Audio transitions in supercollider

Problem?

In the domain of images and videos, programs like powerpoint and video editors provide a wide range of "transitions". If you think of powerpoint, e.g., you can switch from one slide to the next directly ("cut"), or you can gradually fade out the first one and fade-in the second one, or you can push in, push out, wipe according to a shape, split, reveal, random bars, shape, uncover, cover, flash, morph, ... too many to name.

In the audio domain, however, the options seem quite limited. I'm only aware of direct cuts and cross-fading as audio effects that are offered by default. Can we think of other audio transitions as well?

Approach

In this blog post I will propose a few other audio transitions, as a proof of concept. The code can be found on http://sccode.org/1-57H.

Setting up supercollider

To illustrate the transitions, let's first create two sounds that we want to transition between.

\sound1 is a sine wave with randomly varying frequency (frequency changes 4x per second).

\sound2 is a sawtooth with varying duty cycle. Both sounds are different enough that we can hear the transitions taking place.

I let the 2 sound producing synths output their audio to audio busses.

Next to the sound producing synths I have a bunch of transition synths that calculate the transition between \sound1 and \sound2 as a kind of audio effect. Each transition synth takes a pos argument. Setting it to -1 corresponds to only listening to \sound1, whereas setting it +1 corresponds to only listening to \sound2. For values between -1 and 1 the transition is taking place.

For demo purposes, the pos argument in the transition synths is ignored and instead driven from a fancy counter made specified by an envelope (Env). This fancy counter ensures that supercollider first plays \sound1 for 5 seconds, then gradually transitions to \sound2  during 5 seconds, then keeps playing \sound2 for 5 seconds, then transitions back to \sound1 during 5 seconds and finally plays \sound1 again for 5 seconds.

Groups are needed to ensure that the transition synths are executed on the server after the sound producing synths. Otherwise we wouldn't get audio output. (After all, it's impossible to fiddle with a sound that isn't calculated yet.). 

In the fork section we will instantiate all effect synths one by one so we can hear all of them in succession. In the first screenshot only the "direct cut" is added. This is a transition that basically does nothing: it just stops the first sound and starts the second one in the place.

Familiar effects

cut

A cut (in audio this is sometimes called a "butt splice") is where you stop one sound and start another sound. This basically means: "no effect". In supercollider this can be implemented by stopping one sound and starting another one. This is already illustrated in the screenshot above.

crossfade or xfade

A crossfade happens when you graduallly lower the volume of one signal while gradually increasing the volume of a second signal. For a while both signals sound simultaneously. This is supported in virtually every digital audio workstation (DAW) in existence. Often one can choose whether to change the volume keeping a "constant gain" (linear curve), "constant power" (square root curve?) or even other types like "exponential" (using logarithmic curves).

In the following screenshot I indicated what was changed to add a new effect. In the next effects I will only show the new effects synths. You can easily update the fork section yourself.

So for cross fading with equal power you could do something more like

Seldom explored effects

Do we have to stop at direct cut and crossfade? Of course not... let's try something else. Note: these techniques may actually be well established, it's just that I've never come across them "in the wild". But then, also not many people use transitions in powerpoint and video editing because if you overdo them, they tend to lower the overall end-user experience.

HPF curtain

In this transition, we increase the filter frequency of a high pass filter (HPF) for the signal that is to disappear, while we decrease the filter frequency of a high pass filter for the signal that is to appear. The implementation of this transition is not perfect as it has some audible artifacts on positions close to -1 and +1. It might help to use a high pass filter with steeper roll-off, or to combine this technique with some amplitude control.

LPF curtain

Very similar to the previous transition, we decrease the cut-off frequency of a low pass filter (LPF) on the signal that must disappear, and crank up the cut-off frequency of a low pass filter on the signal that must appear instead.

Wash out

The sound that is to disappear drowns in reverb whereas he other sound emerges from the reverb.

Pixelate

 The sounds become coarser and then more crisp again. This fragment features some complication involving Select.ar because LFPulse does not behave mathematically correct for duty cycle width=0 and width=1 (it generates audible spikes, which ruin its function as an audio stream selector), so near the duty cycle = 1 and 0, I had to select pure versions of the audio.

Push out

The new sound shifts in from the left side and pushes out the old sound to the right.

Can you think of other transitions?