Internal Buffering questions and Studio Quality

[brandystarbrite]

I have a bit of indepth questions, concerning the Internal Buffering in Lmms. I want to get close to Studio Quality in my Tracks. A bit of people on this forum are asking this question right now. Including Kittynau and others.

Okay here are my questions:
1) How can I get my music to sound like Studio Quality. I want to make people believe I recorded it in a Studio. He! He!
How much must I turn up the buffering setting to get "Really good Studio quality?" Note: I know a bit about Mastering already.
In other words, what is the "best recommended Buffering setting," to get "Studio quality in Lmms?"
I see a bit of users on this forum asking this question on "quality alot." That's why I chose to post this topic. So that others wanting to know, can check this post out.


First off, I use a ASUS K50AF Notebook, my specs are...............
AMD Turion Dual cores 2.3 Ghz. With Amd vision
4GB memory AMD
Via HD Sound cards
SRS Premium Sound
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5145 Custom graphics card for Asus K50AF Notebooks and other similar notebooks 512mb

To sum it up, it can run "Super Street Fighter 4, pretty well"

In the Lmms Manual, I read about Internal Buffering. But I've noticed there is not much on this topic for LMMS, on Youtube or anywhere. On Youtube, I saw a tut for FL Studio, and the guy said, make sure your "latency is over 10ms" if you want FL Studio, to have good quality.
It seems "quality" seems to be an issue for users in alot of other Daws as well. Not just Lmms.
I was reading user comments for different Daws etc. And some users of other Daws, complained about quality in the DAW they owned. Believe it or not,
eg. Some FL Studio users "dropped" FL Studio, because they found, Cubase, Ableton Live etc. to have better Sound Studio Quality, than FL Studio.
eg. Some users of other Daws eg. Cubase, dropped Cubase because they believe, FL Studio and others have better Sound Quality. And others,......well you get the picture.
eg. Oh yeah, in one case, a FL user dropped FL Studio, for "LMMS." Because he said that LMMS has better sound, and is easier to use.
Much props to the Lmms developers, and a job well done guy's. Nice.

In my observation, it could be buffering settings that I've read about, and saw in the FL studio tut on Youtube.

I've read that when buffering settings are too low, instruments make clicks, crispy notes and 3rd party Vst's crash etc. And I've seen a good bit of people, on this forum asking about, how to get rid of crispy's, clicks etc. Could this be why some Vst's crash in Lmms? Hmmm............

Hope you guys reply soon. I have music tracks to release. I'm still sort of a Newbie, for some things in Lmms. That's why I'm asking. Bye for now.


PS: Wow Lmms can go up to up to 16384ms in buffering settings! In other Daws, 5800 or less is max for them.

[orpheon7]

First off, 90% of the time when quality is bad it's either your fault or that of the samples. Check the Spectrum analyser that nothing is clipping, no frequencies are above 0 decibels, etc...
Then, check whether you're sure that it's not the samples that's doing problems (because bad samples will always sound bad).

Latency is something I thought you'd want to minimize, as (I thought) it was the amount of time between two sound updates. The less you have, the more precise the sound, and the more horsepower your computer must do. Someone please correct me if this wrong.

What you could try to do is improve sample-rate, improve interpolation, improve anti-aliasing and of course, compile to ogg. All of these things are in the compilation of the song, they're also things to check.


After that, idk. There are probably things LMMS is missing, but usually if you cover all those points above and have a well-mastered piece then it'll sound pretty decent too.

[Sti-Jay]

Mostly it is the samples/harware/vsti´s/soundfonts which sucks, and therefore ruins the song. But I agree with orpheon7, 10% of the times, it is me who aren't good enough. (probably more... )
Advice nr. 1: Use high quality samples/soundfonts/vsti´s. To use this, you are probably gonna need some high quality harware/PC.

What I thought I knew about latency: The time between I press the key on the piano and it comes out from my speakers. With a lot of buffering the notes is in higher quality, and with almost no buffering the time is short but the quality poor. Also, to attain low latency you need a good computer. This is not very accurate, and it feels it is (kinda) wrong after reading this article. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan05/a ... sician.htm However I still don't think that affects the quality of exported files, only live performance.

