Alan Tubbs

I’ve been happy with my Native instruments  A49  control keyboard.  The cheaper, non lite version.  8 knobs and a nice keyboard feel.  49 keys is a minimum.  Less than $200 when I got mine.  Good quality.  I had a Novation 25 and keys went dead.  Doesn’t mean they all do but just passing that along.  They fixed it when I wrote directly to them.  But I had to send the unit to Austin.

Too bad.  I don’t use drum synths that much, but AD pretty good.

Doesn’t Cake still come with addictive drums?  That is what you need.  I never really know what is still included with Cake.

The ns systems (ns 10s etc.) were designed as proper pro monitors including their accompanying amps.  But they got sold as bookshelf speakers for the home.  Didn’t harm the sound.  
 

I put four on the ceiling of a small live theater for sound and they worked fine, even for the bass (this was in the analog days and LPs were limited in the bass).  It was for theater, not a disco.

I was going mention the 500 series but I haven’t kept up with those releases.  I do know that Rupert Neve has a 500 series of his 1073 but you are talking 2 grand.

good hunting.

I replaced a 45 year old matched Yamaha monitor (for my ns 500 10 inch speakers) with a used hafler p1500 transnova.  I was used to the relaxed mode my system had reached but the hafler with the ns 500s is a lot more forward, a bit different in the high end (the ns 500s have beryllium (sounds like elvish  gem) tweeters.  A bit more strident, which is not something totally bad, since it can point out problems.  But like everything else musical, the harder and longer you listen the more you hear.

The warm pultec is pretty good.  It is not precise but you have digital eq for that.  The warm tracks pretty close to the real thing.  In an Austin studio with a pair of originals the Grammy engineer could point out different eq slopes he could hear and then I could.  He works with the pultec sound everyday.  Pretty good for a tenth of the price. Does add some mojo, too,a d thickens the sound with a transformer goodness.  And the dueling slopes are different than most eqs.

I think Heritage has some 1073 neve style eqs.  I’d buy audioscape eqs in a sec but don’t think they have standalone eqs.  Api had some 1000$ eqs, but I heard they were kinda weak.  Not so many clones for eq. As comps and pres.

Just add solved to the title of your post.  And document the fix, if applicable.

Scook answered your second question.  About the metronome, clicking on the icon opens a menu.  You have to carefully go over everything.  One thing that comes up is the vol of the instruments used for clicks.  Fool around w the instruments and vol at the bottom of the menu.

Usually one uses the master buss.  That is working Inside the Box (ITB), and one wants to pass all audio through it.

however, some or many work with their DAW thru a mixer or summing mixer.  The original idea for this was back before we had 64 bit mixing and native up sampling.  The 24, 32, 48 and 54 bit mixing engines many pros felt didn’t provide enough information unlike analog summing.  Today many use analog mixing just to integrate external hardware.  I have about 6 different analog processing channels to record into.  With my Summing mixer  I leave my channel strip and combinations of pres, eqs and or pres hooked up to record into and analog mix out without messing with the patch bay.  I don’t do it because I’m dissatisfied with Sonar’s mix engine.

however, I can hear the transformers driving in my RND Orbit when mixing. Even just a stereo out.  If you ever want to hear what a good, musical transformer can do to add some excitement to your mix, try an Orbit.  Much better than any saturation/distortion plugin in my opinion.

Ever since I got a free copy of plasma in computer music I’ve just “gotten” Cakewalk DAWS.  Cakewalk by Bandlab continues  to be a natural fit.

I didn’t edit the editor. 

If you are using asio drivers they are limited to a single driver.  You can choose an alternate driver, but not two.

even if you use woman the different interfaces can lose timing.

B rock was a major contributor for Sonar back in the day.  He made some good stuff.

Plug the DX audio input into your interface audio input and record that.  The DX is an external instrument and gets recorded just like a voice or guitar.

The super synth Pigments 3 by Arturia is for sale for $100.  Great deal on a dual engine synth that does sample playback, granular, a new harmonic (additive) engine, virtual analog wavetable along with FM facilities.  The biggest difference between this and the falcon or synthmaster supersynths (other than price) is the faceplate.  Very visual and easy to understand.

