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.

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[older questions]

Question: How many Reaper licenses are there worldwide? And also do you see a trend if the growth rate is increasing lately? I have a feeling that it does in my audio world.
Asked by mlprod (155.4.132.x) on March 30 2017, 10:23pm
Reply on March 31 2017, 5:40pm:

We don't disclose our sales stats, but we've seen steady growth throughout REAPER's development! Comment...

Question: Are you friends with "Mommy" in real life?
Asked by Prizmaxic (65.73.206.x) on March 30 2017, 2:58pm
Reply on March 30 2017, 10:10pm:

not that i know of Comment...

Question: I also really like "03 dont tell me." Your off-pitched vocals hurt your songs though. Are you against slightly tuning the vocals? I just listened to the album and tracks 3 and 4 are really good. Track 5 is not bad. I could listen to these melo songs for hours while surfing the Internet. You should either take your vocals seriously or just upload your projec
Asked by Mommy (99.173.156.x) on March 29 2017, 2:12am
Reply on March 29 2017, 2:10pm:

Why should I take vocals seriously? that's no fun Comment...

Question: Cheers for the answers Justin! Another question - how do you deal with going from -32768 to 32767 (one less than the negative side!?) with silence being a load of zeros, to -1.0 to 1.0 with silence being a load of 0.0s?
Asked by Tommy G (82.132.226.x) on March 28 2017, 7:10am
Reply on March 28 2017, 1:31pm (edited at March 28 2017, 1:32pm):

#define INT16_TO_float(out,in) { (out) = (float)(((double)in)/32768.0);  }

Comment...

Question: Hi! May be a silly question, but when coding something such as reaper, how do you handle the fact that 8 bit wav audio is unsigned (when everything else is signed?) any books on audio coding you can recommend? cheers!
Asked by Tommy G (5.71.200.x) on March 27 2017, 10:26pm
Reply on March 27 2017, 10:43pm:

That is handled at the read/write stage, where it is converted to signed floating point... :) As far as books on programming, can't say I can recommend much. Fiction, sure... Comment...

Question: "160804 a simple phone call" has a lot of potential! Are you playing the sax at 00:55?
Asked by Mommy (99.173.156.x) on March 27 2017, 8:04pm
Reply on March 27 2017, 10:22pm:

thanks! That's actually a clarinet, which I am playing. That made it to my latest album, as track #4. Comment...

Question: what is WALTER?
Asked by ruchira (123.231.110.x) on March 27 2017, 5:24pm
Reply on March 27 2017, 10:23pm:

WALTER is the layout engine which drives REAPER's various theme elements on top of the WDL VirtWnd system. It's not open source, also it's sort of half brilliant and half terrible (that might be giving it too much credit, more likely 5% brilliant and 95% terrible). Comment...

Question: Do you ever feel like the demands of REAPER keep you from doing other things you want to do? If so, is there anything we (users/extension devs/etc.) can do better? I hope it gives you joy as well, and you get a kick out of all the music made using your work - I was pretty tempted credit you on my album because it's been so central. :p
Asked by DavidR (72.21.196.x) on March 27 2017, 1:41pm
Reply on March 27 2017, 3:46pm:

Nah I think if I wanted to do something else REAPER would be fine getting less of my attention. I'm getting to make lots of music so that's fun, which was the point to begin with, anyway. Comment...

Question: An endless stream of feature requests and bug reports... Isn't that at times exhausting and feels like Sisyphos ? How you cope with it ?
Asked by wasereb4 (79.246.86.x) on March 23 2017, 12:47am
Reply on March 23 2017, 3:14pm:

a day at a time, I suppose Comment...

Question: Mantis or Wasabi?
Asked by ruchira (123.231.120.x) on March 22 2017, 6:00pm
Reply on March 22 2017, 6:02pm (edited at March 26 2017, 3:14pm):

LICE 4EVER (+ maybe WALTER too eh?) Comment...

