Christian Jones

Before Guitar Center it was a trip to RadioShack. I won't knock RadioShack though; they came through w/ the odd connector no one else had back in the day back when churches used to build their PA systems out of RadioShack gear. I remember the pos Realistic mixer my church had built into a really nice wooden panel.

As I use amp sims I find the more plugs I have going in a session my latency will start to suffer. I run at 64 and often 128 and refuse to go higher than that. So specifically in regards to how my latency is affected, I'm trying to get a solid grasp on what does what when talking about turning off plugins on tracks vs turning off the entire FX bin, and archiving tracks if there's any data on them, or even just archiving a track that has several plugins on it but no audio yet, and of course freezing tracks. This stuff's in the manual, but I'm trying to get a definitive grasp on what actions improve my latency. In amp sim world, I often split my signal w/ a hardware splitter and send it to two inputs on my audio interface and run a dual amp sim rig. Each amp rig consists of the initial DI track (usualy w/ the fader down) which gets sent to an aux that has the amp sim, then that aux will often be sent to yet another aux where I may have an effect of some kind like an octaver. So I'll have two of these rigs running to simulate two amp rigs, and I do ok w/ this at 64 or 128. But the more plugins that get added on various tracks or even maybe just the audio on the tracks, my latency starts to become noticeable. Often I'm testing out various rigs I build within a working session.. So what can I temporally turn off, disable, archive etc to help restore my latency is those cases?

Nothing's touching, that's just a photo anomaly and besides that's a premade jack that I snipped. What I have are two trs to trs cables and I'm converting just one end of each to female xlr. That trs jack in the photo where the red wire is connected, that left side terminal on the jack bends to the upper right where it is then hooked onto a pin at the upper base of the jack and that's why I thought it was the tip, whereas the right terminal where the blue wire is connected just runs up the side of the jack which made me think it's the ring. Does that sound about right?

Uh.. dang. I may have soldered them wrong. I was following a couple diagrams that showed the tip of a trs jack to be on the left and ring on the right when looking straight at it. Like in the photo below, that's one of the trs jacks I snipped, and I was under the impression that the left side where the red wire is connected is the tip, making the rest self-explanatory. But your diagram shows an opposite configuration w/ the ring on the left. In this photo here of a prewired trs jack w/ the red wire on the left - is that the tip or the ring it's connected to?

Right on guys thanks. I'm gonna redo both cables then later. I need better gear too, I was getting down real crude today w/ a solder tip that used to be like a needle when new/clean and now it looks like a q-tip lol w/ all that crud on it that won't easily come off. My solder joints were kinda messy w/ black specs in it here and there from the crudy solder tip lol. I only admit that embarrassing fact cuz I think you guys are cool and won't judge me too harshly lol. I'll get it redone proper. Yeah what happened was I bought two right angle trs to straight trs cables from SW as I thought that was what I needed, but when the cables arrived and I went to connect them I saw that the would-be receiving end on my audio interface required a female xlr, I could have sworn it was TRS so I didn't check prior. But no one sells a *premade* trs to female xlr outside of expensive custom, so I got some neutrik connectors and snipped these trs cables to make my own. I may start making more cables though. I followed this diagram https://www.shure.com/en-GB/support/find-an-answer/how-do-i-wire-an-xlr-to-1-4-adapter-cable - since I was converting one end of a premade cable I just assumed it wouldn't work at all if I had wired them up wrong. You saying even if I wired them up wrong they might still work just not properly?

So today I converted two trs cables to trs one end and female xlr on the other end, and one is slightly quiter than the other on my mixer meters. I took the quiter one and looked at the solder connections and saw that the ground wire was touching either the blue or red wire.. Is that maybe why is that one cable is quieter than the other? Is it maybe getting shorted out a bit? And I guess what I'm asking in general is, when making these kinds of cables are the hot, cold and ground cables supposed to be isolated from one another and not touch each other? I'll admit this is my first ever diy cable project and yeah I did a fairly crummy job because I had a short amount of time to get it done but I'll have more time later to do a proper job.

If you look at the alphanumeric code for the first voucher you'll (probably) see that the first code has an "09" denoting September there, which means it won't work here in October, at least mine didn't. The second code they sent you would have an "10" there in the code for October. A PA rep told me there was a glitch with the first batch of codes they sent everybody.

