# Release Alignment in Sampled Pipe Organs - Part 1

At the most basic level, a sample from a digital pipe organ contains:

• an attack transient leading into
• a looped sustain block and
• a release which will be cross-faded into when the note is released.

The release cross-fade must be fast (otherwise it will not sound natural or transient details may be lost) and it must also be phase-aligned to the point where the cross-fade begins.

## The necessity for phase alignment

Without phase aligning the release, disturbing artefacts will likely be introduced. The effects are different with short and long cross-fades but are always unpleasant.

The following image shows an ideal cross-fade into a release sample. The crossfade begins at 0.1 seconds and lasts for 0.05 seconds. The release is aligned properly and the signal looks continuous.

A good crossfade into a release.

The following image shows a bad release where the cross-fade is lagging an ideal release offset by half-a-period. Some cancellation occurs during the cross-fade and the result will either sound something like a "pluck" for long cross-fades or a "click" for short cross-fades.

A worst-case crossfade into a release.

(The cross-fade used in generating the above data sets was a raised cosine - linear cross-fades can be used but will result in worse distortions).

The problem of aligning release cross-fades in virtual pipe organs is an interesting one. As an example: at the time of writing this article, release alignment in the GrandOrgue project is not particularly good; it uses a lookup-table taking the value and first-order estimated derivative (both quantised heavily) of the last sample of the last played block as keys. This is not optimal as a single sample says nothing about phase and the first-order derivative estimate could be completely incorrect in the presence of noise.

## Another approach for handling release alignment

If the pitch a pipe was to be completely stable, known ($f=\frac{1}{T}$) and we knew one point where the release was perfectly aligned ($t_r$), we know that we could cross-fade into the start of the release at:

Hence, for any sample offset we could compute an offset into the release to cross-fade into.

In reality, pipe pitch wobbles around a bit and so the above would not strictly hold all the time - that being said, it is true for much of the time. If we could take a pipe sample and find all of the points where the release is aligned we could always find the best way to align the release.

It turns out that a simple way to do this is to find the cross-correlation of the attack and sustain segment with a short portion of the release. Taking the whole release would be problematic because as it decays it becomes less similar to the sustaining segment (which leads to an unhelpful correlation signal).

The first 25000 samples of the signal used for the cross-correlation.

The above image shows the attack and some sustain of bottom-C of the St. Augustine's Closed Horn. This shows visually why single sample amplitude and derivative matching is a poor way to align releases. During one period of the closed horn, there are 14 zero crossings and 16 obvious zero crossings in the derivative. One sample gives hardly enough information.

A 1024 sample cut from the start of the release.

The above image shows a 1024 sample segment taken from the release marker of the same Closed Horn sample. It contains just over a single period of the horn.

The next image shows the cross-correlation of this release segment with the sample itself. My analysis program does correlation of the left and right channels and sums them to provide an overall correlation. Positive maximums correspond to points where the release will phase-align well. Minimums correspond to points where the signal has the least correlation to the release.

Normalised cross correlation of the signal with the release segment.

Using the correlation and a pitch guesstimate, we could construct a function which given any sample offset in the attack/sustain could produce an offset into the release which we should cross-fade into. This is for next time.

# wxWidgets, C++ libraries and C++11

## Building wxWidgets on OS X targeting libc++

It seems right to put this at the top of the post for easy access (probably for my own reference).

To get a configuration of wxWidgets (I am using version 3.0.0) which will use the libc++ as the standard library implementation, the following command line works (using Apple LLVM version 5.0 clang-500.2.79):

 ../configure --disable-shared --enable-unicode --with-cocoa --with-macosx-version-min=10.7 --with-macosx-sdk=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk CXXFLAGS="-std=c++0x -stdlib=libc++" CPPFLAGS="-stdlib=libc++" LIBS=-lc++ 

-std=c++0x (I know, this is deprecated syntax) tells the compiler that we want C++11 features.
-stdlib=libc++ tells the compiler we want to use the libc++ standard library implementation (rather than the libstdc++ implementation.

This will produce a static, unicode build of wxWidgets without debug information. The flags will not work with --with-macosx-version-min set to anything less than 10.7 because -stdlib=libc++ requires this as a minimum.

