Starise

Highly Underrated. A nice set of tools in this plugin.

I didn't list this in the FX thread because It's more of an instrument.

If your looking for a comment that might help you get further in exposing your music, I'm sorry I can't offer you that. Back in the day , and even to some extent now pending a more normal playing schedule for bands, the best way to gain some extra $$ was to pitch your CDs and than have them on a table in the back of the room along with the T-shirts. Make sure you have a break or two during the concert. Direct people to the snacks bars and restrooms first and then also casually mention the CD table. The better more well known bands will do better. People liked you enough to show up for a concert and pay for it. Most people come to concerts with a little extra money thinking they will eat out afterwards etc etc etc... People like to have a keepsake. Even if that CD ends up as a doorstop or gets buried in a pile of junk eventually they will buy it. In my case, I buy them, listen once or maybe twice then forget about it. 5 years later I'm cleaning out my glove box to sell the car and come across it. Musicians think they have an edge now in selling online. It's really a disadvantage because no one knows who you are or cares. If you don't play out or get some kind of exposure or have some kind of a memorable schtick like playing naked or using dancing elephants in your act you will be "just another rock band" with "just another rock band" sound. The big acts were chosen and funded by large corporate interests with deep pockets. It's like you can strike gold in Alaska eventually if you're willing to put millions up front and take several years doing it. The older I get the more I see right through all of the crap. Famous musicians are often minimally talented shills who are simply "products" to be marketed. Use any angle you can , the devil, se** whateva brings in the dough. Don't think for one minute it has anything to do with music.

The Dirge Of Purge The Happy Scalers Submarine Susie Captain Cakewalk Deep Dive Delight The Saltwater Seaquacks

Sea Monkey Escapade The Bubble Pumpers The Lurchin Urchins Clapping Wave Riot The Crabby Louts Fighting Oarsmen

Ship Me Timbres The Anchor Jerks The Chilly Whillys Blackbeard's Privates The Hooked Mariners The Dancing Flounders Shrunken Matey The Luna Tunas The Horney Whales The Swinging Harpoons The Mass of Mast The Holy Sails ...............the, never mind

That's an awfully expensive window stop. Could have saved a few bucks using a PC.

The Spud Muffins The Fuzzy Peaches Half a Mermaid The Thumb Clubbers The Nose Pickers Blue Grasshopper The Flying None Dunlap Distress Vapor Caper Mystified Susan .............................you want more?

I'll bet she had babies. Just a guess.....probably in her 50's now and wishing she still looked like that. Oh....was this supposed to have something to do with tools?

No worries Dave...I frequent a paid service that augments some of my violin training. They have a forum there. Someone asked if we knew of any online service that could allow a live playing experience. A few of the players tried Jamkazam with little success. Though I'll admit, the video you posted made it look very appealing. Seems to be working for a few. My internet connection at home is decent. I don't pay for the skunk works version. If the total success is dependent on the slowest connection in the group I'm probably screwed. Most musicians I know are far from tech literate and probably don't have a clue as to how to max their systems. I don't intend that statement to be derogatory. Just the way things are. Don't get me wrong. I doubt Bill Gates would hire me as a custodian. I know enough to get by when it comes to servers, routers, internet connections etc. I can put computers together whoopee. Obviously now would be a good time for someone to rake some $$ in if they could come up with an idea to make the process work better.

The Roland offerings are no better or worse than most of the other prosumer interfaces such as Tascam, Steinberg and the like. They don't touch the quality of something like Apogee or RME. The Clarett line is in that range and a good value in comparison. The Scarlett range is more similar to those others. I think the pres sound a bit better than something like Tascam to my ears. Presonus has some decent interfaces too. If you use a decent outboard preamp into line inputs mic preamps become less of an issue. You really have to sort through the sales jargon and the specs to get a better picture. At the end of the day all preamps have some noise and harmonic distortion. Most of them have very little noise at 60% volume or less. A Scarlett pre might have 10% more noise than an RME pre. If the input signal is healthy there should be no need to push them up much higher. It goes deeper than that. You need clean power filtration in the interface and I think Focusrite have done a good job since they use wall warts. Good RF protection is another factor. The better interfaces have lower S/N ratios than the less expensive ones. The A/D converters are usually stable enough that most human ears can't detect a huge difference. Presonus uses something called XMAX that's supposed to stabilize the crystal oscillations. That's a company trademark term and it might be more fairy dust than reality. Sort of like the "waveguide" technology JBL uses on their monitors. It's patented. It's probably an improvement. How much I can't say. Scientists and techs like to see hard data on an oscilloscope to determine how much noise is in the electronics. Musicians on the other hand, use their ears. The differences are not huge unless we are comparing Apogee to M-audio low end sub 100 dollar interfaces.

If you don't have a touch screen this is great, or maybe if you can't be close to the computer. Looks interesting! FWIW Elgato has a free phone app as well. Stream Deck Mobile In addition to carrying hot keys over I especially like the multi functions that are capable of combining multiple actions together that will all happen with one touch of a button. This goes way deeper than DAW control since it can tie into just about any other controls system.

This is the one I have. ....or as another option, The Behringer ADA8200. 8 "Midas" preamps .

In spite of the lack of full customization, Cakewalk's touch screen capabilities are pretty cool. If you want further customization and a faster workflow I recommend you look into Elgato Stream Deck. You can set it up with any DAW including Cakewalk This guy is using it in FL Studio.

