bitflipper

We piano snobs are quick to dismiss it, but don't write off the piano in the good ol' TTS-1. If you know what you're doing with EQ and compression, you can make it sound pretty darn good. I often use it as a placeholder, with the intention of replacing it later on with Keyscape or a Kontakt library. Sometimes, though, if in the final mix the piano isn't particularly prominent I may just elect to leave the TTS-1 in place.

You never know what you'll learn reading through a thread...thanks, Promidi, I wasn't even aware of any recent driver updates for my GTX960. I just assumed they'd pulled the plug on driver development when they stopped manufacturing the card.

We only believe in the two-Ed theory because no one has ever seen Ed and bapu together in the same place at the same time. Consider the possibility that they are actually identical twins who've been playing an elaborate prank since 2003.

Keni, I apologize for my flippant reply. I'm sure this issue is important to you and I didn't mean to trivialize your concerns. I've just never felt the need to copyright anything. The best outcome for anything I create would be that it's appreciated by someone, even if that appreciation takes the form of unaccredited theft. Music wants to be free.

10 songs would certainly cover all the times a composition of mine was stolen and then made into a gold record or used in a car commercial.

I would not. At least not until I'd done some research. The manufacturer isn't going to waste time and money twiddling with a piece of software that isn't broken. There exists, somewhere, a change log that'll tell you what they've fixed. Find that, and then see if any of those changes affect you. If it says "makes a funny noise at noon on Tuesdays under Fruity Loops", I'd pass.

But that's an example of actual causation, not a spurious correlation. The leading precursor to death is birth. One of my favorite extrapolations used to be a comedian's observation that "50% of all marriages end in divorce. Those are the lucky ones; the successful marriages end in death."

I think it could. Whenever users are having dropouts due to DPC latency, 9 times out of 10 it's because of the network adapter preempting interrupts from the audio interface.

Great idea! I use TeamViewer every day in my day job but never considered it as a remote control for a DAW. It is indeed very responsive; I'm usually controlling computers that are physically thousands of miles away and the response times are almost like being there. Latency is going to be less than a millisecond on a local network, but even if it was 100 ms that's good enough for a control surface. My only reservation is the network overhead and its possible impact on audio performance. Sending individual clicks, keypresses and mouse moves is a necessarily inefficient use of bandwidth because every event may require its own packet, and your network card's interrupts take priority over your audio interface's. I could see it occasionally causing a dropout. I doubt it would be a concern for me, as my ASIO buffer size stays at 2048 at all times, but it might be an issue for someone wanting very low latency, e.g. a drummer playing Superior Drummer in real time.

I'd be reluctant to use any remote device that relied on wi-fi, just because it would require enabling the one piece of hardware most likely to have a detrimental effect on audio performance. Try to find a solution that doesn't need wi-fi. Depending on how far away you are from your computer, a hard-wired (USB) control surface might be a better way. That's only practical for runs less than 15', but for many people that's plenty. Wireless keyboards are great, don't slow anything down, and work right out of the box. However, they also have distance limitations and many require line-of-sight to the receiver. (Sigh. I miss my Frontier Designs Tranzport. That was a brilliant solution, but Windows 10 killed it. I know some folks here are still using one under W10, but I've never been able to get mine to work.)

First, the good news: Windows 10 is just as good at audio as Windows 7. You'll be able to get back to your accustomed performance with a little tweaking. On initial installation, Windows is going to set generic defaults that will work for most people with the fewest problems. Unfortunately, they aren't always best for a DAW. Sometimes, even Windows updates will reset things without asking. (One update killed my audio completely by changing my default audio device back to the motherboard's integrated audio that wasn't hooked up to anything.) There are many Windows 10 optimization guides around that can help, although some give outdated or even dangerous advice. Don't make a whole bunch of changes all at once, and test each change before moving on to the next one. Some of the most reliable guides are from interface manufacturers, such as the ones from Presonus and Focusrite. IIRC, RME and Avid have similar guides. If your computer has a Wi-fi adapter, make sure it's disabled. Windows likes to enable it by default, and it kills DPC latency. Grab LatencyMon as recommended above and see how your computer's doing in terms of DPC latency. There is good documentation on the Resplendence site for interpreting what LatencyMon tells you, and what to do if it reports bad numbers. If DPC latency is low, then your issue isn't with interrupts but rather some background process(es) that need to be disabled.

I often wear headphones for 6-8 hours straight. That's because most nights I fall asleep with them on. Sennheiser's fuzzy parts are super comfy. If they get drool-caked, toss them into the wash. (Not the whole unit, just the earpads.)

I'm digging FreqAnalystMulti the more I dig into it. It may be the most versatile multi-channel spectrum analyzer I've used. Might even supplant my current favorites MMultiAnalyzer and SPAN+. It's certainly the best-looking of the bunch.

