Tezza

I've been preparing for this as well. Buying one component at a time you only need to pay a little as you go. Personally, I would assemble the computer as I get the parts so they would need to be bought in order. I have already bought new hard drives, great graphics card and new DVD burner which are in the old one. I would think this order in my case (yours might be different) might be a good start: 1. Case 2. PSU 3. Motherboard 4. CPU 5. RAM 6. Transfer "C Drive" SSD 7. Transfer Graphics card 8. Transfer DVD Burner 9. Install Windows 10 10. Transfer remaining hard drives I would only transfer one hard drive and set up the C drive, then install windows as if I put them all in at once and then install windows I have difficulty with the assignments. The only part I am confused about is how and when to buy Windows 10, I think you can buy it with the motherboard for OEM prices or something like that. With the old computer, I can install the old hard drives and DVD burner I have and run it from internal graphics and then flog it on Gumtree.

Yes it does. One hand cannot clap alone without the other hand to hit against. You can trust me on this, Vulcans cannot lie.

I have mine on an internal SSD drive but I guess if you have a macbook or something like that and you have limited internal drive functionality then I guess an outboard drive would be the answer. I have Komplete Ultimate 10 and there is still plenty of stuff there I have yet to use. You will need a good internet connection to download and install komplete, even if you buy the hard drive. I upgraded mine to 12 but then had to return it because I couldn't install it on my bad internet even though I bought the hard drive to try to avoid this. With 10 I don't have to worry about this because 95% was on the hard drive I bought and then I manually downloaded the updates from another computer and put them on the a USB stick. I can just install from the hard drive, install the updates from the USB stick and then go online for a few seconds to authorize. After 10 they changed it so you must be online to install anything. You can't even install anything from the hard rive without being online.

nah, I never lock anything up unless I'm going away, that was when I was living in a different place and had a PA and monitors rigged up to the audio interface in a room by itself. Neighbours were pretty good there, some of them were musicians as well.

If I'm in the house, I will sometimes leave the computer on with something being worked on and come back to it occasionally but if I leave the house I always turn it off, once I left the house with the guitar plugged in and the feedback built up, the neighbours had to come in and turn it off, said it was shaking everything in the room and also in their room next door! I don't think anything would be hurt by leaving the computer on with the monitor off, I've never done it though, probably excess wear and tear on the computer though if you've got it running but not actually doing anything with it. I wouldn't do it but bear in mind, I live in a country with some of the most expensive electricity in the world.

I think this could be my problem when using sims, going straight into the UR44 might not be cutting it but when I have a $40.00 pedal that does seem to be cutting it at the moment, for fender clean anyway, I'm reluctant to put up the dollars for a better front end, I'm happy with the UR44 for it's mic inputs at least, mic'd acoustic guitar and vocals are fine for me there. Perhaps investing in a good quality DI might change things but then again, it might not. I might try my boss tuner which is advertised to be good for DAW front end as it acts as a "buffer". See if that makes any difference. The problem is, if you have to add things at the front end to make amp sims sound good, it defeats one of the positives of amp sims, just plugging in direct and playing straight away, may as well use pedals.

I tried the Vermillion by Kuassa, it's not bad for clean after some tweaking. None of the "clean" presets are anywhere near clean, they are all distorted, some quite heavily so I don't know what they are doing there. And I use low output pickups. At the moment I don't have an amp sim that sounds better than my $40.00 American sound Joyo pedal for clean fender sounds. I have tried most, while they get close, when I get my ear right up to the monitor, my guitar has more tone and richness and smoothness with the Joyo pedal than with any amp sim. The ease of use of the Joyo also is better for me, 6 knobs and that's it. The waveform also looks healthier, fatter and smoother whereas all the amp sim waveforms look to me just like they sound, spiky and scratchy. This could be due to me going direct in to the audio interface, I don't know, perhaps there is no buffer? and it will always sound bad this way. The Joyo also feels more like a real amp in the way it responds. The Joyo also stands up in the mix, it sounds good regardless at what volume I put it at in the mix, the amp sims become even more scratchy and lacking in tone when you sit them back in the mix. I am still not that impressed by amp sims to deliver a rich, quality fender tone, it's not quite there yet for me. Also the workflow with the pedals is simple and done, that's it. All you need to do is EQ and Comp, that's it. This is what I need when I put the tracks down and jam to the songs, a great sounding track of rhythm electric guitar that I then may not even need to change for the final product with no mucking about. If that is not there, it makes it harder for me to compose the rest of the instruments and doesn't inspire me to go on. In production of the song, I am happy to use amp sims like guitar rig to produce alternate effected guitar parts direct from midi or play the guitar through guitar rig for stereo effects etc. Guitar rig can sound great used this way, in stereo for clean. I really would like amp sims to be the solution for me but at the moment, while they have a place in production, I can't use them for my go to sound and my initial song creation sound.

