sox is doing my head in!
Feb. 28th, 2002 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronI think one of the best investments we made was a CD burner. It only cost £60, and it's saved me huge amounts of time and effort. Before we had it, I used to have to give CDs to Richard to copy at work. Anyone who's tried to meet up with him in an evening will know what happens to him at work - he tends to get stuck there ages after he's planned to leave, and he never gets round to doing half the things he meant to do. The average turnaround time for him to do a straight disc-to-disc transfer for me was about two weeks, so you can only imagine how long it would have taken for him to get round to making up CD compilations for me.
Now that we have a burner at home, I make up compilations whenever I feel like it. It's not normally too difficult, unless you find that your input CDs were recorded at wildly differing volumes. We don't have any sophisticated audio software, and so far we've never needed any. I do audio processing with nothing more user-friendly than command-line sox. However, I'm failing to make any sense out of this part of man sox:
fade [ type ] fade-in-length [ stop-time [ fade-out-length ] ]
Add a fade effect to the beginning, end, or both of the audio data.
For fade-ins, this starts from the first sample and ramps the volume of the audio from 0 to full volume over fade-in-length seconds. Specify 0 seconds if no fade-in is wanted.
For fade-outs, the audio data will be trucated at the stop-time and the volume will be ramped from full volume down to 0 starting at fade-out-length seconds before the stop-time. No fade-out is performed if these options are not specified.
I typed in sox infile.wav oldfile.wav fade 0 200 4, and got a four-second sample out instead of the 200-second sample I'd been expecting. Various fiddling, and I discovered sox infile.wav oldfile.wav fade 0 2000 gives a 52-second file. Clearly, stop-time is not measured in seconds. But what is it measured in?
Update: 21:00. There seems to be a bug in sox version 12.17.1. stop-time should indeed be measured in seconds. Downloading 12.17.3 fixed the problem. Just thought I'd let you know :)
Now that we have a burner at home, I make up compilations whenever I feel like it. It's not normally too difficult, unless you find that your input CDs were recorded at wildly differing volumes. We don't have any sophisticated audio software, and so far we've never needed any. I do audio processing with nothing more user-friendly than command-line sox. However, I'm failing to make any sense out of this part of man sox:
fade [ type ] fade-in-length [ stop-time [ fade-out-length ] ]
Add a fade effect to the beginning, end, or both of the audio data.
For fade-ins, this starts from the first sample and ramps the volume of the audio from 0 to full volume over fade-in-length seconds. Specify 0 seconds if no fade-in is wanted.
For fade-outs, the audio data will be trucated at the stop-time and the volume will be ramped from full volume down to 0 starting at fade-out-length seconds before the stop-time. No fade-out is performed if these options are not specified.
I typed in sox infile.wav oldfile.wav fade 0 200 4, and got a four-second sample out instead of the 200-second sample I'd been expecting. Various fiddling, and I discovered sox infile.wav oldfile.wav fade 0 2000 gives a 52-second file. Clearly, stop-time is not measured in seconds. But what is it measured in?
Update: 21:00. There seems to be a bug in sox version 12.17.1. stop-time should indeed be measured in seconds. Downloading 12.17.3 fixed the problem. Just thought I'd let you know :)
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Date: 2002-02-28 01:17 pm (UTC)While I remember - I notice the Tassauds theme parks are reopening on March 22nd, the Friday before Good Friday. I don't expect many schools will be on holiday then (Liam's Easter break doesn't start until GF) so the queues should be ok. Do you want to visit Chessington or Thorpe Park then?
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Date: 2002-03-08 11:25 am (UTC)I see from browsing them, they're introducing a Good! Which one do you want to 'do'?
I see from browsing them, they're introducing a £35 annual ticket for off-peak (ie school days, basically) visits to just these two. I'm quite tempted - I hate the queues during holidays, I know I've been on the Eye a lot less this year than last since they stopped booking in advance, and once you've been to Madame Tassauds once...
I also see they want people to pay an extra £30 to ride Colossus at Thorpe Park half an hour before anyone else. Gasp. I think annual pass holders don't have to pay more, but I'm not sure.
I did discover that the annual pass still works (once) with Parc Asterix which is something PA's site keeps quiet about. That's good - we're going there in the week my current annual pass runs out.
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Date: 2002-03-20 01:50 pm (UTC)I don't think I'm tempted by the £35 off-peak ticket because one thing I rather like about the main ticket is that Alton Towers is included. With it being so far I probably only go there two or three days a year, but it's nice that it is included. Also, looking at http://www.thorpepark.co.uk/tickets/peak_offpeak.asp (http://www.thorpepark.co.uk/tickets/peak_offpeak.asp) there seems to be quite a shortage of green days (when that ticket is valid).
The new info about the standard Tussauds season pass is that it includes unlimited access to: Thorpe Park, Chessington & Alton Towers,
Warwick Castle, The London Planetarium & Madame Tussaud's -
London, Amsterdam, Las Vegas, Hong Kong & New York,
and Heide Park - Germany. (As of when our current passes run out it will no longer include the London Eye).
Also, the pass allows one visit per year to each of the Great European Theme Parks: Efteling, Holland; Liseberg, Sweden; Parc Asterix, France & Europa Park, Germany.
And it would seem that holders of the Annual Pass holders get the exclusive ride time on Colossus for free. Apparently you must book in advance on 0870 444 44 66, though.
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Date: 2002-03-20 03:07 pm (UTC)Yep - the 'green days' are the school termtime days. In the past, that'd have been perfect for me - no way am I going to queue for 30-60 minutes to have one go on something I'd be able to stay on for several times around on a schoolday.
I dunno. Jo Anna's going to change the equation (no skipping off to CWoA or TP because the weather's good). Part of me is still tempted by a full annual, especially if they're still doing a 'your entry today off the cost of an annual pass' deal on it... the current pass cost £50 having blagged a full price day ticket off someone inside TP. At that price, it's less than the £35 + a day at AT.
Fancy a day at AT during April schooltime? Your time with Richard there last year made me jealous :)
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Date: 2002-02-28 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject