Snd

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Revision as of 19:58, 24 August 2011 by Juanig (Talk | contribs) (add startind snd section)

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Written and developed at CCRMA by Bill Shottstaedt, SND is a sound editor modeled loosely after Emacs, an old, sorely-missed PDP-10 sound editor named Dpysnd. It can accommodate any number of sounds each with any number of channels, and can be customized and extended using guile and Ruby. It can be customized and extended using either s7 (included in the Snd sources), Ruby, or Forth. Snd can be started on any PlanetCCRMA Linux workstation by selecting the application on the PlanetCCRMA menu and the editors tab. Otherwise SND is started by typing the 'snd' command on a terminal window or shell.


Starting SND

On a terminal shell (Linux or OSX), SND can be started by typing:


    snd &      

If you have a sound you want to listen, you can type for instance,


    snd /zap/dog.snd &     

and your soundfile will be loaded and opened directly on SND. This is a good way to get familiar to the SND interface.

Once SND is running, go to the file menu, and open another soundfile or close the one already opened. To hear the sound, click the 'play' button. To see an fft, click the 'f' button on the left. The left mouse button is used for most pointing operations; the middle button pastes in the current selection; the right button brings up the SND pop up menu. Make sure you go through the help pull down menu to find more about all the features SND. In addition to this there is an enormous amount of information in the SND manual or search its documentation on its index

Note: You might need to run Jack with Qjackctl in order to get some sound out of the Linux workstations.

Editing soundfiles with SND

To edit soundfiles using SND, good advice is to use 'emacs-like' keyboard combinations (see below), and then try them on a SND listener window. To make things easier start with a short (3 secs) mono (one-channel) soundfile.


c-x means control-x or the keyboard combination <ctrl>-<x>
M-x means meta-x and at CCRMA is the keyboard combination <esc>-<x>


If you have a soundfile in the active window try the following combinations and watch the cursor in the displayed soundfile active window. If you don't have a soundfile you can use the open command in the file pull-down menu of SND.

c-a: move cursor to window start
c-e: move cursor to window end
c-v: move cursor to mid-window
c-l: position window so cursor is in the middle
c-f: move cursor ahead one sample
c-b: move cursor back one sample
c-q: play current channel starting at cursor
c-t: stop playing
c-[Space]: start selection definition
c-m: place (or remove) mark at cursor location
c-j: goto mark
c-w: delete (cut) current region
M-w: (copy) current region
c-y: paste in last deleted region
c-_: undo
c-x c-s: save your current edition.

Playing a Soundfile

  • To play a sound file from a place other than the beginning:
  1. Activate sync or sync/unite modes in the lower right check-boxes
  2. Create a synchronize marker by:
        c-s-M (control-shift capital M)
-You should you get markers for all the channels.
  • To play from that location just click on the triangle in any of the markers.
  1. Playback should start.
  2. You can also move this markers and even 'rock the reels' by dragging the mouse.
  • More complex operations:
  1. To move forward or backwards in the Soundfile use the following key combinations:
      c-a                     ;;; move cursosr to the beginning
      c-u 0.4 c-f             ;;; move cursor forward 0.4 seconds
      c-e                     ;;; move cursor to the end
      c-u 1.12 c-b            ;;; nove cursor backwards 1.12 seconds
      c-[Space]               ;;; start selection definition
      c-e                     ;;; a selection of 1.12 seconds
Note: These combinations and more can be viewed on the online Help menu at the overview command at the right side of the SND active window.


More info at Users at PlanetCCRMA:SND