Question: there has been discussion on audio forums such as gearslutz that DAWs have their own sound.. if you have two different DAWs with the same files and plugins all set the same will they sound different based on the underlying code of the DAW ?
Asked by EcBaPr (124.169.103.x) on March 22 2017, 1:55pm
Reply on March 22 2017, 2:27pm:

I'm of the opinion that's almost always operator error or subtle differences in settings such as pan laws. Comment...

Question: How do you feel?
Asked by Rich (24.186.108.x) on March 22 2017, 8:22am
Reply on March 22 2017, 2:28pm:

Sore, but good, considering! Comment...

Question: Beating dead horse, but... ARA for Melodyne, por favor? I know, I know, but it's mandatory for #1 hits! Anyway, thx for making a sweet DAW!
Asked by Joe H (24.205.69.x) on March 19 2017, 5:40pm
Reply on March 20 2017, 1:02pm (edited at March 20 2017, 1:03pm):

It'd be a lot easier if Celemony added REAPER-API support to Melodyne. Comment...

Question: I think there is such a need for a program like WASTE that matches the functionality of MS Lync or Skype (i.e. screen sharing, conference calls etc..) but is fully encrypted and decentralized. Have you ever thought of updating/resurrecting WASTE to include some of that functionality?
Asked by Jason (76.109.104.x) on March 18 2017, 12:56pm
Reply on March 20 2017, 1:02pm:

That would be cool, using EC rather than RSA for WASTE would make the keys more manageable too, perhaps. Comment...

Question: What aspects of Computer science do I focus on which may help me merge my interests in music and computers? More specifically: What language(s) will be helpful for DAW and Plug-In development? What novel aspects of computer science hold some relevance in the music industry? (AI for example)
Asked by Aaditya (122.176.187.x) on March 16 2017, 12:56pm
Reply on March 17 2017, 3:21am:

No idea, the scope of what you describe is very wide and very deep, so you could go any number of ways... a good place to have fun with programming and sound is writing JSFX in REAPER (which seems like a shameless plug -- but there's an integrated code editor, tons of builtin effects you can edit, and you can test out changes on the fly...). Comment...

Question: In REAPER you have the name of a track, which is a text written by the user. User can modify this text in various places around the interface, and the text is updated everywhere. How's your approach to implement this? A global function called UpdateAllTrackTexts()? Trigger some event? Call each renderer object individually after the change is made?
Asked by Rodrigo (177.97.191.x) on March 14 2017, 3:28pm
Reply on March 15 2017, 1:33pm:

When you update something on a track, the track has a "UpdateUI()" type function which goes around invalidating the relevant panels, and also marks the track manager as being dirty too. I think. Comment...

Question: Are you interested in machine learning? Do you read up on it?
Asked by Chris (76.97.150.x) on March 13 2017, 6:15pm
Reply on March 14 2017, 4:01am (edited at March 14 2017, 4:02am):

A little here and there but not really. It's interesting, but not my area per se. Comment...

Question: Do you have any legal papers about your Cockos codebase in case of death, accidents and the likes?
Asked by Dali (205.236.3.x) on March 13 2017, 3:53pm
Reply on March 14 2017, 4:01am:

The corporation will survive. Comment...

Question: Do you find it hard to switch from a programming frame of mind, to a making music frame of mind? For me, when I'm interested in one, the other seems pointless.
Asked by Dream Of Sleepin (90.221.59.x) on March 8 2017, 9:31pm
Reply on March 9 2017, 3:16pm:

Only if you force it Comment...

Question: re: plugin not loading; This brought me on the right track. It was resources (images) not loading correctly. Fixed and working now. Thank you ! (I'll skip the question this time :))
Asked by wasereb4 (79.246.86.x) on March 3 2017, 2:59pm
Reply on March 3 2017, 3:52pm:

real programmers debug with printf(), ha ha Comment...

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