I remained unhappy today, due to Burn of God, I just wasn't quite happy with the quality of the music, specifically the balancing of some of the tracks. At 3pm or so, I pulled the release and instantly felt much better. Perhaps I made the mistake of discovering a new fancy audio effect, tweaking my sounds with it and instantly accepting the results.
I've also discovered some bugs in my recent audio plugins. This is actually an old bug, but one that rarely appears. The volume of the signal is tracked by a floating point value, multiplying it by a fraction to reduce it, or by the inverse of a fraction to increase it. The thing is, sooner or later this will reach a limit of infinitesimality which causes the vales metaphorically explode and ruin the audio (and program generally). I merely needed to add limits to the value (curiously, this speeded up the algorithms rather than slowed them). This only occurs after about a minute of silent audio or so, but would apply to any of my plugins that use volume trackers, including noise gates. It feels good to find a bug like this, even if I'm the only one who would ever notice or appreciate it. This is the eternal sadness of the programmer; the reason I wanted to become an artist instead.
I surmise that nature will have the problem of infinitesimal amounts too. You can only divide so many times before a limit is reached, thus quantum mechanics. Nothing in the universe is actually infinite, even in maths its only a theoretical idea; we can never count to infinity for example, or, for that matter experience zero.
I've developed a few new plugins; a new noise gate, and an "Engram Input Attenuator". Engrams are ways of passing track data to another track, like a parallel data feed. In this case, I can use that data to 'duck out' a track. It's rarely useful, but can be used for some interesting effects. If I use the drums as an input, and apply it to a steady bass then the bass will hop and jump in the gaps between the drum sounds, very groovy for fans of nineties bands like 'Sash'.
I've also ordered the War is Over CDs today. I still, however, feel unproductive today, and anxious about this bug. These plugins, with their 6-tracks and lots of complex variables, all seen and monitored by hand, are easy to accidentally spook. I'll have to check the others in case any other use volume trackers. I don't think any do...
