The sound samples used by iTabla Pandit Studio Pro are make from real instrument recordings. Only a few are synthesized, for the shruti box.
What is made of a sound sample?
- A good recording of an instrument, usually a few seconds long.
- A high sample rate. The higher the sample rate, the better the final output quality of notes.
- A pitch correction if the sound sample pitch needs to be normalised and match perfectly the required tuning.
Why some sound samples are written “low…” but sound at the same pitch as other?
Why notes in sound samples changes but sound at the same pitch as other?
That’s simple… iTabla Pandit Studio Pro plays any sample we feed to it at the pitch required by the user. If you selected Indian Harmonic Scale, A 440, Base note D, octave 1, pitch +10, and then, you switch on the shruti. Whatever the sound sample you select, if you ask the shruti to play Sa, the pitch of the sound sample will be changed to Sa.
Then why to have different sound samples? In order to maximize the output sound quality, we should not change the pitch too much:
- if you want to play a low shruti, select a low pitch sound sample.
- if you want to play a G shruti, select a sound sample with its base note as close as possible of G
The calculations will preserve more of the original sound to generate the note at the required pitch. If the original sound sample has a very high sample rate, it also helps a lot to preserve original sound quality.
Example, take your calculator…
Imagine the output sound is at 48000 KHz, as observed on Android Phones. You have an original tanpura sound sample with Shadja tuned on E, at 96000 KHz. You want to play a tanpura tuned in E. In order to play Kharja, the sound sample will be changed by one octave: it’s the equivalent of playing the sound sample at a ½ speed. So playing our 96000 Hz file two times slower for an output rate of 48000 Hz is quite simple, all sound samples are already here: In one second, 96000/2 = 48000 samples will be used, which is the same sample rate as the sound output! We didn’t loose any sound quality, even by changing the sound sample by one octave.
Import & tune sound samples
You may read 👆 Import of a sound sample to lean how to import new sound samples into the studio.
You may read 👆 Tune your sound sample to understand how to tune your sound samples with the studio, so that they will match perfectly the tuning of other instruments (surel).