I could have sworn I read recently that this was now a possibility but maybe I read something else. Is sound on sound recording not possible on take lanes? Is there any way to have any of the previous take lanes in a track play back as I record onto another take lane or even the same take lane?

Damn so that dude nullified your other voucher? If so they must not approve of selling the vouchers then - either that or he doesn't know they get bought/sold on kvr and thinks you were up to something scandalous. Folks report on kvr as able to use more than one voucher per month. Maybe you got cracked down upon by PA in that one instance.

Wait.. What? People sell their vouchers on kvr all the time so you could easily have your own monthly voucher that PA sent you plus a voucher you purchased off kvr in the same month .. .. Does PA not approve of selling the vouchers or something? Did you email PA and ask them or did that guy happen to notice you used two and contacted YOU? Lol he's on to your @ss

Yes you can. I haven't personally yet, but it's been reported that you can. Another funny thing was that PA was limiting the number of license transfers someone selling their plugs could do each month. So you'd see sellers posting on their for sale ads that sales will have to wait till next month because they've already transferred the limit that PA would allow them for that month - and I just thought that was kinda dumb of PA to do as they were basically delaying if not preventing people from giving them money. Like if I'm ready to buy, say, three PA plugs off kvr and I'm ready to pay PA to activate them, but PA is like "no, you have to wait till next month" I may just move on. They were basically shooting themselves in the foot there. So in the past few weeks PA finally removed the transfer limit. And while folks *do* often use vouchers to cover the activation fee, they don't always, so I'm sure a lot of money started rolling in to PA once they removed the monthly transfer limit. Maybe license transfers somehow cost PA money and maybe that's why they had the monthly transfer limit, idk, so I don't see how. Anyway.

Care to give a preview of what you got? 😎

Ah my voucher hasn't come thru yet this month but any time now I suspect. Wait you asked if I've been able to use more than one voucher per month.. Yes you can

Word, yeah I scored bx_bassdude for $13 and soon after saw it for $5 and I was "S#! t!" Lol as if $13 down from $149 wasn't already a killer deal, but still it's all about the game too you know. Yeah, I've been looking for the Chandler off and on but I'm really after the Brainworx Deizel

Lol I told you I'm on this s#!t

I mean if you're checking the Deals section here everyday then you might as well be cruising the KVR Buy/Sell section too where people are often unloading their plugs stupid cheap. I got some Brainworx amps off there for $5 to $13 that sell on Plugin Alliance for $149 and my voucher covered the $20 activation fee. I scored Valhalla Room and Valhalla Vintage for $50 for both and they're usually $50 a piece +tax, and I probably could have gotten an even better deal than that. Bx_saturatorV2 for $5 (normally $199). This is all day if you just cruise the ads there and of course the best deals go fast. Just make sure that whatever plug-in you're interested in, educate yourself on the transfer fees if any, and often there aren't any like with Valhalla and Izotope. I'll be scoring Izotope Ozone 8 Advanced off there for around $75-80 real soon. Trash 2 was $10 on there recently. https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=43&sid=f7d00e304676e76f0880e6d1fc599b71

Another thing that's cool if you have Soundtoys is you can use their plugs for the saturation part only. Like even with Echoboy Jr. you can avoid the delay effect and just use the saturation part and it's pretty far out. That reminds me, my monthly PA voucher should be coming through any time now so I can use it to activate the bx_saturatorV2 I scored off kvr for like $5 or whatever it was for that $199 saturation plugin. You can clean up on kvr. Someone gave me almost all of Brainworx' distortion pedal vsts for free on there - I just need to activate them, which I'll do for free w/ my vouchers over the course of the next few months Lol

Yeah that's what I meant, thanks. Anyway I pretty much figured it out. The Ampeg vst just needed to be gain staged/matched better so that the record and playback meters are for the most part the same. And just to be clear, the record and playback meters *are* supposed to be the same, right? I mean you'll need to gain stage and arrange for that but they're pretty much supposed to be the same, correct? .. Because it seems counterproductive otherwise because what you'd be doing is setting the proper level on the meters while recording, but then during playback you're getting a whole different meter behavior and that just seems to defeat the purpose of the initial gain staging.

Ah yes, I'm aware of that, that the DI settings don't affect the track after it's been recorded. I believe it's the Ampeg vst. I'll make a quick video to show what I'm seeing.

