Yes, bass sounds that contain higher partials, as most actual instrumental 
bass sounds do, sound louder than they actually are on mediocre speakers, 
because the upper partials are loud enough for our lying ears to infer what 
the much reduced or even missing lower partials are.

It is critical to monitor on the best, i.e. the most accurate, possible 
speakers for this and similar reasons.

Regards,
Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Nelson" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:20 PM
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: low frequency oscilators


> Yes, I listened to it on better speakers and was able to hear much
> better.  It still seems a little quieter than I'd expect, but I can
> cope.  I played with the different vco2 modes, it's interesting, but I
> still prefer the simple oscilator I think.  Thanks for the feedback.
>
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 1:52 PM, Peter Lakanen  
> wrote:
>>
>> The first thing I'd check is the frequency response of the speakers or
>> headphones you are using to listen to the music.  I would think you could
>> hear 98Hz on most setups, but it's been a while since I was messing with
>> pure sine waves that low.
>>
>> NOTE: You didn't say anything about what your function table looks like 
>> so
>> I'm assuming you're using a simple sine wave.  If I'm right about you 
>> using
>> a simple sine wave, try adding some partials to spice it up a bit and 
>> give
>> your ear more stuff to grab onto at those lower frequencies.
>>
>> Regarding the vco2... if it sounds more like a video game and less like a
>> flute then I'm guessing you're not using sine waves here.  There is a lot 
>> of
>> variability in the vco2 instrument:
>>
>> http://www.csounds.com/manual/html/vco2.html
>>
>> For instance, if you're not specifying an imode value then it's going to 
>> use
>> a sawtooth wave by default, which is considerably richer than a sine 
>> wave --
>> and will likely result in the video game sounds you're getting.
>>
>> Finally, a word on LFO's (low frequency oscillators).  As you can see on 
>> the
>> Wikipedia page for LFO's, they typically aren't used at frequencies 
>> higher
>> than 20hz:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_frequency_oscillator
>>
>> The reason for this is because typically LFO's are used to control some
>> dynamic aspect of an instrument that changes over time.  Because the 
>> lower
>> threshold of human hearing is 20hz, anything more than that ends sounding
>> like a sound and not like a part of the sound changing over time.  I hope 
>> I
>> explained that clearly enough.
>>
>> Perhaps by using the phrase LFO what you meant to say is that you are
>> experimenting with using oscillators to create low frequency sounds
>> (bass-like and well above the 20hz lower limit for human ears) for use in 
>> a
>> larger piece.  That ends up becoming another conversation that I will
>> refrain from expounding on at this time.
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
>> -peter
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thomas Nelson wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm new to CSound and thought it'd be a good start to try replicating
>>> some simple songs with an oscilator.  But I noticed lower frequency
>>> notes (98 hz or so, G2 on a piano for example) are very quiet and hard
>>> to hear.  I've tried to compensate by putting lower frequency notes at
>>> higher amplitudes, but it's difficult to tweak manually.  Does anyone
>>> have any advice or suggestions.  I'm currently using poscil3, i
>>> noticed some other generators like vco2 are much easier to hear at low
>>> frequency, but it sounds less like a flute and more like a video game,
>>> which isn't really what I'm going for.
>>> Thanks,
>>> Tom
>>> P.S. I can attach the csd file i'm using if that will help.
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to this list.
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>  Peter Lakanen   lakanen@platinumweb.com
>>  Platinum Web Development  http://www.platinumweb.com
>>  1320 Terrace Street  Tallahassee, FL 32303
>>  850.508.4518   FAX: 850.681.1930
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to this list.
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>> csound"
>>
>
>
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