That's what I thought when I saw it. I thought it was referring to the old forum though.

Is this still like the factory kontakt guitars ie you cannot input midi to trigger notes just patterns.

Seymour Duncan, Fender American Standard, Mexican Standard and Tonerider City Limits. The problem wasn't the quality, it was the high output single coils giving me this scratchy distortion, many would like it but I hate it. Now with the Pure Vintage I have a truly clean option that sounds quality and I can work the sims to taste in relation to dialing in distortion if I need to on occasion (I only use a little). Funk and quack heaven! I should point out, I only use single coils in the strat. That in part may be a problem, I think the Humbuckers work better with the sims out of the box, single coils are more fussy. Australia has a lot of links with Indonesia, many live there and retire there. Bali is our official party house! I just saw a report today saying that the Bali police are going to crack down on drunken Australians "wreaking havoc" in Bali.... They say things like that occasionally but the reality is we pile huge amounts of tourism dollars into Bali and we are always welcome there. It's a great place, sort of lawless in many ways and also has the spiritual side covered with meditation retreats, beautiful landscapes and surf. The mainland is very impressive and they have come a long way in raising the standards in their country. In addition, Australia is about to sign an updated trade deal with Indonesia which is massive. They have about 270 million people....big market for us! They are 90% Muslim but it's fine for us anglo's over there. There's been a few scuffles like the minor war that erupted between us during Timors independence push and a terror bomb that went off in Bali, killing about 80 Australians but generally it's great on any of the islands or the mainland.

Just downloaded demo of Kuassa Vermillion, will try it tonight, it ticks all the boxes for me, simple amp like interface, brilliant reviews, praised for clean sound, simple authorization and Indonesian, here in Australia we like to support the Indonesian's where possible, and cheap!. Will try it tonight.

I wanted to go for a nice clean sound, my sound has always sounded too scratchy when going direct in so I use pedals, even then, Iv'e not been satisfied, there was this scratchy distorted sound at the front of wave form, hated it, couldn't EQ it or compress it out without really mangling the sound. I just ditched my old pickups and put in some Toneriders Pure Vintage. Immediate change, now the amp sims are quite ok for clean, pedals slightly better but only by a whisker, The scratchy sound has gone completely but it has taken me 4 sets of pickups to get there. In my view, high output single coils straight into DI for a clean sound, don't work, nice lower output single coils sound heaps better for that sound. The quality of the sound of my finger picking, lead and chord playing, rhythm chops etc has all gone up quite significantly, but more importantly, in the direction I wanted it to go. So friggin smooth!!! even through DI! John Mayer clean if you know what I mean. Plus the modern stagger of the Toneriders gets rid of that predominant G string sound, better overall balanced sound, the high strings not so shrill, warmer. It's like playing with a transparent compressor and EQ working silently in the background. Moral of the story, pickups are important too, in fact I think they are more important when recording DI than when playing through an amp. I love my Toneriders! I am also now prepared to revisit trialing amp sims only for my sounds. All good stuff Christian, thanks!, the only thing, as far as I know, the Golkden Age Pre 73 is actually a pre-amp not a DI, no wait, I think you are saying that you are going into a DI and THEN going into the GA and then to line in on interface, is that right? if so I'm wondering if going through a DI alone would make a difference as opposed to going straight in through the HiZ interface input. Seen mixed views on this. I am set on hammering Guitar Rig to get the sound, I have other sims but I want to move to a simple install with kU12, Cakewalk and that's it, with no pedals (good for traveling and taking a laptop). I think I can get there but haven't yet explored guitar rigs ability to import impulse responses, that's the next task.

I would add that it depends on your hand size as well what will feel comfortable to you, I have smaller fingers and like narrower width necks. If your starting and you don't know what to do, I would get an experienced guitar player to help you out. If you have smaller hands, look at the size of the neck, then it is setup really, the action or distance from the strings to the fretboard. You need one that is reasonably well set up, an experienced guitarist will be able to assist you there, or send it in for a setup, generally, grinding down the bridge and doing the nut slots and neck relief. This is important because playability will determine if you stick with practice or dump it after two weeks. You don't need super high quality guitar, I find semi acoustic electrics/cutaways are fine, they can be fun to plug in sometimes. I also play the Tanglewoods, mainly because of their thin necks, they sound good for their price as well. They also seem to have a fairly good setup straight off the shelf mostly, a few bumpy frets here and there sometimes, best to run over the whole fretboard. I think they would make a great start for someone getting into guitar.