The main advantage to the Clarett over the Scarlett is better mic/instrument preamps. I have the Scarlett version of the 4 pre and it works well in my home studio setting. I'll probably replace my Scarlett with a Clarett when the time comes. So far though the pre amps in my Scarlett are just fine. In an actual recording mix I doubt the difference is night and day. What your main question is though concerning the S/PDIF. I don't see how there could be any difference in that digital signal between the two. Lots of users are taking advantage of the S/PDIF to add 8 extra mic inputs to the interface. I haven't heard of it used for guitar input so I can't comment on how it worked for that. I would be confident it would work just fine if sample rates are matched.

Vimeo!

Looks like issues with the keyboard audio. That's Dave? Doesn't look anything like his pic here to me. You sure?

For NI it probably doesn't get any better than this. I see one or two additions I could maybe use. I would be updating K10 so I have most of it already. The acoustic looks like a nice program. The orchestral additions and changes look nice. Not sure how much I will use them though. Usually it isn't as much as I thought I would. If you had an older version and want to upgrade this looks like the time to do it.

Interesting read. I try to remind myself that any time I use compression it plays with dynamics. I know that should be a pretty straight forward thought, but it helps me to see it that way since often when people use compressors they might be trying to do something else, like make the material louder. For me that isn't the goal. I was recently reminded of this when I worked on a live broadcast pushed out to a social media channel. The audio feed is in mono and bass is almost non existent. If you really want to hear compression at work just listen to a lively piece of music on an AM radio station. Almost no dynamics. It's alike everything is closed into a small box. Yes you can still hear everything but it isn't ANYTHING like the real performance. Now imagine how everything sounds attending a live music event. Admittedly a mix of an event well done often sounds better than actually being there. In that sense the mix can be an improvement. Too many conflicting dynamics in a live situation .vs the compressed world of AM. In folk music you probably want to hear the detailed plucks of the acoustic instruments, so playing too much with those peaks will kill the feel of it. I never have a single way I make my mixes. If there are some really powerful attacks coming from acoustic instruments or drums I might tackle them by simply dealing in a narrow db range with only the tips of those attacks. You might not hardly ever see the compressor indicator at work in that case. I would do this at the track level sometimes if there are some crazy loud attacks that didn't break 0db. If it went above that just re track that part. A compressor isn't a mixer and it wasn't intended to make things louder even though many compressors have a makeup volume control which is really dangerous in the wrong hands. If you go too far with all of that you will be making your own AM radio audio. If anything I'm often using multi band compression over a whole track approach because often only a small segment of the audio needs any compression if at all. Another really viable option is to use side chain compression. I often find issues in the master concerning bass and it's easy peasy to run the offending track in to a master compressor side chain. I don't see limiting and compression as the same thing. Limiting is like compression on steroids. I seldom use it on anything but the master. As with compression I prefer multi band limiting as a 1st stage on the master and then if necessary I'll add a master limiter set lightly for folk music. It is usually suggested by mixing pros to track at low db levels for the mix, say -6db or less. I have tracked some parts at -12 db or less. There are other things we can do to get around feeling the necessity to compress. If there is only a few offending places in the master why not use volume automation instead?

Thanks Craig! I didn't do so well in English class though I could read and spell at collegiate level in 5th grade, which never made much sense to me. It was the terms designed to explain a thing in English. The scientific break down and terminology I didn't grok. Didn't help there were 30 students in the class and if you didn't understand anything they didn't wait for you to get it, which means anything else you leaned from then on had no foundation because it was all built on everything else. ..........so I guess what I'm trying to say is this gives me a great excuse for flunking.

The synths in this look to be pretty good. Not to mention all of the other additions. I admit I would feel a little odd using it without ROLI hardware. For 50.00 I might forget the ROLI keyboard.

Same here. I have had it now, maybe a month. The first few days I played with it. My intentions were to dive deep into the program. Then life happened. Hopefully I'll swing back around to it soon....if you don't use it, you won't loose it. Eventually I'll get there.

It would take some getting used to for me since I have been working two monitors for so long. Console view always goes on my right, everything else on the left. Or I can collapse the console temporarily to mix a movie. No bad or good or best way. Old dog. New tricks. Just sayin'. I'm sure I could make just about anything work if I had to.

Thanks Craig. Nice areas. You hid those wires well. I used to work with MC which is the external covering cable you showed. I still have the cutters for it. I much prefer buying the higher voltage type with the wire already in it. It's a real pain to fish wires though MC conduit. I might actually end up using that or something similar. From an electrical emissions standpoint I wonder how much it will help because the sub panel is 25 Ft. away in a closet located in another room. I could still have issues from the panel. In doing a search for how studios are wired I mostly encountered the audio cable connections info and the notorious issues with ground loops. All important for sure. I don't tend to buy the most expensive cables for my audio gear. I would say it's mostly mid grade. You hear very little about the high voltage. I say high voltage relatively speaking because I've been around 13,800 volts. This is only 115 volts/120 volts. Still enough to bite you if you touch it. There's already a 220 volt line running in the attic above my future studio for the heat pump. It isn't shielded but it is grounded well. It wouldn't be very close to my audio gear. The other lines will come into the space from the attic area and down through the walls. I'm sure the unit outside is well grounded ( I installed it). Looks like lunch for a thunder storm though with all of those circuit boards in it .

Great!! I think everyone goes through something and eventually comes around. We all have vices. Nothing wrong with a drink. I hear what you're saying though. Not sure about you but my music has been suffering some lately. I was working from home, but they made me come back. I was beginning to enjoy it at home. I had plenty to keep me busy, so I didn't think much about the time or seclusion. My wife was around. That doesn't always work well though. I saved a bunch of money on gas and car expenses over something 8 weeks or more. I go shopping around here, just throw on the mask. TV is great for me in the evening sometimes. I try to stay away from the news most of the time. Can you sit out back and watch the birds? That always helps me.