Alan Tubbs

19 hours ago, Freyja Grimaude-Valens said:

Not exactly, what you hear in movies as far as synths and hybrid scoring are synths like u-He Diva, Zebra (Regular and Hans Zimmer editions), Omnisphere and Serum. Unfortunately, Massive X had been received not as well as expected, due to it not leapfrogging Serum in terms of features and UX design.

And you will  hear others not listed .  As well as  hardware synths.  And non virtual instruments, too.

I habitually turn midi to audio, copy and paste the audio to another track, then archive the midi only track.  That works for me.

also, NI does sales twice a year.  Wait for the summer sale around the 4th of July.  Worth the savings.  And some of the NI synth packages are well worth the price, esp. if your soft synth collection isn’t great.  You can hear massive x all over movies etc.  if you listen.

You might want to add solved to the thread title so others will know.

As above, Kontakt is about about as necessary as any soft synth.  And the full version  really ups the usefulness.  It is a bear to program, but the libraries are great.  Wait until the middle of summer or their winter sale around Christmas.  If you can, pick up one of the NI packs, when it is easy to get kontakt for $200 or their packs with it and other synths for $400.  A great investment if you don’t have a lot of softsythns.

It depends upon how much you want to spend.  Lynx is a great unit but expensive.  I’m using an audient id44 now, which is everything you’d want, except is a 4x4 adda unit with digital expansion.  The only modern 8 adds unit I’ve used is the Roland.  It is a solid, good sounding unit.  

I’ve gotten gorgeous sound out of an octava pencil mic from above the shoulder.  An ok room, although I do use an RND portico II channel.  If miking  isn’t possible, yea, use a guitar amp sim (clean) and irs to give it body.

Record it with the proper gain.  When I don’t, I usually can get by with normalize.  It works, but you do have to watch out for noise.  Also check for overs.  It is best to use just enough, like Goldilocks.

That is how ASIO defines them.

You can’t sell your own sample collection using cake content, but that is true of any sample set I know of.  Standard.  But cake has no call on your songs composed with their samples.

I believe the ‘Jimmy” preset for dimpro will do it, tho it might be the rapture synth.  But it works upside down, diminishing the vibrato as you raise the wheel.  Great preset.

It depends upon what editing you want to do.  Many edits in cake are non destructive.  SF and other audio editors are destructive editors, so that you save the file as a new sound, such as for mastering.

let us know what kind of editing you want to do, but I will say having SF is a great tool for workflow.  It does certain tasks a lot quicker and easier.

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Duet.  Best sound available is always a good choice.

Touch is best for controlling larger movements and unless you have a 3 foot screen many functions are just too small.  It is best used within a system of keys, keyboard and mouse (which is more precise for smaller changes).  I prefer the mouse for envelopes, keyboard for numbers and naming and touch for other aspects.  If extremely large touchscreens become more affordable, more functions can be take on via touch.   touch is great for synths and some hardware emulations.

You shouldn’t need 2pres to get a good signal.  That being said, it shouldn’t hurt your signal to use the boost.  But If you need such a boost for electric guitar or kick, Houston you have a problem.

For recording any acoustic instrument, the most important ingredients, descending , are player, instrument, room, mic, pre and conversion.

for an interface less than $500 I love the audient line.  The TAscam line, too, is fine.  The TAscam uh 7000 is a superior audiophile unit with bad drivers, but if you go digitally into another unit you can get the best of both worlds, tho the TAscam must be the master.  Over 500$ is lynx card.

the warm pre should give you nice options with a transformer sound as opposed to cleaner ic interface.

Don’t go to sleep n the PC EQ.   It is as useful as most 3rd party software.

That should work fine ... the vs 100 has rca ins?  I can’t remember..  but should be no problem.  You don’t need to overcapture the cassette audio.  The vs has a lot more dB range so you don’t need to hit the red with the old songs and you don’t need any extra noise.  

Vocal rider is a third party plugin.  You probably don’t need it.

you can record the vocals twice, with the gain set appropriately for either singing level.  Then splice together.

and as pointed out above, vol automation is the first step.  Even it out and then comp to hold the volume even enough.

Ugo still has some free if old synths at Ugo audio.  Rez is still a great bass synth.

I could feel  some difference in those rates 20 years ago.  There should be no difference today.  And no appreciable difference in sound.  Switch back to 44.1 at 24 bits.  Many pros use that, esp. if they don’t usually transfer files.  Synths and  FX mostly up sample internally these days.

Great synths and I don’t know why they don’t rerelease them.  Bandlab has done a lot of good if not flashy work with cake.  Although they haven’t said anything about synths, an updated rapture would garner a lot of press and make many of us happy.  Whether it would make money and be worth it to bandlab with their free daw is another question.  That market is pretty saturated.  But even with all the NI stuff and assorted synths I’ve collected rapture is a go to synth.

Usually the eq follows the comp, tho there are times you want to thin out the sonic herd before it triggers the comp.  but there are no rules, only what works to your own taste.  If you are worried, try both eq before and after.

however, the remainder  of the rules are there because they work most of the time.

Ribbon mics to record. Also remember that the songs were mastered for optical tracks and vinyl and have little bass and attenuated highs. Some noise can be injected, but most noise you hear today is from old optical tracks transfers, not the originals.  The sound as recorded was as clean as you can get today, if thicker and not quite as precise.  
a soundstage ir could be a nice complement.

And some practical advice.  If you are recording acoustic instruments, a high pass filter is the one piece of software you need first.  Don’t “master “ (wrong term, to master means polish a finished recording for publishing) individual tracks just solo the track, enable your high pass and slowly expunge the muck below 60 HZ or 100 HS or 150; depending on the instrument.  Like most sonic adjustments, go extreme so you can hear the difference, then back off until you can’t hear it unless you punch the filter out.  You can be surprised how well this can work and how much noise and useless air you can remove and add back space between the sounds.  That will clean up tracks individually and make your entire song more open.

A good mix comes from an OK room and access to a pro listing environment helps.  You can’t fix what you can’t hear.  Corning or rock wool are your friends and a cheap date to boot.   Personally, I’ve got a pair of great speakers I’ve had for 30 years and know them well, but I still take home brewed recordings to a pro studio to check the bass, etc. 

spend time and thought on the song’s arrangement.  The space in songs is important, as well as introducing new “elements” and instruments sequentially.  Many musicians  coming from bands have a hard time hearing the song as a recording artifact instead of live.  One young band freaked out when I suggested playing a second rhythm guitar since they couldn’t play it that way live.  This stuff happens esp. with cover songs.

another thing is to buy a nice signal chain.  Once that problem isn’t there and you can’t blame the tools anymore, you have to concentrate on your technique.

lastly, it takes time.  You didn’t learn to drive in a day or play an instrument in a. Hour.  Recording is a skill.  And if you are trying to record yourself it is harder.  Even having a gofer around to bounce ideas off of, move the mics and asking a 3rd person which sounds better develops your ear for this stuff.  The old studio system put one into a situation where you learned with those who had ears already as well as decent equipment (usually).  Once you learned the basic bag of tricks and your associates’ tastes, you could adapt them to your own style.  But it still took time.  In the meanwhile, it is easy to do horrendous mixes and have no idea why.  Don’t let that stop you.

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