Make sure when your singing into the mic that you have good headphones and a good monitoring level, reduce the instruments if you have to so you can hear your voice well, in addition, use a pop filter and set it about 4 - 6 inches from the mic. This should enable you to use microphone technique to control the volume of your voice well. Sing your loudest part and watch the clip levels so it doesn't clip, then do some test recordings. If you set it up right and practice, you won't need a front end compressor or limiter. The trick is getting away from your mic, that way you will record more consistent waveforms with less spiking, you can back off up to 10 inches or so if you need to, depends on your microphone and audio interface etc. Find the sweet spot. The closer you are to the mic the more clipping, dynamics and spiking of the waveform you will get. You will need to be using a condenser with phantom power to get this right. The worst situation is singing right on top of a dynamic mic and trying to go straight in. I had some compressors on the front end but I don't use them anymore because I've found the sweet spot for singing. There really shouldn't be much problem in recording straight in if you set it up right, should be a nice, full, even waveform. The further you go back though, the more the room reverberation will play a part, that may be desirable in your situation or not. You can hang a blanket behind you to cut some of this out. It depends on your set up but you should be able to find the sweet spot where it all comes together. One more thing, I've done quite a bit of testing with different microphone screens/reflectors, those things you can buy to put behind the microphone on a stand. My conclusion is they are worthless, they all impart an ugly coloring of the sound that is recorded because of what bounces off them back into the microphone, I don't use them and get a far more natural sound to my voice.

LOL Is it beer though, looks like Stout.

I am subscribed to it, I only get downloadable videos and don't subscribe to the net delivery videos all access pass stuff. For those interested, you can download the video to your computer in full to watch later, which is what I do. Shove the USB stick into the TV, get the video going and turn on your DAW and get going, that's a nice morning. I did Sonar Explained and Sonar Advanced and it got me up and running with Cakewalk quite quickly. There are some differences between Sonar and Cakewalk but you can get past those. I've also used them for other DAW's as well. They have specials on their videos quite regularly, might be good to sign up just to see when that happens. I find them quite good. I am also a member of my local library which entitles me to premium level membership of Lynda.com so I can also download videos for free from them, I don't know if you can do that where you are.

Logged on the forum today and noticed Mark has the Staff insignia next to his name. Just wanted to congratulate Mark on his promotion! Well deserved if you ask me. Has certainly helped me in the past and his extensive knowledge, especially in areas of all things midi should be well known around here. Mark also always manages to keep a cool head on this forum, despite that pint in his hand all the time! Congratulations Mark!

You are THE person that knows! Are they not aware of the infamous deals forum? You should probably be doing their job. Although I have Studio One V2 and V3 pro, I cannot upgrade for a number of reasons, the predominant one being I absolutely hate their GUI. So glad to get away from it actually. I know I am in the minority there though, just not a fan of flat dark GUI's.

I had a midi latency problem, it set in after I had been using the computer for about 1 hour and it only affected the midi keyboard, not the audio. Really annoying, couldn't pin it down, thought it might have something to do with updating the audio interface drivers. I stumbled across a M-Audio Keystation 61 mk3 keyboard and really liked it, so I deinstalled my Nektar Impact GX61, plugged in the new Keystation and latency is back to excellent. Weird!

I would use the 500gig ssd for your operating system, the 1tb ssd for your samples and the 1tb HDD for your recording audio files/projects. That's similar to what I had but I think I upgraded my HDD for recording to an SSD. I've also been a 3 hard drive person, however, I would think that 2 SSD's might be acceptable as well on a home computer, the advantage being that you can just install your samples and applications all on the same disk and use the other one for recording. I don't know if others are doing this but it is something I might consider in the next build since I don't intend to change my current DAW/applications/samples much. Komplete sometimes gets muddled up when I first install it and then have to rebuild the databases which I think is due to my samples being on a separate drive.

Out of the box, a lot of lead sounds won't fit, the equalization might be way off you might have to tweak it a bit to get it to fit. It also helps if you know at least the ADSR stuff. I would also stick to analog sounds to start with since they are likely to fit better over both analog and digital sounding backing. I sometimes put a track down as lead that I will convert to vocals later, I don't find it easy and it pollutes what you are creating as lead synth is so different from vocals, Although you won't have that problem if it is going to permanently be part of the music. I ended up using something called bosendorf or something like that, it's in Massive. If I am to lazy to sing it or I am not set up to do that then I just use bosendorf to record the lead vocal line and any harmony ideas.

If you have fans on the top of the case, that will generate noise, shouldn't really need those for music production. Although it sounds as though you have very heavy needs with 4+ SSD drives. 4+ SATA HDD bays and 6+ PCI card external outs. I cannot begin to imagine what you would need all these for. If your looking to put 4 CD bays in there for mass production, I would see that as a separate computer from your DAW. DAW's run best with fewer components to worry about. It would probably help to know what you want the computer to do exactly. What your needs are.

Thanks Brian!

I'd be interested in sound forge pro, still don't understand how this all works, You have to subscribe for $12.00, then pay $1.00 for the edm stuff, then you have to also pay $16.54 or more and then also pay $25.00 "or more" to get sound forge, is that right. Has anyone actually bought, downloaded and installed sound forge from this deal yet?

http://ivyaudio.com/Piano-in-162