Ask Justin Frankel

justin = { main feed , music , code , askjf , pubkey };

Ask Justin Frankel
No reasonable question unanswered since 2009!

Suggested topics: programming, music, sleep, coffee, etc.

Note: please do not ask questions about REAPER features, bugs or scheduling, use the forums instead.

[newer questions]

[unreplied] | [replied] | [recent comments] | [all]

[older questions]

Question: Is there an open-source version of ReaPitch? n (I'd love to add HPF+LPF pre+post filters to each band.)
Asked by Dax Liniere (51.52.72.x) on December 13 2018, 7:03pm
Reply on December 14 2018, 7:48pm:

Hmm yeah I might've made one available at some point... 2 Comments...

Question: As an adult, I do not have a lot of money to spend on learning to code. What is a cheap way that I can get into coding and really become proficient?
Asked by Jake Flose (73.91.212.x) on December 13 2018, 2:39am
Reply on December 14 2018, 7:48pm:

No idea... 1 Comment...

Question: Hey Justin, I have been thinking about your choice of software copy protection. Why and what made you go this way. I mean you obviously trust people and put the responsibility of honesty in their hands. What is amazing to me is that this feels like its a better way to inspire respect than having thousand dollars and few layers of copy protection. Why are you so different amd why is it so successful? :)
Asked by DRocks (135.19.15.x) on December 12 2018, 2:32am
Reply on December 12 2018, 2:58am:

There's probably more money in more copy protection, but there's no fun in that. 1 Comment...

Question: How is it that It's not possible to edit an audio file in another program while the file is open in almost any modern daw, reaper included. As a streamlined workflow including a distructive wave editor and a sequencer is such an obvious necessity. or in another words why DAWs need to lock access to the files by other programs? even in case of reaper it requires reaper playback to stop in order to be able to save the file in third party audio editors.
Asked by Milad (95.222.238.x) on December 11 2018, 12:21pm
Reply on December 12 2018, 2:14am:

It's complicated, some of it is OS-driven, but allowing other programs to write to files out from under you would be bad, then when things went wrong you'd get blamed. 5 Comments...

Question: Let's be realistic. A lot of young adults are in college, and those young adults also have jobs, although they may be work study jobs on campus and/or summer jobs. To be effective in college, you have to study (sometimes for very, very long hours), regardless of how smart you are. I'm sure that Winamp required at least 8 or 10 hours a day (or more) to build over the course of several months (or maybe up to a year). How did people like you find the time to work on these complicated projects like Winamp whe
Asked by Ace Thomas (73.91.212.x) on December 9 2018, 9:00pm
Reply on December 9 2018, 9:53pm:

I didn't make Winamp until after I left school. 1 Comment...

Question: Why not check this fun MIDI problem - sounds simple, but having it work on every material might not be: bit.ly/2SCCJnD
Asked by Breeder (78.0.210.x) on December 7 2018, 7:39pm
Reply on December 8 2018, 5:03am:

Because video is more fun! 1 Comment...

Question: Love Linux native reaper version. Miss Lv2 support. Any news? :p
Asked by Steinar Krogstad (86.62.132.x) on December 6 2018, 8:04am
Reply on December 6 2018, 2:44pm:

Nope Comment...

Question: Have you made anything in Qbasic/Quick Basic?
Asked by MS from Sweden (83.185.242.x) on December 5 2018, 10:02pm
Reply on December 5 2018, 11:09pm:

Not since the early 90s 2 Comments...

Question: As a programmer, is it very important to be an "organized" person in general? I know that, with executives, it is very important for them to be organized as people. But, what about coders needing to be organized?
Asked by Joe Loyes (73.91.212.x) on December 4 2018, 2:33am
Reply on December 4 2018, 5:13am:

Organizational skills are probably a very important thing for programmers, too. It doesn't mean that being organized in every aspect of life is a requirement, though, just the places where it is important... Comment...

Question: When DAWs record audio to disk. Do they all link to the same predefined Low level code or is each Daw writing there owncode for the record/playback functions? The way I understood it is they all were linking to the same specific core functions but, if you used anything inline like a delay or eq from within the DAW itself. Then your going through an added layer of specialized code with all the functions of the daw?
Asked by Paul (23.17.82.x) on December 3 2018, 8:56am
Reply on December 3 2018, 6:36pm (edited at December 3 2018, 6:37pm):

There are portions that are always done by the OS -- for example, writing bytes to a file on a disk is an OS job. The DAW is responsible for converting audio samples into bytes to be written to disk. Comment...

