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Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

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Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#91

Post by keyth72 »

Applejinx wrote: post #23

…at MP3 quality. This is fine if you like that sort of thing. I would note that latency is very important here: it's not going to be nice to play through if it's incurring any significant latency.

...At mp3 quality

As the creator of this project I can assure you that the audio used here is at least CD quality (44.1kHz 16bit). With the HiFiBerry hat the digital audio comes in at 24bit/192kHz. The NeuralPi DSP processes the audio at 44.1kHz with 32 bit floating point precision. No reason the sample rate can’t be higher though. Elk OS claims latency is less than 1ms, but I’d like to test and see exactly what the latency is running the plugin. As a guitarist, I can’t tell the difference between this and an analog effect.

runs and ducks for cover

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#92

Post by humbledrone »

duosonic wrote: post #85

Honest question: if you're a musician, what is the appeal of digital modeling? Is it purely affordability/accessibility, or are you drawn to it because it would create different sonic possibilities that you couldn't get from the original?

Speaking for myself, the accessibility and convenience is a huge part. Instead of lugging around a 60 pound fragile finnicky pedalboard, I just throw my Helix in a backpack and am good to go. It has way more pedals in it than I could fit on a real pedal board, and I can also switch presets with the tap of my foot (including rewiring all the connections between pedals, changing their order, swapping pedals, swapping amps, etc).

And yeah the sonic possibilities are endless. On a physical pedalboard, it's pretty involved to rewire everything to change the routing, or add/remove pedals, etc. With the digital modeling ones, this all becomes trivial and you can try all kinds of different setups much more quickly, save them and go back later, share them with friends, etc.

All that said, it's kind of like asking an acoustic guitarist in the 1950s why they would use an electric guitar. Electric guitars obviously have lots of advantages, but it's not like people stopped playing acoustic guitars. I still think real analog pedals are cool, they're fun to collect, in some cases they sound better, etc. And sometimes you don't need the mega-flexibility -- if you have a 4-pedal setup that does "your tone" maybe that's all you ever need.

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#93

Post by keyth72 »

andybak wrote: post #7

any pedal? That seems far-fetched - one trivial counter-example would be a looper as that requires modal input and state. I also wonder if it can handle complex multi-tap delays. Can anyone give a rough idea of the actual limitations? I would guess that there is a limit to how non-local the effects it can manage are.

..any pedal

It can’t do time based effects such as delay, reverb, flange, chorus, etc. The LSTM can model distortion, overdrive, compression to an extent, and amp circuits (including vacuum tubes).

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#94

Post by duosonic »

URSpider94 wrote: post #90
duosonic wrote: post #85

Honest question: if you're a musician, what is the appeal of digital modeling? Is it purely affordability/accessibility, or are you drawn to it because it would create different sonic possibilities that you couldn't get from the original?

You mean, besides the appeal, what is the appeal? As an artist and a musician, you can have access to close approximations of sounds that would require a warehouse full of amps and dozens of pedals, costing tens of thousands of dollars - all in a Pi project box. That’s not just a little bit of affordability and convenience.

And I certainly don't mean to sound dismissive about the possibilities that creates! It's a huge factor and I would see it being akin to how the rise of "pro-sumer" home recording equipment played a huge role in underground punk music.

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#95

Post by keyth72 »

keyth72 wrote: post #93
andybak wrote: post #7

any pedal? That seems far-fetched - one trivial counter-example would be a looper as that requires modal input and state. I also wonder if it can handle complex multi-tap delays. Can anyone give a rough idea of the actual limitations? I would guess that there is a limit to how non-local the effects it can manage are.

..any pedal It can’t do time based effects such as delay, reverb, flange, chorus, etc. The LSTM can model distortion, overdrive, compression to an extent, and amp circuits (including vacuum tubes).

