Starise

2 minutes ago, frankjcc said:

No wars here, I'm in agreement with what can be done in software as a whole, but,  just a recent example of when uad came out with the avalon 737 plugin.  I had a hardware unit years ago and I sold it because it seemed like it wasn't doing anything I couldn't do with software. and I moved on to what I thought was a better front end.   as I progressed in the details, I realized this was in fact very difficult to achieve with software and when Uad came out with the plugin I demoed it and compared to my earlier recordings that were post processed with the hardware, the eq came close, but the compressor could simply not be duplicated, and I tried very long and hard, then I asked myself, if it's this hard just to try and match  one sound( it was a kick drum), how much are people(including myself) just settling for when they use plugins and get them to sound their best, and possibly not even realize there is a whole new world of (in this case) superior and much quicker results.  at that time I didn't even know what I had until it was gone.  There was also a "sheen" that I was never able to get again with other hardware or software.  This "sheen" sort of showed up in the plugin but I wasn't convinced in the end. 

I'm not advocating for hardware to the degree that it may appear, I have and use lots of plugins, but it is another aspect of sound that will be overlooked if  a plugin only mentality is used.

Yeah, there's that garage sale dream I keep having where I stumble into a garage  toward the end of the day and there's this woman there looking sad wondering what to do with all the stuff she hasn't sold that day. Over in the corner there's this pile of metal boxes all dusty. She explains that it belonged to her deceased husband who once had a recording studio. She is moving next week and she really needs to get rid of everything. She says she will take any good offers on "those boxes" over in the corner.

I mosey on over there trying to look bored to look at the boxes. I only have 100 bucks in my wallet. I offer it to her and she looks relieved saying she accepts asking me when I can come and take it all away. It ends up being a pile of vintage gear that most engineers would give their right arm for.......man what a dream that was.

So now I can put all of that in my studio and they might even feature me on the cover of a well known recording magazine. People will look at that and say wow!! that dude has quite a load of gear there ( I know dream on).

It was a nice dream

While I whole heartedly agree with 99.99 % of what you said,  I would only add that  I believe many plugins are very accurate representations of actual hardware units.

While not many people can afford 5K for a compressor or a channel strip we can afford to buy something that is so close many wouldn't know for MUCH less. 

I don't claim to be extremely knowledgeable about dedcated 1960's-1970's hardware since it wasn't ever a part of my reality, so maybe I'm missing something. I have heard some pretty good mixes using mimicked hardware in software though. My software Korg M-1 sounds exactly like my hardware M-1 did....only at the time they wanted 100.00 each for all of the cards for it which were included in the software version.

No intention to start a war here. I really wish I could get some of that expensive gear  Lots of hobbyists eventually at the least end up with some kind of a channel strip if using mics is a high priority. I don't see it as a necessity though given the quality of today's pre amps.

8 minutes ago, synkrotron said:

I have already tried to get Tim interested in Adaptiverb but I don't think he was impressed

That was some time ago, though...

 

I jumped right into that one.  Actually this is pretty tame.

Magix offerings can be somewhat confusing to anyone who doesn't have any of their products. There are several versions of Vegas. If you aren't familiar I suggest you look at what the different versions offer.

The pro version is the one that accepts the most formats. I have Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 16.

If you upgrade to Pro 17 from 16 you get the update to version 18 in the deal HERE. Since I don't have PRO my price is  probably higher  than someone who already has PRO 16.

There might be people here who didn't see this on May 19th right? 

But yeah, Larry is tough like that. And yes, he would not have hesitated.......

I seen it because I just got this months issue of MusicTech and it was one of the freebs on the CD.

I'm not going to go three pages in before I post a deal.....two maybe  

I think if you stay in this you'll eventually have both. At least I seen Fabfilter Pro-Q as the last EQ I would ever need......not that I wouldn't try another one.

Not sure how far along you are in your mixing hobby. At the very beginning you're still learning the basic concepts. You can make pretty good mixes using basic plugins.  I've been at it awhile and I still have a lot to learn. I think maybe you could use the basic CbB plugins in the beginning to get a good understanding of EQ frequencies. IOW where your instruments generally sit. What many beginners don't realize is that EQ is often more subtractive than additive. Often if gain is needed it is very small. The CbB EQ can be expanded and is actually a pretty nice EQ in every sense of the word. Most good mixes are only EQ, proper gain staging and maybe some compression per channel. Most masters are similar only your looking at the whole mix and trying to get the mix to the correct levels without going too far using a limiter. You and your ears are more important than the plug in.

Many of the best mixing techniques you won't ever learn using automated or pre set chains. In order to really learn you need to know WHY and in what context. What is the goal?  In this respect Ozone or IK Multimedia TRacks can be very educational. Look at an Ozone preset. What are they doing to achieve that result? Look at how each module is set. Cakewalk has chains too. Simply click the arrows on a module in the pro channel and you will see a drop down list. Looking at these chains can be very educational. Once you know how all of that works you can build your own chains using any plugin you desire or use pre made ones. 

