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 Forum index » Clavia Nord Modular » Nord Modular G2 Discussion
Bug in delay lines?
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Afro88



Joined: Jun 20, 2004
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2005 4:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I don't see the point of having a 24bit signal path if reverbs and delays are actually 16bit. Those are the 2 effects which you're most likely to hear the increased dynamic range from a 24bit signal path. I hate to say it, but it looks suspiciously to me like Clavia chose 24bit/96k so they can say 24bit/96k in the promotional material.

If there is some kind of work around that would be really nice. I used to use the G2's delays a fair bit, but noticed that they don't behave like my software delays - with high feedback they deteriorate into noise quite quickly and stay at a constant noisy low level which is pretty annoying. On some occasions they also seem to weaken the sound which I know sounds stupid, but that's the effect they have with my ears.... For conventional delays I usually record the G2 into the computer these days and use a software delay on that sound. It seems to sound much nicer.
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Jason



Joined: Aug 12, 2004
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2005 4:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I dont have anything particularly good or bad about the quality of the delays other than its a shame this 16bit seems to be true.
I will only use them for some specific features and I too rely on adding delays after the fact in software or with outboard gear for that matter, but still... My question however is if anything is being done at that point if the signal is just being turncated or if any dithering is being applied which I would doubt since the path is still 24bit? At this point its a mess anyway.
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2005 5:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I promissed I´d stay out of the G2 stuff but I think this topic is worth breaking a little promise over. As long as no DAC´s or keyboards are mentioned we´ll be fine :¬p

First; the reverb has a known bug in that it doesn´t go back to silence but stays noisy at a low level, quite a smooth noise. I don´t think that´s just the delay element, I think it´s a chaotic function with a accidental non-zero stable state. I fear that one got marked as "low priority".

Second; for tonal, KS-style, delay feedback there are various reasons to use a clocked delay, shiftregister style. These don´t suffer from being 16 bits, can be more easily tuned (if you use a power of 2) and due to a static amount of samples reacts better to modulation while playing a sound (a important difference, Rob did some very interesting work in this field back in 83 which I more recently took to the G2 and made some slight variations/improvements on, we were planning a little article but got side-tracked). Since you know the exact clock speed at all times custom interpolation algorithems become much easier too. I recomend this method over the stringosc because it reacts to modulations in a much better way and gives far more tonal controll.

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cebec



Joined: Apr 19, 2004
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2005 2:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hmm. I think Clavia might be able to make this up to us if they try this:

The delays on the G2 Demo software are 24 bit? 32 bit floating point? and use the PC or Mac's system RAM for storage. Why don't they just allow us to choose whether we'd like to use the G2s RAM or our system's RAM... There must be some way, with the USB port and tiny amounts of RAM required.

We also need a statement from Clavia that lists all of the modules that are effectively 16 bit and how the conversion from 24 to 16 and back again takes place. They need to fix the Reverb bug, too!
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mosc
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2005 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Maybe we can talk to Palle who is representing Clavia at electro-music 2005 and see if he has anything on this topic.
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 6:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

cebec wrote:
Why don't they just allow us to choose whether we'd like to use the G2s RAM or our system's RAM... There must be some way, with the USB port and tiny amounts of RAM required.


Well, RAM amount isn´t the bottleneck, actually it´s insignifficant. The problem is USB bandwith. You could have 8 (or so?) delay modules, times 24 bit, times 96KHz, times two (back and from), you do the math... Oh, and it realy should go times 4 again since that´s how many G2´s they want to be able to have on one port using a hub.

We need to remember Magnus is a very intelligent man, if it were simple it would´ve been solved already

Quote:

We also need a statement from Clavia that lists all of the modules that are effectively 16 bit and how the conversion from 24 to 16 and back again takes place.


Agreed. You have a right to this and they need to be honest since it´s what they sell. I agree. It´s not the end of the world though. If this were the worst problem I would´ve gotten two G2´s.

Quote:

They need to fix the Reverb bug, too!


Yes, well.... Simple, cheap yet good sounding reverbs are hard to make, especially good decaying feedback loops for reverbs that sound lively are hard; you could easily spend a lifetime on those. For now I sugest you abuse it as a cheap, very gentle sounding noise source; I think it beats the "noise" module hands down.

Don´t get me wrong; you are right all round, but the problems are very hard and certainly not fixable with the snap of a finger.

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Tim Kleinert



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:
Don´t get me wrong; you are right all round, but the problems are very hard and certainly not fixable with the snap of a finger.


Adding a 24-bit option to the delay modules isn't hard at all.

It just requires providing 24bit depth by splitting every third 16bit word into its LSB and MSB and making two 24bit words out of that. Some extra code for handling the memory pointers, but nothing more.

Of course, this reduces the overall available delay time by 33.3%, so it would be something like 1,8 seconds instead of 2,7. Still a good figure, imo, and way enough for physical modelling and other applications where true audio bandwidth is paramount.

They could leave all the existing 16bit delay modes as they are (for backward patch compatibility and since 16bit is enough for many apps), so, implementation-wise, it would simply boil down to adding some extra entries to the delay time dropdown menus.

Not difficult at all.
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cebec



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 7:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

yeah, that sounds great. and i could live with shorter, higher quality delays, etc. i hope they listen to my requests for them to check this thread and/or rectify/clarify the situation.
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jksuperstar



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 7:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yep, send 'em to your other thread for details!

http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-4850.html
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cebec



Joined: Apr 19, 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 7:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ah, right, thanks!
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