But I will say that there is a project out there for time varying effects, but haven’t dug into it yet. I believe it’s a different method than the LSTM

https://github.com/Alec-Wright/NeuralTimeVaryFX

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#96

Post by duosonic »

humbledrone wrote: post #92
duosonic wrote: post #85

Honest question: if you're a musician, what is the appeal of digital modeling? Is it purely affordability/accessibility, or are you drawn to it because it would create different sonic possibilities that you couldn't get from the original?

Speaking for myself, the accessibility and convenience is a huge part. Instead of lugging around a 60 pound fragile finnicky pedalboard, I just throw my Helix in a backpack and am good to go. It has way more pedals in it than I could fit on a real pedal board, and I can also switch presets with the tap of my foot (including rewiring all the connections between pedals, changing their order, swapping pedals, swapping a…

I think those are perfectly valid reasons for going with emulation.

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#97

Post by ushakov »

duosonic wrote: post #85

Honest question: if you're a musician, what is the appeal of digital modeling? Is it purely affordability/accessibility, or are you drawn to it because it would create different sonic possibilities that you couldn't get from the original?

portability is a big one

you can run the produced models in browsers, on mobile, on embedded hardware such as in this case and even on calculators (joking)

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#98

Post by jiofih »

montroser wrote: post #33
Applejinx wrote: post #23

…at MP3 quality. This is fine if you like that sort of thing. I would note that latency is very important here: it's not going to be nice to play through if it's incurring any significant latency.

Yes, latency is huge. Modern digital audio stacks in consumer OSes are still completely terrible at this. Not that it's an easy problem to solve. But it's pretty hard to beat elections flowing through an analog circuit, when in the digital side you have to: convert analog to digital, run through the kernel to get to user space, run the bits through the RNN, send back to kernel space, convert to analog and finally sen…

> Modern digital audio stacks in consumer OSes are still completely terrible at this

This has been solved for over a decade. Linux is a bit tricky but MacOS and Windows have native low latency drivers. There are also a ton of digital effects units running at 0ms on the market.

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#99

Post by jtriangle »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #65

It is my understanding that capture based emulation of a given sound seems like a better idea than it really is. Say you capture a given amp or pedal sound - even if you get the latency down to acceptable #s, what if you want/need to turn a knob? Tweaking knobs is an essential part of the process of dialing in a sound relative to your guitar and output environment. Contrast with the Fractalaudio approach of modeling…

The AxeFX is old news when it comes to guitar modeling. The newest Kemper firmwares do a much better job, and NeuralDSP's Quad Cortex does an even better job still along with the ability to capture distortion pedals.

Modeling real gear is all fine and dandy, but what really has potential is being able to replicate circuits that aren't viable in the real world, like a tube amplifier on the edge of occilation or one run way over the rated TDP of it's tubes, situations that might provide sonic possibilities that aren't viable long term can now be stable and replicatable long term. Additionally, being able to modify a tone stack in software to provide extra flexibility is very handy.

The Quad Cortex is also slated to receive updates that will allow it to capture modulation effects, and will undoubtedly get better with time as the Kempers did.

Re: Neural networks emulate any guitar pedal for $120

#100

Post by keyth72 »

duosonic wrote: post #85

Honest question: if you're a musician, what is the appeal of digital modeling? Is it purely affordability/accessibility, or are you drawn to it because it would create different sonic possibilities that you couldn't get from the original?

Flexibility and affordability. As a guitar player, if I walked into a room and on one side there’s a perfect digital emulation of a Marshall stack, and on the other side there’s and actual Marshall stack, I’d go for the real thing every time. But the reality for most musicians, myself included, is that I wouldn't be able to or wouldn’t be willing to pay that much for one. Now if I had a whole library of digital amps/pedals to try, then I could find something I like best and go get the real thing. I don’t see digital as replacing analog, only enhancing it. It’s also nice to be able to plug in headphones, and from a laptop or pedal that takes up much less space.

But as an engineer I just nerd out over all of it. Analog. Digital. If it makes good music it’s all cool to me.

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