What do you hear?

[Paul Battersby]

Linked below is a short sample of a few flute notes followed by a few clarinet notes. These have been described to me as follows:

For the flutes (first sample) "Every note except the last is followed by a squeak"

For the clarinets: (second sample):  It's a harsh sound, and there's a buzzing or rattling that gets louder as it moves up the scale.  It sounds to me like something metallic [...] you can hear the levers rattling"

Is that what you hear? (I've provided both .mp3 and .ogg versions)

flute-clarinet-samples (mp3)

flute-clarinet-samples (ogg)


I personally like the sound of the clarinets, but I'm curious to know what others hear.

[Samulis]

The links didn't seem to work for me. Maybe try uploading on Instuad.io?
https://instaud.io/

I always find there is a battle between "perfect theoretical synthetic sound" and "realistic mistake-riddled sound". I tend towards the latter, but some people are crazy into things that sound more like square waves than clarinets as being "good clarinet samples".

Once someone was complaining about my glockenspiel samples, "Oh they have this awful giant thud at the start!" and I was like, "what on earth are you talking about?" Turns out there was indeed a thud, but to me it made it so much more natural and realistic- I added an EQ so people could remove it, haha.

[Mattias Westlund]

(01-11-2017, 08:19 PM)Samulis Wrote: The links didn't seem to work for me.

Nope, not for me either.

[Paul Battersby]

Try it now. I had tested the links in Firefox when I first posted the topic and the links worked. Testing again in Chrome it didn't work. Not sure why it didn't either always work or never work.

Anyway, the links should work now.

[Michael Willis]

(01-11-2017, 08:19 PM)Samulis Wrote: "Oh they have this awful giant thud at the start!"

Hey! I like that awful giant thud! Glockenspiel samples have no soul if you can't tell that a mallet was involved

[Samulis]

I hear a bit of sound on the releases of the flutes, but honestly it sounds like a bit of "chiff" sort of noise and sorta adds realism to the releases to me. It sounds like it's part of a specific sample used in that range.

I didn't hear anything in particular on the clarinets. There's a bit of an airy sound, but to me at least, that's desirable- honestly for freeware clarinets, they sound pretty darn good. I didn't hear anything that sounded like keywork.

[Otto Halmén]

The "chiff" at the end of each flute note is probably a matter of taste. In the phrase, it sounds out of place. Personally, I'd cut it out.

As to the clarinets, the sample that covers C and D has some kind of fluctuation going on. Could be a wolf tone (if clarinets have them?), could be loose levers (though it doesn't sound exactly like that to me), could be a post production mistake (e.g. botched dynamic range compression from a batch process). The rest sounds fine, though.

[Mattias Westlund]

Huh, I didn't hear anything wrong with any of it. Like Samulis said, some people want pure square waves for clarinets rather than the real instrument. Now, my personal experience with live wind instuments is limited to a variety of Irish whistles (high and low), a keyless Irish flute,  plus a few recorders, a fife and something called a spelpipa and let me tell you... chiff, hiss and squeaks are what differentiates a real instrument from an analog synth.

[kmlandre]

I think a lot of people audition these things completely out of any musical context where even *live* players often sound ho-hum at best. The minute you put those squeaks, squawks, thumps, thuds, scrapes, pings, chuffs, quacks, and blisterious sliffelbrall in an ensemble setting, it all sounds 1000% better than the "clean" version, especially if you're using a round robin shared neighbor approach...

IMHO...

 -- Kurt

[peastman]

I'm the one who created the file, so I should explain a bit.  When I listen to the flutes, there's a very pronounced squeak that cuts right through a whole orchestra.  I was trying the VPO instruments for one of my pieces, and it just jumped out at me as "what the heck was that?"  Just listening to the sample once it's not so bad, just a little extra "realism".  But listening to a whole series of notes where every one has exactly the same squeak, it's very distracting.

When I listen to the clarinets, there's a clear metallic buzzing/rattling sound.  That again is audible over the whole orchestra.  Every time the clarinets would come in I would say, "What is that?  It sounds terrible!"  When I switched back to the SSO clarinets, everything sounded good again.  Paul has edited the file a bit: my original version had the clarinet line played first with the SSO instrument and then the VPO instrument, which emphasized the difference.  You can get it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nelfumnzxifn67...o.mp3?dl=0


Naturally, you need to listen with a good pair of studio headphones.  Listening through my laptop speakers I don't hear any problem at all, but that's to be expected.

Peter