What are you going to do when your soft synth doesn’t work anymore?  Alchemy was my main synth but is no longer viable.  I’ve updated my computer and my rapture and pro as well as dimension won’t work without work.  
 

always convert your midi to audio and you won’t loose your song.  Even if you switch DAWS.

That is a good deal for a pro level Neve 73.  I’ve used some heritage units and they were all bang for buck.  If I needed another pre I’d have my card out.

Good ribbons are good mics.  I use a basement bottom mxl to record a lot of guitar.  With a fender twin in a damped room I pick up some goldy oldie tone.  Perfect for old style blues or rock.

2 gigs of kurzweil samples may sound better than a 20 gigs of another library, just as you can can record a guitar part in a bad room at 96 kH that sounds worse than a good room at 44.1. Internal sample rates dont define how good a sample sounds as much as how carefully the sample is curated (the new hot word for sampling).  An out of tune sample at 96 kH won’t work as well as an in tune sample at 16 bits,

A lot of the pros I know use 48 /44.1.  
 

Although it is old, Lavry’s (of Lavry Engineering) white paper  showed that  the best sample rate was-in th low 60s, after everyone adapted 44.1/48/88.2/96/192K.  Higher rates have their own problems and is a waste of recording space since it ain’t better sounding.  Look him up on google.  It is pretty interesting.

But 96k is good for sample storage as opposed to recording.  Don’t lose much info as it makes it way to mp3 land.

24 bits is good, again for your DAW.  But  Make sure that the engine is running in 64 bit when mixing so the engine can take advantage of the extra bits to keep it from truncating the numbers sooner.  Older software fix etc. upsampled for the same effect.
 

there is a lot more to samples than just rates.  Always remember that first in your signal chain is the instrument and player, then the recoding chain  goes room, mic, pre amp, conversion, storage.  A flaw in an earlier step just keeps getting worse the longer you try to work around it.

I wouldn’t worry about the statistics as how much the sound works for you in context.  The best your audience is likely to hear your music on is a CD,  that is downstream of your DaAW quality

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I just mutidock all my synths and float it.  The only problem with this is there is no way to reorder the multi dock windows tabs linearly.  If your first window is a piano that you latter add a reverb on it, you have to side scroll through all the tabs.

Yes.  Try the gap alone.  You should get a slightly beefier sound driving the unit.  And it should be able to amplify your sound by itself.

one other facet of recording is your room.  It is almost impossible at home to get a balanced room.  But with a few pieces of rock wool you can even out the worst elements in your room tone.  It also takes a lot of experimenting with the mic and instrument (human voice in this case) to get a decent tone.

 My cheap favorite method is to cut/stuff rock wool into cheap pillowcases and then put those inside burlap coffee bags.  $100 for rockwool, a dollar a shot for Amazon pillowcases and my roaster gave me the burlap bags for free.  However, I can’t sew a stitch but my kid does.  a few of these in the corners and over the recording/mixing area and either side.  You’ll be surprised how much you can cleanup and soak up extra bass .not abbey studios but every little bit helps.

The warm pre is an api style mic.  Very upfront, rock n roll sound.  Nice fullness from the transformer without sacrificing transients.  Simple circuitry.

the other main clone these days is of Mr. Neve’s 1073 pre with eq taken from his early solid state mixers.  Golden age was the first low cost cloned but had quality control issues.  Enter Warm who got better qc plus had good service.  Golden age solved their qc problems.  I’ve never used one but plenty of people seem to like it.  The warm Neve is pretty good but a lot more than $80 more than their api pre.

another serious  contender is the isa one by focusrite.  Kinda splits the difference.  A little smooth transformer goodness but not heavy.  You can find them on sale for 4 or 5 hundred with luck.  Taken from (again) one of Mr. Neves later designs from focusrite when he returned from audio exile after selling his Neve company and signing a non competitive agreement.

As he worked toward reproducing an electric signal with no distortion at all he did reach that goal.  But without some internal distortion recording engineers found they missed it and how distortion can help cut or fill out a sound.  I had one friend who guessed which company it was.  He said you could turn up an eq band and feel it doing anything.  So Mr Neve introduced Silk to his RND line which adds second and or third order harmonic back into the signal for such help.  Mr. Neve never said which brand it was, but …

I replaced my 45 year old Yama amp with a halfler transnova.  A lot punchier than the softer Yama, more upfront.  Like an api preamp.  Interesting.  More difference than I thought.