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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Question: If you're over windows, how are you using your beloved vs code 6?
Asked by Will (23.125.224.x) on December 23 2020, 4:23am
Reply on December 23 2020, 12:35pm:

It's mostly vim and make on other OSes these days Comment...

Question: hey- with win os do you see disk partitions as a big thing or?? are ssd or any other drives actually benefiting from partitions in some way?
Asked by 2020 (2.26.240.x) on December 23 2020, 12:59am
Reply on December 23 2020, 1:44am:

I don’t see them as useful from a performance or reliability perspective, but sometimes good from a logistical perspective? I’m pretty over Windows though... 1 Comment...

Question: What are you thoughts on the COVID vaccine? Will you take it? I'm sure my job will force me to take the vaccine.
Asked by Mommy (142.196.50.x) on December 22 2020, 10:26pm
Reply on December 23 2020, 1:43am:

When it is my turn, absolutely! Comment...

Question: Hey Justin, I'm enjoying your Super 8 jams and tutorials you've been posting lately, especially the guitar tone. What fx you are using on your guitar, are they plugins or are you using pedals etc?
Asked by Nick Demosthenous (46.177.253.x) on December 22 2020, 1:09am
Reply on December 22 2020, 2:30pm (edited at December 22 2020, 2:31pm):

Guitar (Fernandes Monterrey, usually) connected to R24's hi-z input
(toggleable) JSFX distortion (fuzz) - shape: 32, hard limit -25dB, wet -9dB dry -60dB
JSFX amp model (or ReaVerb) with the "Fender Deluxe - Tweed Champ.wav" cab model
(toggleable) ReaDelay with one tap, wet set to -2.5dB, length is 147ms feedback -4.4dB

Comment...

Question: Hey Justin! I am doing sound design for shows and working with MP4 videos. I have been working in reaper for 10 years and so I was able to solve the problem with video freezes. With the latest updates, the situation has only gotten worse. I could not work on the new 4k monitor, as the freezing situation became simply unbearable and I was sent back to the 1080 monitor. Please, give me advice, I'm desperate. The operating system is Windows 10.
Asked by Ilia Kostroma (178.215.98.x) on December 20 2020, 4:23pm
Reply on December 20 2020, 8:51pm:

This isn't really the place for it but if you can narrow down in what version something changed and post on the forums or email support at cockos dot com that would be the way to go about it. Comment...

Question: I am considering learning to code and I want to write my own Mp3 player and add a few features I don't really see in Winamp. What language was Winamp written in and what software/IDE would you recommend I use for my project?
Asked by Mike (73.91.212.x) on December 20 2020, 12:25am
Reply on December 20 2020, 8:52pm:

Winamp was written in C and C++ I think... Hard to recommend things these days, I guess I'd say use Visual Studio or something? Comment...

Question: Hey- apologies but> have you ever considered making (the daw that must not be named here) into a 360 panoramic or VR ready environment? would it even make sense? plus what are your general feelings towards 360 video,virtual reality soft and hardwares?
Asked by 2020 (2.26.240.x) on December 18 2020, 6:10pm
Reply on December 18 2020, 11:50pm:

I haven't yet but I'm not yet on the VR bandwagon so... 2 Comments...

Question: Hey- seeing your laptop in uses- but do either you or schwa also use super powerful desktop pcs or whatever? which kinda setup do you push system benchmarks for stability,high load cpu or resource handling and dsp measuring?
Asked by 2020 (2.26.240.x) on December 17 2020, 5:23pm
Reply on December 17 2020, 5:53pm:

There's no real reason I can think of for us to have super high-end stuff. Comment...

Question: Hi Justin. First: THANK YOU for all your hard work on Reaper. Do you still like living in SF? I recently left the city, begrudgingly, kicking and screaming. But it was time to move on, SF has in many ways lost its soul. The architecture is still quite lovely and inspiring, but the gentrification finally pushed out a vast majority of the exuberant quirky weirdos that made life fun.
Asked by Hungry Ear (73.132.195.x) on December 17 2020, 3:31am
Reply on December 17 2020, 4:29pm (edited at December 17 2020, 5:52pm):

I've been living in NYC for about 10 years :) I like SF fine, though I haven't spent much time there since... If I were to move back to the bay area, though, I'd probably choose somewhere with easier hiking trail access. Comment...

Question: What is a "0 watt amplifier"? simplifieramp.com/
Asked by Will (23.125.224.x) on December 15 2020, 6:49pm
Reply on December 15 2020, 10:11pm:

I didn't read it but it would probably be giving the qualities of an amplifier (warmth, harmonics, frequency response, whatever) without amplifying. Comment...

Question: hey-so,do you believe in leading by example,and do you feel our 'elected' leaders are leading by good* examples? are they showing us the 'right' ways??
Asked by 2020 (2.26.240.x) on December 15 2020, 1:34pm
Reply on December 15 2020, 3:13pm:

I do believe people should lead by example, and no, I don't think our leaders are doing a good job at that (I'm sure someone somewhere is, but tons of examples to point to of leaders' actions sending the complete wrong message). I do feel that putting elected in scare-quotes is inappropriate, though. Comment...

Question: It is hard to be skinny with a physical labor job. How do all the superstar coders stay so skinny?
Asked by Mike (73.91.212.x) on December 15 2020, 3:23am
Reply on December 15 2020, 3:13pm:

By avoiding physical labor? I dunno Comment...

