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

Andres Cabrera wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Also be aware that ears are not linear in their relation of amplitude
> and frecuency, i.e. different frequencies at the same amplitude will
> be heard at different loudness.
> 

And further, that  the same tone at different loudnesses  will be heard 
at different pitches, e.g. louder-->flatter, quieter-->sharper.

Richard Dobson

It doesn't appear to have a name as such (it is a separate phenomenon 
from the Fletcher-Munson curve); it is just described as a "secondary 
pitch effect" in the Howard/Angus book, citing the original study by 
Rossing(1989). The effect as I described is shown for frequencies below 
2KHz. At that frequency there is no perceived effect, while above it the 
situation is reversed, so that HF loud sounds are perceived as sharper.


Richard Dobson





Andres Cabrera wrote:
> Thanks Richard, I was not aware of this. What is that phenomenon called?
> 
..
>> And further, that  the same tone at different loudnesses  will be heard at
>> different pitches, e.g. louder-->flatter, quieter-->sharper.
>>