## Why build wxWidgets on OS X targeting libc++

OS X currently ships with two C++ libraries, libstdc++ and libc++. libc++ is reasonably new and completely supports C++11. libstdc++ (on OS X anyway) is very old and only supports a subset of C++03. Unless you specify otherwise, building an application with clang will produce object code which expects to link against libstdc++ targeting the C++98 standard. If you are building C++11 code and only add -std=c++0x to your compiler arguments, your application may fail to compile because the standard library might not have all of the features which you require. In short, if you require C++11 support on OS X, you probably want to migrate over to libc++ for your standard library.

If you build a static library with C++98 targeting libstdc++ and try to link it against an application targeting libc++, you are probably going to get errors looking something like (for wxWidgets anyway):

 Undefined symbols for architecture x86_64: "std::basic_string, std::allocator >::find_last_of(wchar_t const*, unsigned long, unsigned long) const", referenced from: wxFileName::SplitPath(wxString const&, wxString*, wxString*, wxString*, wxString*, bool*, wxPathFormat) in libwx_baseu-3.0.a(baselib_filename.o) "std::basic_string, std::allocator >::find_first_of(wchar_t const*, unsigned long, unsigned long) const", referenced from: wxLocale::GetSystemLanguage() in libwx_baseu-3.0.a(baselib_intl.o) wxFileName::SplitVolume(wxString const&, wxString*, wxString*, wxPathFormat) in libwx_baseu-3.0.a(baselib_filename.o) wxRegExImpl::Replace(wxString*, wxString const&, unsigned long) const in libwx_baseu-3.0.a(baselib_regex.o) wxString::find_first_of(char const*, unsigned long) const in libwx_baseu-3.0.a(baselib_mimecmn.o) wxString::find_first_of(char const*, unsigned long) const in libwx_osx_cocoau_core-3.0.a(corelib_osx_cocoa_button.o) 

... which will continue for several hundred lines.

This is because libstdc++ and libc++ are not fully ABI compatible. When your libc++ application tries to link against a library expecting libstdc++, you are going to have major unresolved symbol issues unless you use a very minimal subset of C++11. Bugger.

Edit: I just found this excellent post Marshall's C++ Musings - Clang and standard libraries on Mac OS X which is very relevant to the topic.

# Jaycar Electronics JV60 Speaker Kit Review

I'll start off this post by saying that my wife and I had a 5.1-channel satellite and subwoofer setup for quite a long time at home. After a few years I decided to upgrade to a stereo setup with decent left and right drivers. You heard right: upgrade to stereo. Our dominant use-case at home is listening to music rather than watching television and movies and satellite systems absolutely suck for music. If you purchased one of these systems with the puny 1 to 2 inch drivers I am so sorry that you have to listen to such inferior quality audio. I took the bookshelf speakers which I was using for my digital-organ and put them in our living area along with the existing subwoofer to create a 2.1 channel setup. Guess what: it was even better with television as well.

After about 6 months, I really wanted to play organ again without needing to use headphones so I started searching for some decent speakers which I could replace the bookshelf speakers with. After plenty of googling around and showing the specs to some of my work colleagues, I decided to DIY and get a Jaycar JV60 Speaker Kit (the cabinets are also available from Jaycar). The kit is a three-way design utilising 2 Vifa P17WJ speakers and a Vifa D25AG tweeter. The supplied crossover is designed such that one woofer provides only sub-200 Hz frequencies and the other provides sub 3 kHz frequencies i.e. there is an overlap in the bass frequency response. The manual states "This has been done to achieve a strong and extended bass..."

How the JV60 speaker kit is packed.

Included JV60 components.

Personally, I don't understand why the tweeter is in the middle of the cabinet rather than the top. I figure that the typical use-case for these speakers would be floor standing in a living space featuring an epic couch. Our couch is by no-means epic, and is actually quite low. Even so, when I am sitting on the couch, my ears are above the height of the tweeters. I would have expected that the most directional speakers would have been placed either on axis or slightly above rather than below the height of even the head of a child sitting on a couch.

