> 	FMSound brass1 play
> 
> And I have to tell that, both with default and without reverb, I can hear the abrupt end of the sound very clearly. 
Well without reverb there is a definitely non-musical harsh noise. With 
reverb on, the sound still does stop abruptly, but more musically. This 
makes all the difference to me.

But I do agree that overall the FMSounds releases are not graceful :)


> IMHO it does not make a large difference, except for the fact that a pure tone should not have any reverb by definition.

A FMSound is not a pure tone. A pure tone is a sinusoid, which ends with 
a clear click (a very non-musical noise).

Now anyway the reverb is used only when playing a sound, not when 
processing it - here it is not part of the FMSound itself: you will not 
see the reverb in the waveform or the spectrogram.

 From a musical perspective, there is always some reverb. Nobody plays a 
concerto in an anechoic chamber. So you can think of the default reverb 
setting as the sound of the Squeak room itself - when just playing 
sounds like, for a game, it is nicer to have one. And when we need 
Squeak to behave like an anechoic chamber, we can just turn the reverb off.

> 
> I am not an expert in sounds at all, but couldn't it be a more elegant solution to adjust the envelopes of the problematic sounds instead and to extend their release phase?
> 
> I changed #brass1 like this:
> 
> 	| snd p env |
> 	snd := FMSound new modulation: 0 ratio: 1.
> 	p := OrderedCollection new.
> 	- p add: 0 at 0.0; add: 30 at 0.8; add: 90 at 1.0; add: 120 at 0.9; add: 220 at 0.7; add: 320 at 0.9; add: 360 at 0.0.
> 	+ p add: 0 at 0.0; add: 30 at 0.8; add: 90 at 1.0; add: 120 at 0.9; add: 220 at 0.7; add: 320 at 0.9; add: 440 at 0.0.
> 	snd addEnvelope: (VolumeEnvelope points: p loopStart: 4 loopEnd: 6).
> 
> 	p := OrderedCollection new.
> 	p add: 0 at 0.5; add: 60 at 1.0; add: 120 at 0.8; add: 220 at 0.65; add: 320 at 0.8; add: 360 at 0.0.
> 	env := Envelope points: p loopStart: 3 loopEnd: 5.
> 	env target: snd; updateSelector: #modulation:; scale: 5.0.
> 	snd addEnvelope: env.
> 
> 	(snd setPitch: 220.0 dur: 1.0 loudness: 0.5) play
> 
> The only difference is that I moved the last envelope point 80 ms to the right. I can't hear any "plop" now any longer.

Right, but the duration of the sound cannot be considered to be one 
second anymore - it is much closer to 0.9 seconds (where it was around 
0.95 before, so already too short).

See the attached pictures: SoundElementEditor1.png is the current 
waveform, SoundElementEditor2.png the one you propose. See how it ends 
prematurely?

I would say 390 at 0.0 for the last point is better. It still sounds good, 
but does not shorten the sound as much.

For composition, it is important that a sound lasts as long as it claims 
to last. Else, the phrasing articulations cannot be right - you would 
hear a staccato when a legato is asked for.

So a sound release should happen after the sound nominal duration (which 
is not the case at the moment)


> My proposal is to turn off reverb in the SoundPlayer by default and to adjust the most problematic FMSounds manually instead. What do you think? :-)

My counter-proposal would be to keep the default reverb and give it the 
settings it has in muO :)

And then, if you want to tweak some sounds, have their nominal duration 
respected. So I would vote for having releases after nominal duration, 
but this means a mechanism would then be needed to differentiate the 
nominal duration from the duration you get from the raw number of samples.

This mechanism exists in muO.

In fact it is rather difficult for me to give any specific piece of 
advice about how music should be handled in Squeak proper, because my 
own way to do this has been to implement a much vaster and deeper 
framework where many different perspectives work together. Not to say it 
is perfect, but it is thorough - one thing lead to another and I could 
talk for hours...


Best,

Stef
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