Question: Is it legit to static link the windows CRT to LGPL'd code?
Asked by Gio (79.130.172.x) on December 1 2018, 9:15am
Reply on December 1 2018, 2:23pm (edited at December 1 2018, 2:37pm):

My understanding is that there's an exclusion for C runtimes but I could be wrong. Edit: I just read that it is for "system libraries", bleh. I dunno, but in any case it seems like a stupid technicality. 1 Comment...

Question: Hello. I have like 300-400 of audio files. I want to normalize all of them. Is there any way in REAPER (or in any other software?) to batch normalize all of them. I really like the built-in normalize feature in REAPER but it will take me months to normalize those 300-400 audio files one by one.
Asked by Abhi (220.158.145.x) on December 1 2018, 6:13am
Reply on December 1 2018, 2:30pm (edited at December 1 2018, 2:31pm):

Create a new project.
Insert all of the files
Select all items
Go to media item properties (F2), set fade lengths to 0, choose OK.
Normalize (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + N)
Open batch converter
Click "Add...", then choose "Add selected media item(s)"
Change output directory to somewhere you want
Change file name to be "$source" (without the quotes)
Change sample rate to (source), channels to (source)
Change output format to desired output foramt...
Start convert!

Comment...

Question: Do you know Plini? Great guitar player. Check this out if not youtube.com/watch?v=Rv_a6rlRjZk&li... Do you like it?
Asked by guitarguy (94.134.91.x) on November 30 2018, 11:43am
Reply on December 1 2018, 5:30am:

Nice. Not really my thing but obviously very good. Comment...

Question: I am curious about contributing to ninjam development to support video synced to the audio. The most recent post in the ninjam developer forums has more details. I am an amateur developer and would love for you to take a look and share your thoughts! Thanks for your time!
Asked by stooshbatis (73.123.35.x) on November 29 2018, 4:10pm
Reply on November 30 2018, 4:38am:

You can definitely experiment with it yourself, I haven't touched ninjam code in quite some time... so I'm not sure the best place to begin. Comment...

Question: Do you like “The Rolling Stones”? If so, what’s your favorite album?
Asked by asafonov (109.172.101.x) on November 25 2018, 3:18pm
Reply on November 25 2018, 6:55pm:

I do, but I must confess I've never listened to their albums! So many good songs though, any album you'd recommend to start with? Off the top of my head, Gimme Shelter, Paint It Black, Jumping Jack Flash, Sympathy for the Devil come to mind 1 Comment...

Question: In your opinion, how good and capable is Linux (with ALSA and Jack) today to make music, compared to Windows and macOS (with ASIO and Core Audio)?
Asked by Sangeppato (79.16.225.x) on November 25 2018, 1:09pm
Reply on November 25 2018, 6:52pm:

Totally capable, the only weakness IMO is the relatively few number of VST/VSTi in comparison. But that doesn't both me since I mostly just use REAPER's built in stuff and audio. Comment...

Question: Did you borrow the idea of having Nibbles/Snake in REAPER from the music tracker Fast Tracker II?
Asked by MS from Sweden (83.185.242.x) on November 24 2018, 7:22pm
Reply on November 24 2018, 9:13pm:

Yep, FT2 was awesome. 2 Comments...

Question: Ok. This is what I mean. Say you wave a wav file. Now you want to write code in C++ to play it without using fancy libraries. I would rather learn how it works on the most elemantary level. Where do I turn to get the information of how to do this? Any suggestions?
Asked by Ulf Enhörning (94.234.35.x) on November 24 2018, 6:24am
Reply on November 24 2018, 2:41pm:

OK sure -- the .wav file format is

described places

here's a tutorial I randomly googled to

Comment...

Question: How do you create an audio signal from scratch without using any libraries? Can you tell me what terms to google for or suggest a link?
Asked by Ulf Enhörning (178.59.54.x) on November 21 2018, 11:30pm
Reply on November 24 2018, 2:23am:

It depends on what the signal you want is I guess? Comment...

Question: "In the studio I have a Q9400 (2.6ghz, 8GB RAM maybe?) running Linux for recording, using a RME HDSP 9652 (PCI card)" Kind of surprised nobody jumped on this answer. Could you elaborate? How well do the unsupported Linux drivers work? Do you use Linux in your recording rig just to test it?
Asked by zappsunzorn (68.10.147.x) on November 21 2018, 11:54am
Reply on November 21 2018, 3:05pm:

They work great. I got really tired of the crap Windows put me through on that machine, linux has been really a nice (though it takes the right sort of setup tweaking to get it all working well). Comment...

[newer questions]

[unreplied] | [replied] | [recent comments] | [all]

[older questions]