Um.. What? Excuse me but I'm confused there.. what do you mean the DI should have no effect on the meters I see in Cakewalk? .. Because I have the Pre 73 in DI mode going out the Line Out to the RME 9632 Line In and the Mic Gain and Output knobs on the Pre 73 *are totally* having an effect on the level/meters in Cakewalk. If I turn either the Mic Gain knob or Output knob all the way down then the meters on the Cakewalk track drop down accordingly, and that's how it's akway worked and how I expect it to work. I'll make a quick video showing this behavior and post a link to the video in a moment, but the Pre 73 is totally controlling how much level I send to the daw and definitely has an effect on the meters in the daw in record mode and just input monitoring, so I don't think I follow here.

Well it turned out to be the Pre 73 preamp I'm using as a DI. It has a Mic gain and an Output and when using it as a DI both of those knobs are essentially gain when going into my interface for an amp sim, but the Mic gain knob adds some color whereas the Output is a bit more transparent, so I had the mic gain backed off a bit and the output knob cranked more to try to get a cleaner sound, but when I turned up the mic gain more I was able get good recording levels on the meter. So I guess w/ the Ampeg VR anyway I'll need to just crank the mic gain. The RME Total Mix fader is at unity and I always leave it there and I've never had a problem with that. And the track itself that the Ampeg vst is on, it's at unity. Honestly, I'm still confused in general as to why my meters always differ somewhat when I arm to record as opposed to just monitoring through the daw without record being armed on the track. Like, if I arm the track to record and I gain stage my signal on the recording meter so that the signal is e.g. around -12 and peaks at -6, when I un-arm the track and play back what I recorded it plays back at the same volume just like when I recorded it, but the playback meters show an increase of like 3db or more than the record meter. What's up with that? With the track fader at unity and the playback sounding exactly the same and with the same volume as when I recorded it, why are the record and playback meters different? I've never fully understood that. The playback doesn't playback quieter or louder it's the same exact volume and sound as it was when I recorded it except the playback meter seems to reflect a louder signal. How do I make it so that the record/playback meters are the same - so that when I'm gain staging on the record meter (w/ the track armed), the levels I'm seeing while recording would be the same levels I see during playback?

Honesty, and not to knock the developer but just being straight up, this Straight Ahead Bass library, though it had good sound it was poorly designed. Pretty much everything was locked down to the keys they predetermined and though I was able to transpose the way Bitflipper suggested, doing so threw the key switches out of whack - they kept moving themselves; each time after I'd engaged one it would move itself back up or down an octave like a practical joke. And every time you engaged a key switch the first couple notes would crackle afterward but then the rest of the notes would play fine (not a buffer issue, as it was only the first couple notes after engaging the key switch). The developer was unresponsive to my emails both directly and through PayPal, so I launched a PayPal dispute and got a refund. Lol they didn't even respond to the dispute so I won by default. I'm looking at Ample Bass now, that one's looking nice and I'll probably get it.

Is it just booze w/ Hetfield or is it other stuff too?

I'm about to look into the RME Total Mix thing and will repor back, but just real quick... That's no longer the case, as recently - like in the last few weeks recently - native versions of these Brainworx Ampegs have become available on Plugin Alliance and that's what I have, so no UAD card.

Today I'm using the Brainworx Ampeg VR bass vst and I'm getting good volume and levels between -18 and -12 w/ peaks around -6 when monitoring through the DAW w/o having Record armed, but as soon as I arm to record the record meter drops to around -30, though the volume and sound quality of my bass signal doesn't change and sill sounds good. Then when I record my bass I get a little tiny waveform, but when I un-arm record and play that recorded track back so that it's the playback meters I'm seeing, it sounds just fine and the playback meters are healthy between the -12 and -18 even though the waveform is much smaller than I'm used to, it's tiny. When I disable the Ampeg VR vst so my bass is a pure DI signal then the levels are the same for both record and playback at the -18 to -12 when I gain stage it as such, so I know it's the Ampeg vst doing this, and my guitar vsts I use don't cause the recording levels to be that low nor give me tiny waveforms. But again, although the recorded waveform is small the playback meters are healthy and the sound and gain staging sounds/looks good - so I don't know that anything is wrong per se and I know we're in 24 bit and I've heard somewhere about tiny waveforms not being a big deal if all else is good, but idk, I'm confused as to why the record meter is so low but the playback meter looks good. I record through a Golden Age Pre 73 into RME 9632.