Advice nr. 2: After it is all about the samples, it is all about the mastering. https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/lmms ... ring#p1955 The number one goal for many dj´s and musicians in life is to be better in mastering than everybody else. Yeah, it really is that important.

[brandystarbrite]

Wooah!! I got alot of info. Thanks guy's. I also get Crispy noises sometimes when I use some Lmms plug ins, like triple oscillator. And limiters doesn't help sometimes.
I saw an answer later on, from you sti2nd, "on the popular "crispy notes problems topic," in this post https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/lmms ... ?f=4&t=610
On FL Studio tuts, on Youtube, they even said raising the buffer thingy, actually helps remove it. Well in FL Studio that is. Above 1000ms seems to be fine for some FL Sudio users, to get rid of "crackles and crispy's."

Yeah orpheon7, I myself thought minimising the latency, is something you'd want to do. Maybe they changed it, to "maximise" in this Lmms release. I think?

Thanks sti2nd. I know that mastering is very important. I like the info you presented. And orpheon7's own too.

I'll have to find a perfect Buffering or Latency setting for my Projects. Hope I get studio quality too. Or hopefully, better!!

[brandystarbrite]

Wait! Re edit. Does moving the slider to the right, mean Higher Quality? Or lower quality?

[Sti-Jay]

Moving to the right could mean higher quality (and thus more time from you press the key until you hear a sound)

[pauljs75]

If I recall though, that buffer is for live play. (Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) If your saved songs still aren't that clear, it's your export settings that need to be dialed up to a higher bit-depth and sample rate. Of course those are accessible from the options under the export menu.

Mixdown comes into a lot of it. Needed to avoid clipping, and when done poorly is the most obvious sign of a DAW noob. From what I understand, a lot of people like FL Studio because it limits a lot of clipping with a hidden "autopilot" of sorts. Thus people assume it's better software. (Ok, it's been around longer and a lot further ahead in development... But other than that.) LMMS is additive in how it handles instruments but without this "safety net". (It still can be done with limiter FX if needed. LADSPA Fast-lookahead is a good and relatively easy one to use.) Thus when somebody does loudness-war-sepkukku upon their music track (think "ALL THE THINGS!" meme applied to volume sliders turned up to 11), they suddenly think LMMS sucks for their blatantly noobish mixdown mistakes. LMMS is great though, since once you get a clue - you can overdrive things purposely without some babysitter getting in the way and muting out that harder kick, pop, or snare. (Of course good artists don't blame their tools, learn the nature of their workings and figure out how to make the best of them, and only find complaints when running into a real limitation.)

*BTW, I might be a little harsh there, but that's my opinion and how I see it. And I'll say it that way even though I don't claim any particular expertise myself - much of my "music" is very amateur in how I go about making it.

Good mixdown is even technically more challenging though. That's when you get into EQ work, and do various sliders like cutoffs to help control instrument blending such that it sounds seemless. Hard part is to do it enough to sound good, but not overdo it and smooth everything over. (I'm still very much a noob in this area. I tend to find that aspect particularly daunting in LMMS, since there's still no automation recording and the UI for these things (via some of the more advanced LADSPA FX) consists of 100 tiny seemingly randomly located knobs instead of virtual mixing board with logically placed faders and whatnot. At least I can hunt for VST effects which are better in that regard, but those aren't included with LMMS.) This also is one area where cheap hardware can hurt, good soundcard and headphones can make a difference if matters enough to you.

One last thing that can help drop some unwanted pops or clicks is an instrument's envelope settings. (Typically off by default.) Turning on that volume envelope and nudging the attack down a tiny bit is the quickest way to take some clickies out of the 3XO or some mildly problematic samples. I tend to make it a habit to go for the envelope setting right away when using samples, specifically so I know I'm getting a nicer sound. (Hold, decay, and release are sometimes very useful too - particularly when you want to tone down something from being too obviously "sampled sounding".)