impact are the size of images, caching of everything that can be cached, GZIP compression, lazy load of images and videos, and HTTP2 protocol. Of course, a good server is very important.

Years ago, before I delved into all of this, I was working on a website and wondering why it was taking ages to load (50 sec). Then I realized my images were like 1.5MB each Once I brought them down to 120KB each and implemented the other optimizations, the website has been loading instantly ever since.

@clevername27 Then your vote doesn't count. Sorry.

@clevername27 Have you tried the Digital Ocean CDN?

@ustk a CDN should be helpful since files are distributed to several "edge" locations around the world and get served to end users from the location closest to them.

The CDN plugin I mentioned here works great. I use it to serve all images, videos, and products from the CDN.

Make sure your website uses HTTP2 protocol, as multiple resources get served at the same time, as opposed to one-by-one, thus speeding up your website.

@d-healey The plugin is:

Upload Your WordPress Media to Amazon S3 with WP Offload Media - Delicious Brains Inc

Speed up your WordPress site by offloading your media to Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces or Google Cloud Storage. Watch a full demo and see how it works.

Delicious Brains (deliciousbrains.com)

It automatically transfers all of your uploaded content from the website over to the CDN and updates the website links to pull assets from the CDN. You can offload any assets from the CDN to be served from your website.

For software distribution, I upload files directly to the Digital Ocean CDN. Unlike Amazon's ridiculous barrage of settings, it is as simple as "private or public" for any file. I set them to "public," as no one actually sees the direct links. The WP plugin, in conjunction with WooCommerce, creates unique links on the fly. The links expire as soon as they are used, but new ones are generated as soon as the user clicks on the download button.

When setting WooCommerce products, I use the CDN endpoint links for each product. You are provided 3 links for each uploaded file by the DO CDN: origin, CDN, and subdomain endpoints.

The WP Offload Media can also be used with Amazon.

@ustk I have not tried your approach, so I can't advise on such a procedure. However, I can recommend the Digital Ocean's CDN. It is extremely easy to use, affordable and there is a plugin that integrates with WooCommerce.

What @d-healey explained here sounds very good to me if you are utilizing a download manager. As an extra precaution, you can set the maximum number of downloads per product in WooCommerce to, say, 5. Then, if someone needs more, you can manually regenerate download links for them. That would prevent someone from downloading hundreds of times.