Re: [pygame] Some way to pickle or otherwise save a pygame.mixer.Sound object?

[Alec Bennett <wrybread@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2018 at 4:21 AM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Alec Bennett wrote:

16 bit wav files. 1411 kbps. About 5 megs each but one is very long (a 13 minute medley of all of them, 133 megs).

Okay, I didn't realise they were that big -- I was thinking
short horn sounds, not substantial pieces of music!

It's a "musical horn" in the ice cream truck sense. Plays this for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzodaDCD798

Uses this keypad with a Raspberry Pi:

https://learn.parallax.com/tutorials/language/propeller-c/propeller-c-simple-devices/read-4x4-matrix-keypad

 

You bring up a good point, I can certainly make them mono.

Also maybe 8 bit -- a horn probably doesn't need terrifically
high sound fidelity.

True, but it does seem a shame to have to degrade the sound quality. I'm calling the project "music box" since I'd like to be able to use it as a general music clip trigger, like the classic Dr. Sample:

https://www.amazon.com/BOSS-SAMPLE-SP-303-PHRASE-SAMPLER/dp/B0002J1NE6

 

But surely there must be some way to save a preloaded state?

That's over 200MB altogether, which may be why it takes so
long. Have you tried simply reading all the files to see
how long it takes?

Very good point.

 

If that takes just as long, then reading a preloaded state
isn't going to gain you anything -- you've still got over
200MB of data to read in.

You could also try using a compressed format such as
mp3 or ogg/vorbis to see if it loads any faster.

I tried MP3, but unfortunately the pygame.mixer.Sound doesn't support it. The pygame.mixer.music does support MP3, but it doesn't support polyphony.

I wonder if it would be possible to modify pygame.mixer.Sound so it supports MP3?

I see that pygame.mixer.Sound supports OGG, I guess I should try that. I've never used OGG before, and I wonder if it supports OGG if MP3 would be an easy addition?

Another thought -- instead of loading the medley as a
separate file, could you assemble it on the fly from
parts of the others?

Yup, should definitely do that. But again, part of me is thinking about this as larger than just my project. It seems a shame that playing a 13 minute sound file with polyphony should take so long to preload. I get that in games that's not usually a factor but Pygame is useful for so much other than games.

 

Another other thought -- instead of storing entire tunes
as sound files, just use samples of the horn sounds and
write a sequencer to play the tunes with them.

Here's a playlist of the old ice cream truck jingles we're playing. This is for a cart that sells oysters by the way. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzodaDCD798&list=PLxDFYmPWdF3DqMkFxwnKPr22r_15-GWne&t=2s&index=2

 

--
Greg