## Building the Speakers

I thought this was going to be a trivial exercise that would take an hour or so - but it took me quite a bit longer. This is likely because I've forgotten how to use a screwdriver. Long ago are the days where I was apprenticing for Peter D Jewkes pipe organ builders... my hands still have blisters.

### Cabinets

The speakers are well built for the price.

The cabinets have a gloss finish on the front and matte finish on the rest.

### Mounting the Crossover

This is exactly how the JV60 crossovers are shipped with the kit

First step in the manual is mounting the crossover on the back of the speaker. You are meant to pre-drill holes for the screws to mount it inside on the back wall of the cabinet - but good luck doing this unless you have a miniature drill that you can fit inside the cabinet. I managed to get the supplied wood-screws straight into the back panel with a bit of force. The kit was missing the nylon spacers which were meant to separate the crossover from the back wall, but fortunately I had some spares in the garage.

## Issues with the Speakers

After building the speakers, I set about testing them out. Test one was loud electronic music - worked beautifully. Bass was clear and the break as mid frequencies lead into the tweeters was fantastic. Second test was some Bach organ chorales, this test did not go so well. I kept hearing some distortions in the audio; at first I wondered if it was the recording or encoding artefacts but then I noticed it was only coming from one speaker. So I fired up Adobe Audition, created a sine sweep and sure enough one of the tweeters was just totally distorting in the 2-5 kHz region. I got the speaker replaced and all was fine.

### Damaged Grill

When I got the speakers, one grill had damaged connectors which attach to the pins on the speaker cabinets (see the pictures). The plastic connections look like somebody had just hacked at them with a hammer and forced the grill on - even though it wasn't even close to being aligned to the pins. I managed to fix these up by inserting a screwdriver into the connectors for a while to restore their original shape... but I was still pretty annoyed that they were so broken when I got the cabinets.

## Summary

These speakers are amazing... once they are built and working. I doubt that I would be able to get a better sounding pair of speakers for less than 2 to 3 times the price I paid for these. However, if you decide to build this kit: insist on checking that all of the components are present and that there are no defects in the cabinets/grills. Make sure you do heaps of listening once you've built them to ensure the speakers are all working and there are no unpleasant distortions or leaks in the box.

What I really love about these speakers is how the mid woofer covers such a large frequency response and how well that response leads into the tweeter region. The drivers themselves are clearly of an epic quality: the tweeter is not harsh at all and both the woofers and the tweeter don't appear to have any horrible peaks in the frequency response. Even soft organ reeds with frequency content which covers the whole audible spectrum sound really natural.

# A short story

A few days ago, I had a lengthy reflection on how I used to "write code" when I was a boy (somewhere between 12 and 15 years old); I cannot remember what initialised the reflection, but it seemed interesting enough so I thought I would share it...

When I was a boy, my programs executed slowly. I don't think this is unexpected from programs developed by a kid, but on many occasions, mine were slow deliberately. I had this insane idea that by making my program do something in a complicated and/or convoluted way, it would be "smarter" or "better". It would be more awesome than the version that completed almost instantly.

I'm not sure what brought on this behaviour. Perhaps it was rooted in a desire to boast? i.e. because nobody I grew up with could program at all, I could boast about how complicated the task was which my program was solving and they wouldn't know any better? Another possible reason was related to computer games: I used to play games on my 486 DX and almost every game which I played had some sort of "loading" screen. The loading screen was where I would be anticipating what was to come - very soon, I was going to be placed into the action of the game. Maybe this instilled some idea that anything worth doing or having requires some period of waiting? Deep.

Thankfully, I abandoned this attitude a long time ago. It is a mind-numbingly stupid attitude.

However, I was lead to ponder the question: are there any adult software developers out there who actually write code like this? Maybe it's not the code that ends up being shipped (because it cannot meet performance requirements), but some internal thing that assists in creating the code which will ship? Maybe they think to themselves: "Ah-ha! I will make this code slow and - because they don't understand it - they will think I am a genius! Nobody will ever know!"? It all goes well for them until somebody proves their solution is so utterly inferior that they could not possibly have created it by accident... even the thought that these people could be employed somewhere makes me cringe.