Re: ABSN reversed playback behavior

Hello Joe,

> Max/MSP (probably the most popular scriptable/wirable sound environment):
loops are ignored with negative playback rate (
https://docs.cycling74.com/max5/tutorials/msp-tut/mspchapter14.html)

I spent a good chunk of my life with Max/MSP and I can tell the groove~
supports negative playback rate with looping. The reference might be
incorrect - I just downloaded 7.3.3 and confirmed again; groove~ supports
the negative playback and it runs like option (2).

> Apple Logic X Pro (one of the most popular DAWs): loops are ignored when
"Reverse" option is selected on an instrument zone (verified by trying it)

>From your mention of "an instrument zone", I believe you meant EXS24
sampler. The new Alchemy synth/sampler actually supports the reverse
looping.

> If anyone knows how the Ableton Live or Native Instruments/Kontakt
samplers handle this, it would be useful.

Ableton does not support the on-the-fly backward looping on the audio clip,
but I think it can be achieved via Looper plug-in. Not sure about Kontakt,
but I believe Maschine and Battery can handle the backward looping.
However, this is all from my memory and needs to be verified.

FWIW, Max/MSP's groove~ is the closest thing to our ABSN. We don't have to
follow but I believe that's what most computer musicians (including myself)
are expecting.

-Hongchan

On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 9:54 AM Joe Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com> wrote:

> Here are a couple of results gleaned from looking at documentation that I
> could find on the Web. They all relate to sampler-based musical
> synthesizers so they do not really reflect the use cases driving (2), but
> it's still useful to know:
>
> Apple Logic X Pro (one of the most popular DAWs): loops are ignored when
> "Reverse" option is selected on an instrument zone (verified by trying it)
>
> Max/MSP (probably the most popular scriptable/wirable sound environment):
> loops are ignored with negative playback rate (
> https://docs.cycling74.com/max5/tutorials/msp-tut/mspchapter14.html)
>
> If anyone knows how the Ableton Live or Native Instruments/Kontakt
> samplers handle this, it would be useful.
>
> Given that these implementations don't allow looping with backwards
> playback *at all*, I don't know that they argue for either of the two
> behaviors :-)
>
> .            .       .    .  . ...Joe
>
> Joe Berkovitz
> Founder
> Noteflight LLC
>
> 49R Day Street
> Somerville MA 02144
> USA
>
> "Bring music to life"
> www.noteflight.com
>
> On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 11:03 AM, Raymond Toy <rtoy@google.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for putting this together.  This, indeed, is the source of my
> confusion!
>
> Option 2 was my naive interpretation of what I thought looping should do.
> Having never used any other music application digital or otherwise, I would
> encourage people to weigh in on what looping should do with negative
> playback.
>
> I have not yet looked at your new changes, but I will get to it shortly.
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 6:45 AM, Joe Berkovitz <joe@noteflight.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ray and group,
>
> I thought I'd try to put out an explanation of the latest revisions to
> https://github.com/WebAudio/web-audio-api/pull/1143 and why I think it
> addresses the issues that came up in yesterday's call. I also think this
> issue should be made more visible to observers of the WG's activity.
>
> To recap: we have a conflict between two alternate interpretations of what
> should happen when playbackRate is reversed on an ABSN that is playing, and
> whose playhead position is currently within the looped portion of the
> buffer:
>
> 1. *The node should play the exact reverse of everything that it has
> played up since it started*. In this behavior, the looped portion is played
> backwards for only as many iterations as it has already played forwards
> (which could be 1 or fewer). This behavior is useful for, say, playing a
> musical note that incorporates both an attack and a looped section in a way
> that "sounds backwards".
>
> 2. *The node should play the loop in reverse, indefinitely*. This is
> useful for playing a looped section in reverse for an indefinite period,
> like a DJ "scrubbing" a looped sound on a turntable by spinning it
> backwards, or a repeating sound effect being played backwards over and over
> again.
>
> There are clearly two somewhat incompatible use cases here. My argument
> for (1) was that it is a simple, literal interpretation of "backwards".
> However Ray has made some compelling arguments for (2):
>
> - Without this behavior, there is no practical way to achieve indefinite
> backwards looping. I had argued for setting an arbitrary large "offset"
> value, but I now realize that this violates the sense of "offset" as an
> actual offset constrained by the buffer's physical length.
>
> - It is possible to achieve the effect of (1) without prescribing any
> special ABSN behavior, by either unrolling the looped samples or by playing
> two ABSNs in juxtaposed sequence, one with the reversed loop and the other
> with the reversed attack.
>
> The most recent revision to PR #1143 now specifies behavior compatible
> with (2) (I hope!) so that we can evaluate what people think of this
> approach. The changes I made were simple: there is a new "enteredLoop" flag
> that tracks whether the playhead has ever entered the loop. If this flag is
> true, then effectiveBufferTime is allowed to wrap *forward*, mapping
> playhead positions prior to actualLoopStart to their corresponding wrapped
> positions prior to actualLoopEnd.
>
> In Ray's test case, the enteredLoop flag becomes true immediately because
> the offset parameter places the playhead within the loop from the start of
> playback. Consequently, the loop will play backwards indefinitely.
>
> In cases where the playhead lies within the "attack" phase of a looped
> note sample, though, the playhead would simply play the attack backwards.
> So this does partially support the goals of behavior (1).
>
> See
> https://rawgit.com/WebAudio/web-audio-api/5d4a6e8b1c3603b5a923f7b0361e2f2078c25389/index.html#playback-AudioBufferSourceNode
> for details.
>
> .            .       .    .  . ...Joe
>
> Joe Berkovitz
> Founder
> Noteflight LLC
>
> 49R Day Street
> Somerville MA 02144
> USA
>
> "Bring music to life"
> www.noteflight.com
>
>
>
>