AndyB01

I have a 2i4 - it's an ancient Gen 1, unbreakable and works like a charm. It just doesn't like USB3.0 ports much (but that's very much a Gen 1 issue). Great advice from John V, as always. Andy

Ooh very Einaudi in style and much as I loved "Tin Foil Hat" (and I really did love it), you're on top form with this. It's so very difficult to play consistently at this tempo and make it sound so effortless. Simply divine. Andy

Takes a while to download it all but that is quite the collection for just forty quid. I had a few vintage string sounds (Toontrack String Machine and Mellotoon) but yep this is definitely worth it imho. Thanks for the heads up Andy

Agreed, great addition. Thanks for setting up. Andy

I demand a 'Devil Went Down To Georgia' style fiddle solo. 🎻🎻 😂😂 Just my 2c. I love it! Andy

I have a Nvidia card - 1050Ti I think - not noticed it causing me particularly significant problems but YMMV. My Lifecam is relatively new and seems to be producing good enough resolution for my needs (may be not be production standards but it'll do for me). Yes, Mike's videos are incredible, I can't begin to imagine how much work goes into them. Andy

John I downloaded OBS, very impressive for a freebie! I managed to get it set up with an old Lifecam I had kicking around and got it to work on a quick test shoot. Awful quality, but I was trying to prove everything worked not win an Oscar. 😂 I can fix all the quality issues later. Hoping to have lots of fun with this so thanks again for a great tip. Lots to learn. Andy

Thanks John, I will check some of those out

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum (hopefully a Mod will move it if required). I'm interested to know what folks use to make tutorials. So, filming and recording a narrative whilst capturing the sound via an audio interface either from a MIDI instrument or guitar. Just looking for tips on effective software/ workflow. Cheers Andy

Great tune Nigel and the usual very high production standards. I don't know how you guys remain so consistent - you must write the odd clunker, no? Great job Andy

Genius lyrics, perfectly described and very well performed. Don't ever stop writing. 🙂 Never been to Glasto but I went to collect my daughter and her mates from V Festival once. Took me ages to find her as I wandered around what looked the aftermath of a refugee camp after a nuclear strike - people wandering around half-dazed with abandoned tents, debris and litter strewn all over the place. 😂😂

Agreed, some folks get way too bent out of shape around this stuff and your predictions are spot on I think. I've literally today just replaced my 1Tb spinner with a 1Tb SSD; so now I'm all SSD. Many of my sound libraries were on the spinner and I've noticed two immediate impacts: 1. Noise - the fan fires less often, runs for less time and the disk noise has obviously disappeared (I never realised how significant this was). 2. Speed of sample loading - e.g. Ivory II down from around ten seconds to just a couple and faster boot time overall (although main drive was already a SSD). I'm less fussed about the speed impact but the noise reduction is a massive and very noticeable benefit. However this is a debate that will outlive us all. 😂 Andy

According to the guy who rebuilt mine, SSD failure is much exaggerated and something of an urban myth. True in the early days of SSDs apparently but not these days, provided you stick with reputable brands. I don't know, just glad to have mine back and working again. Andy

Not my style either but there's a lot going on here and it gels pretty well to my ears. I'm not going to comment on the mix, you've already had better advice from Wookiee than I could ever give. Overall, I thought you did a great job on this. Andy

Yeah, funkin' awesome! Great groove. Andy

Another great song, cello is really nicely blended and the vox and BGVs are a stand out. Nicely done. Andy

Rex that's a beautiful piece of work. Truly stunning vocal - the clarity really cuts through and such a simple stripped back arrangement. I absolutely loved it and was reminded a little of some of those Eagles ballads. Top work all round fella. Andy

Well it's back from the repair shop - full hardware diagnostics and a verdict of no (hardware) fault found?? Guy in the shop reckons the recovery image of Windows was somehow corrupted and not doing a clean install. So he binned off the entire thing, cleansed the disk and has reinstalled a fresh vanilla version of Windows. So I am slowly starting to rebuild all those VSTs and apps but so far (fingers crossed) it does seem better. Time will tell I guess... Thanks to everyone for suggestions, support and advice. Much appreciated as always. Andy

I use Carbonite for backup, it isn't cheap but it does seem to have a low footprint (runs as a background process) and is rock solid for recovery. It has saved me a few times as you can also access your data remotely on different devices. Fairly sure you can use your own private encryption key if you want better security. OneDrive is cheaper but I've never really got on with it. Other than that I use local storage on the device. Andy

I shall, that and a probable dent in my bank balance!

Cheers Craig, I've had the lid off as I thought it might be a badly seated memory module (it wasn't). The option to revert to last good state is there under recovery options but only using the DefaultUser(0) account (which is a temp account) and of course it wants a password (but there isn't one) so that's effectively a no can do. It's an odd one as I had just installed a minor update for a VST, did a restart and that was it - game over. I'll get to the bottom of it eventually, all good with a bootable USB - I have that. Andy

Thanks John, I don't plan on giving up on it just yet. I know a bloke who is far better than me at this stuff and very reasonable - so will ask him to take a look. I have the original OS on a bootable USB stick and everything is backed up on an offline hard disk and an online cloud backup service - so zero risk of data loss hopefully. Might be a chance to put a bigger SSD in anyway as the current one is only 500Gb. Thanks all for the support, much appreciated. I'll post the outcome when I know more. Andy

Think I'm going to be offline for a bit - after a rebuild (that was going well) and a routine re-start, laptop is now in an endless cycle of blue screens. ☹️ I suspect the SSD has died (just three years old) but could be anything. I'll get it to a local repairer I know next week - see if he can salvage anything. Don't fancy shelling out for a new machine at the moment. Ah well, could be a lot worse than a busted laptop... Stay safe Andy

Very sharp, great production and wonderful lyrical craft. All round superb. Andy

Allan that's a very clever arrangement - so many influences I'm hearing there and I like those harmonies - they're kind of dark and slightly menacing. Truly a great job! Andy