Possibility to add reverb and equalizer in openmpt123

[RyanBram]

Hi.

Is it possible to implement command line switch feature for toggling reverb or equalizer settings?
Because I read from Ubuntu Manpage, such feature doesn't exist.

BTW, when trying to do command

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openmpt123.exe -h > help.txt there is no manual page created in the txt file. And without adding > help.txt command, only last part of manual page appear on the commandline terminal.

Thanks.

[manx]

Is it possible to implement command line switch feature for toggling reverb or equalizer settings?

Nothing like that is planned. Partially explained at https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/faq/:

Surround, extra bass, equalizer, automated gain control and noise reduction DSP effects: libopenmpt only tries to decode the actual module file itself and does not try to implement a general post-processing effect chain. Any effects could easily be applied by any player program externally after decoding via libopenmpt.

Although this quote mainly targets libopenmpt, it also concerns openmpt123. If we start adding some DSP post-processing to openmpt123, where would we stop?

BTW, when trying to do command

Code Select Expand

openmpt123.exe -h > help.txt there is no manual page created in the txt file. And without adding > help.txt command, only last part of manual page appear on the commandline terminal.

openmpt123 currently does not use stdout but instead directly writes to the console window in Windows. This is for performance reasons as well as for correctness reasons regarding proper unicode text output, otherwise even the most simple console output would cause sound to stutter. I'll look into whether this can be changed for some modes (i.e. when only requesting help), however it's frankly unlikely to be possible, because the output mode basically has to be decided very early on in openmpt123, even before parsing the command line.

[Saga Musix]

Partially off-topic, but slapping a global reverb on a track is hardly ever going to sound good, because it will apply both to instruments that would possibly benefit from added reverb but also to instruments that really shouldn't be drowned in reverb (e.g. bass and bass drum). It should be left to the composer to explicitely add reverb to instruments that need it (which is already supported e.g. through plugins).

[LPChip]

Saga Music,
Although generally I do agree, from a gaming point of view, reverb can be used to simulate a different environment the song is being played in. Although it indeed destroys what the song would normally be in, one could in theory have a desktop theme that would act like a cave with a reverb effect to simulate that, being able to switch on the fly.

But yeah, I would not play music for fun after that. Just wanted to point out that I can actually think of one reason why anyone would want to add reverb everywhere while they shouldn't.

[Saga Musix]

Although generally I do agree, from a gaming point of view, reverb can be used to simulate a different environment the song is being played in.

openmpt123 is... not a game?! Whether a game could take advantage of reverb or not is completely unrelated, because even if someone was going to use libopenmpt for their background music, it would have to go through the same reverberator as the rest of the sounds in that game.

[LPChip]

The game was just a reference.

I was more thinking of.. lets say, a linux user uses openmpt123 as a means to play music on his pc and he has a background of a cave. They set the reverb settings to simulate a cave and call it a theme.

But yeah, I just wanted to add my two cents really. I really do generally agree with what you said earlier.

[manx]

I was more thinking of.. lets say, a linux user uses openmpt123 as a means to play music on his pc and he has a background of a cave. They set the reverb settings to simulate a cave and call it a theme.

Although rarely used in practice, all modern platforms support system-wide DSP plugins in the global audio chain, independent of any particular player software. The mentioned use case would be better handled that way.

Frankly, I would rather develop a proper GUI for this system feature for both Linux and Windows than add any such functionality to openmpt123.
The situation would be somewhat different if openmpt123 would be a general purpose audio player rather than only the canonical frontend to libopenmpt.

[RyanBram]

Great discussion in here.

Thank you very much everyone for your response to my question. There are many perspective that I learned today from this discussion.

[LPChip]

Manx, you bring up an excellent point. I retract my view. Openmpt123 is not the way for that.