I have Ozone 7 all the way through Ozone 9 advanced still on my computer. If anything I think that program has made too many  people complacent about getting more involved in a mix. Yes it is effective, but if all you ever do is use a preset you might as well  hire one of those online mastering services and save yourself some time and money. Fabfilter is just a more fully featured set of the most used plugins. Pro-Q3 has a way to solo each freq. band. You can choose to make the band "dynamic" in that it will cut that band by a certain amount depending on the material and how you set it, so it's really similar to built in multi band compressor.  You can take any frequency and put it where you want it in the stereo or M/S field. So it basically can pan too. Ozone also has a dynamic EQ as does Melda. Neutron isn't a new Idea. Voxengo  and others have something similar that can look at other EQ in different tracks and make a comparative analysis. Basically a smart EQ that can share data across channels. I have Neutron but I tended to like simply soloing tracks together and manually EQing that way. You might not agree with Neutron's decisions. Remember, it's more about those two things on either side of your head 

The worst thing you can do is to think that any plugin will make you sound better. In the end, only you and your mixing skill will make you sound better. The higher end plugins are just icing on the cake.

Nice work. My videos don't look that nice. Mainly because I'm in some of them. 

I've been watching this and feeling guilty because I have pulled my institutional card to buy software already. It wasn't Presonus software. It was recording software though. I only did it once about 5 years ago. The fine print didn't expressly say I had to be educating in the institution so I looked at it like a benny at the time. Didn't really consider that it might have been expressly wanting me to be a music teacher.  I have led music at churches too but never considered that as a way to  gain a discount.  I looked at it similar to a teacher discount at Staples or a military discount if you were in the military. I simply made a copy of my card and sent it to them for the discount. I don't honestly even remember what software it was * seriously*.  There was never a question to me as to if I were directly educating students.

I would imagine that most educational institutions programs would use a multi user license because there are students. My institution uses Logic and Pro Tools. They might use others I'm not aware of.

Now that I've reflected on it I guess I personally seen their real intent was to snag music educators but I think they should make that more clear in their offers. My offer never mentioned  it.

Nowadays I just keep upgrading the programs I like and I pay those prices just like anyone else. It's only a few more bucks and I know I'm legit. If you wanted to do it though that's entirely up to you and I'm not going to fault you for it. I don't see it the same a pirating software or even close.

23 minutes ago, Syphus said:

Now it is just the logo with "404 error: Page not found."

 

Syphus

This discussion is becoming very *****.  * decides to split about now*

1 hour ago, StudioNSFW said:

With all technology...if you can wait, it will get cheaper. 

I wonder if someday there will be fanbois that gush over the audio quality of vintage CPUs?

I lean in this direction too thinking optimistically. A lot of this probably depends on the state of the future markets IMHO. The C virus caused a lot of trade manufacturing issues. Not sure if things will be stable later. Anything could rock the boat, a typhoon hitting a factory could do it. SSDs were scarce or pricey there for awhile due to some bad circumstances. They have since started to come down in price. 

Right now in my area we only have to deal with the West Nile Virus, COVID-19, the spotted lantern fly invasion, weather modification, chem trails, stinging jelly fish etc......I only think about it if I watch the news . Any other time it's a beautiful day. How much any of this affects things like component manufacturing might be negligible.  People need money to buy the stuff though. If people aren't working they can't buy. If they can't buy what will that do to prices? If you lower prices while expenses go up you don't make any money. They might minimize their profit margins some. Might take a little longer to see the next cpu. Everything has  a way of balancing out.  Thunderbolt doesn't seem to be a widespread consumer demand. Might be seen as a feature for a minority similar to firewire. Only Mac photographers and some studio musicians were using FW.  Something like the i9-9900K would future proof you for awhile.

There are guys collecting old computers and running the old software on them. I won't be one of those. On the old CW forum we had guys still running some old software to make music. Like ATARI configurations lol.

20 minutes ago, Paul Young said:

Wishful thinking.  Intel is overpriced.  Plus I don't see those video cards dropping in price anytime soon.

I'm certainly not past considering a Ryzen build. One of the main selling points for the i-9  9900K is the 95 watts. Thunderbolt tech is purchased from Intel isn't it?  I could be wrong.  Design originated with Apple, somehow crossed over to Intel...possibly because  Apple was/is using Intel. Moving to ARM.  If true, this means AMD has to license TB2&3 from Intel.  I have seen TB MOBOs  for Ryzen builds.  Not sure how well they are working with TB audio interfaces or how much those MOBOs cost.

There's always a lot of homework to do before a build ( at least for me there is).