Thanks for that. Yes, I suppose FreqAnalyst Multi is slightly less intuitive than, say, SPAN+ or MMultiAnalyzer. But more confusing than Neutron? pwalpwal, the difference is the three tools I'm currently evaluating are all multi-channel. The StereoScope tool, for example, shows you panning information for as many individual tracks as you want to look at at once. It's a very different view than, say, Insight's stereo meters, which can be deceiving. Let's say you have a project consisting of mostly wide stereo tracks - standard goniometers would indicate a nice stereo spread, even if the full mix actually lacked panoramic definition to your ears.

😁Don't forget the new reverbs you're gonna need to go with those. No, the ones you already have won't work.

Speaking of scientific-sounding nonsense, I'm sure many of you are already familiar with the DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide) page. It's a brilliant send-up of our irrational fear of "chemicals".

Just discovered this fascinating web site. OK, it's maybe not so fascinating unless you already have a corresponding fascination with statistics in general. But even if you have only a casual relationship with science and math, this sort of thing is still important because the mainstream press routinely confuses correlation and causation in an effort to make you scared and/or outraged. An example of a spurious correlation: there is a 99.79% correlation between the amount spent on science and suicides by hanging. Or the 99.26% correlation between margarine consumption and divorce rates. There is a 95.7% correlation between people dying by falling out of bed and the number of lawyers in Puerto Rico. The site has 30,000 of these, enough to keep someone like me amused for many, many hours. Of course, there are a few that might actually make sense, such as the 99.5% correlation between iPhone sales and people falling down stairs. Or this shocker: precipitation and sunlight have an inverse correlation!

I have no problem with EQ. However, you have to be consistent during the training period. Fiddling with EQ for each medium short-circuits the exercise. Once you've achieved a high level of autonomous familiarity with your system, you can then intentionally alter the EQ without worrying about confusing your ears. I often roll off all the bottom and extreme top as a test to verify midrange balance, something that may be masked by thundering bass. I highly recommend two books on the subject. The first is a light and entertaining read, the second more academic, but both offer great insights. I've read both of them several times, although it's been a long while. I should dig them out... This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin (I see there's a newer second edition; my copy is quite a bit older) Sound Reproduction by Dr. Floyd Toole (this one's in its third edition now)

Returning to topic...Bapu is going to have to do this all over again with his new cans. He's been in the game long enough to know that better playback does not instantly mean better mixes, but that it will over time. Any time you change your environment, you have to acclimate your ears all over again. Recently I added a headphone amplifier to my setup, not for mixing but for kicking-back-in -the-dark-with-a-doobie focused listening. Those bedtime sessions have long been my final approval for any new mixes. Away from the computer, listening intently without visual feedback, I hear flaws in my mix that weren't evident while sitting in front of the screen. The headphone amp was more impactful than I'd expected, a significant improvement. But different. So my homework this past week has been listening to past references, pulling up every recording I've valued for quality. Sure, it's a sacrifice, but one I'm willing to make in the interest of better mixes.

Actually, it may not be necessary to create a correction curve that mimics your hearing aids' EQ. Hear me out. (no pun). Everybody hears differently. Every room sounds different. Every speaker is different. Headphones are all over the map. It's a wonder anybody is able to make a mix that others find agreeable. Think about how that's even possible. It's possible through ear training. You spend enough time listening to well-made records through your playback system, whatever it may be, and over time your brain comes to "know" what a good record sounds like. It's been studied; it's a real thing, and it works. All it takes is the admittedly herculean effort of kicking back while listening to good music. Of course, if the playback system can't replicate all frequencies (e.g. laptop speakers or generic earbuds) then you'll still have to use a spectrum analyzer to fill in the missing bits. But the all-important midrange is going to be there, and that's what counts most. It's worth a try, eh? Set aside a half hour every day to just listen to some reference recordings in your favorite genres.

Thoughts, as requested: 1. You absolutely could create a correction curve if the audiologist has given you a detailed analysis. However, I wonder if the hearing aids would even be capable of full-spectrum sound, even after equalization. 2. I wonder if the midrange emphasis might actually help with mixing. Same idea as using Mix Cubes. As long as you supplemented your monitoring with visual aids to check the low end. 3. The problem of not hearing the same things as others is a universal problem, because no two people perceive sound exactly alike. Sure, it's exacerbated by hearing impairment, but consider that everyone over 30 is hearing-impaired. Especially musicians. Nobody can truly trust their ears. You just know that better than most.

Sorry, a picture of where I came from would violate the TOS.

😥 No Facebook for me, sadly.

True, but that doesn't answer my question. Ozone 5 doesn't do anything that subsequent versions can't duplicate.

Oh, don't be a Luddite! 😉 I'm a piano player who owns a real grand piano, but that doesn't stop me from having multiple Steinway libraries. Just kidding. I don't own a real Steinway, so a sample library is the only way I'm ever gonna get one into a recording. The OTS Pear is a little dated, not quite as good as Trilian IMO, but it's only $59 and unless your song prominently features the instrument it should do the job just fine. It has the main feature I look for first in a bass library: the ability to slide convincingly between any two notes, which many (most?) bass libs can't do without complicated scroll wheel trickery. They're scripted slides as opposed to sampled slides, but in context that's usually good enough.