Question: Any precaution/worry about the vaccine? Looks like a huge beta testing release, not sure what's the best option.
Asked by Gio (79.130.163.x) on December 14 2020, 6:20pm
Reply on December 14 2020, 8:33pm:

Yeah something this fast will likely have issues, but they do seem to be far far less severe and far less prevalent than the disease itself, so seems like an obvious win. 6 Comments...

Question: Is there any difference between mp3 and wav in low frequencies or only high frequencies get affected during audio compression?
Asked by Taylor's Evermore is really good! (27.58.8.x) on December 14 2020, 3:06pm
Reply on December 14 2020, 4:51pm:

All frequencies do get affected, though probably more noticeable on the high end Comment...

Question: Hey Justin! What script/extension of reaper are yours favorites/best ones? There is one you use recurrently?
Asked by HumanBeingWithFellings (179.104.165.x) on December 13 2020, 5:03pm
Reply on December 14 2020, 4:51pm:

There are some JSFX that really blow me away for sure, I forget off the top of my head though. :) Comment...

Question: T-shaped skill VS. I-shaped skill.... which is better? What do you like being between two? (currently, I guess you are I-shaped person)
Asked by The Skill (27.58.64.x) on December 13 2020, 7:45am
Reply on December 13 2020, 1:26pm (edited at December 13 2020, 1:28pm):

I'm probably a [.] but I don't think I'd be I-shaped 3 Comments...

Question: hey- so during this unique year,have you discovered any game changing ideas,information,skill or practices which have greatly empowered your daily flow?
Asked by 2020 (2.26.240.x) on December 13 2020, 3:06am
Reply on December 13 2020, 1:29pm:

Trying to think if there is anything... not really! Just incremental changes as it almost always goes... Comment...

Question: Do you sometimes have sleepless nights? What do you do then if so?
Asked by wasereb4 (87.167.82.x) on December 13 2020, 2:17am
Reply on December 13 2020, 1:27pm:

Never a whole night (knocks on wood), when I can't sleep it's usually because I have too much going on in my head so I try to go get it out by doing things (writing, coding, whatever). Comment...

Question: hi Justin. I would like to make Reaper faders control RME Totalmix faders (& vice versa) via OSC. I'm trying to figure out OSCii bot. Totalmix responds to 1/Volume1 so i want to connect it to n/track/1/volume in Reaper. im not getting far, any chance you could give me some pointers ? ive created OSC layouts on tablets but ive little knowledge with scripting and theres not much activity on OSCii bot forum for help.. if i could get one fader working i think i could propagate the rest from there..
Asked by EcBaPr (119.18.2.x) on December 11 2020, 1:19pm
Reply on December 11 2020, 1:27pm:

Unless you need a lot of scripted logic, you probably don't need OSCII-bot, REAPER's internal OSC definitions could be used... Let's discuss in the comments here (or on the forum?) 6 Comments...

Question: Hello Justin, it's the interview person again. After much procrastination, I have returned with 4 short questions: 1. What non-coding-related skills do you think are most important to your job (e.g. time management)? 2. Any common misconceptions about your job? 3. If you could go back in time, would you have any advice for your 20 year old self? 4. What was the most difficult part of writing REAPER?
Asked by Ethan (71.143.72.x) on December 11 2020, 1:22am
Reply on December 11 2020, 3:01am:

I'm unsure if this counts, but being a user first is probably the biggest thing -- even if I were to stop programming, I'd still want to shape the software as a user. Other important skills (which I don't always do but have been important along the way): digesting feedback from users, both for QA purposes and for improvements. Bookkeeping. Deciding what tools are needed in order to increase productivity (things to help manage our build processes, customer interactions, etc). Finding people who you can delegate things to -- I'm pretty bad at this, but I've lucked into the relationships that we have that have been essential!
Hard to answer this, I try not to read what people say on the internet...
I'd try to get my 20 year old self to exercise more and take better care of its teeth. The prime 15 years of running ability instead were spent in front of computers and driving around in cars, doh! When I moved to SF I would often drive the ~2.5 miles from my apartment to the office each day (and then usually spend time looking for parking). That seems completely absurd to me now.
Difficulty -- it's less about how hard things are and more about how much work they are. It's come a long way in these 15 years, and while there has definitely been code that was difficult to write, difficult to maintain, it usually was less difficult to eventually rewrite. Probably the hardest part with something like this is getting to the point where you feel like it's something that's worth continuing work on. Early on in projects you're making something and it's interesting, you get to some challenging bit that's going to take many hours of contemplation and experimentation, and you lose interest because you're not sure if it will be worth it. That still happens now, with particular subprojects and branches, but early on in a project it is more difficult. As an example -- I recently (due to Apple releasing M1 macs) started working on VST3 bridging for REAPER (it has never been supported, but now there's a real case where people will want to run REAPER/arm64 with their x86_64 plug-ins emulated). VST2 bridging is done by marshalling about 30 calls in each direction between the plug-in and the host. VST3 will require another 30 or so. I started work on it, started organizing things to make it more easily done, and it seems like it will work. But there's so much work ahead of it before I can even come close to testing a limping version. I'll get back to it soon, but in the mean time I can go work on other aspects of REAPER... Whereas if it were a brand new project, I might completely forget about it.

1 Comment...

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