Get it HERE.

For anyone who has Black Hole, can you tell me how this compares to that?

46 minutes ago, Bapu said:

DCC?

 

DAW Capable Computer?

 

?

Hmmmmm........CCS Cake capable sugar?  DCC? Yep makes sense. Remember when that was a Pentium 2 and 2gb of ram?

14 hours ago, jesse g said:

Starise,

A  DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation,  therefore a computer is not a DAW.  It is the software used in the computer to mix and create music like Cakewalk, Pro Tools or Cubase. 

Just letting you know.

I'm baking a cake but I can't call it a cake until it's a cake, so I have to say I'm making a "pre-cake" ? It's all the sum of the hardware/software. If I'm building a DAW, I'm building a digital audio workstation. Nuff said. Have a good day!

My direction on my next build will be making sure the MOBO is Thunderbolt compatible with Presonus Quantum and similar thunderbolt interfaces. An interface is  part of a DAW.

Just letting you know.

1 minute ago, Brian Walton said:

The Beatles recorded some of the most popular songs of all time on a 4-track tape machine.

The DAW one chooses is irrelevant.

I think the tools are important. I also agree. She had a really cool arpeggio thing going on with a harp that sounded real. The reverbs were just the right kind of slathery. Rhythms seem to be easy in that DAW since it has those tools that lend themselves well to it IMHO. Yes I'm sure I could do it in CbB ( or any other DAW) with the right workflow. I don't have her way of making music though, so yeah....my tunes wouldn't sound like her tunes.

The Beatles were good looking too ( to girls...and maybe a few others) and I think they could have recorded on a  victorola and done well  I think more than anything, I was curious how the DAW works in more detail.  If you can add elements to a tempo and have it sound organic, I think that's a big plus......but I don't really know because I haven't used it.

I was eyeing the guitar and harmonica on that list. Unfortunately was having issues playing the sound file examples which are linked to Sound Cloud. I found a guy on YouTube demoing the harmonica but he didn't know how to make it sound like a harmonica. For 29.00 quid it might be worth a gamble. I have harmonicas so I guess I should just put one in my mouth and blow on it instead. 

I personally have drums out the wazoo and was looking at EZ drummer as a quick compo tool but they won't put it on sale. I'm not a drummer and have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. The SONiVOX set looks like just the samples....not sure. The site isn't especially helpful. I appreciate those who have confirmed  at least some of the libs are decent.

Under a grand can theoretically get you into a high end DAW at these prices if you build it yourself.   This just doesn't happen in the Mac world. Not picking on Mac, just saying why I'm not a Mac guy. I have  an old DAW that was laying around since I built my last one. I could remove the MOBO from the silent case  add some SSDs, memory an OS and be good to go. Can't justify it more than admitting it's just  PC  ( GAS) at this point.  

If I thought prices were going to rise in the future though I would be tempted to make a run at this or similar.  Maybe buy a part at a time until I eventually had the whole shebang. The memory and the graphics card would influence the price. I could still keep it close to that number I think.  

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Yeah, watched the video with good ol' Jason there, I only wish that whatever crisis befell the company, that he could have stayed around long enough to finish a manual for Vocalizer Pro. And no, I have no personal knowledge, but I've worked at companies like that. As soon as all the code was in a state where it wasn't crashing, they canned everyone and sold the brand.

He seems like a nice enough bloke, and sharp, and I'm sure he hit the ground running.

Hmm, curiosity got the best of me, looks like he did. Wow, worked at SONIVOX for 11 years before their Death Star blew up, that's an eternity in the software or MI world:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonrjordan

And I was right, looks like he left right around the time that Vocalizer Pro shipped. He says that he worked on Tony Colman Drums and that's one of the last new ones I remember coming out of SONIVOX.

I guess there's a cluster of music software companies around Boston due to the Berklee/MIT convergence?

I had no idea there was a shakeup at SONiVOX???? Thanks for that info. Jason looks like a real knowledgeable dude who probably helped to create a bunch of their libraries ( from looking at his info). 

I have a bunch of SONiVOX orchestral libraries which I was impressed with for the price and functionality. I'll admit I was wondering why their web page wasn't connecting to the audio examples for that last deal I posted. They need to update their web page at the very least.  I found some examples on YouTube. 

Back to Reason-  There's a person I know who is getting HUGE play counts on SC ( compared to most there) and she uses Reason as her main DAW. She makes decent music in her genre. I guess that part had me slightly curious. In the end it probably has more to do with talent than her DAW.  I have wondered if the DAW gave her some kind of an edge though.

10 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I wound up using TAL Vocoder II with its internal synth as the carrier. The Sonivox, wow, the more that I think of it, there's no excuse for shipping a plug-in of that complexity with no user manual, no matter how many video tutorials are out there. I just wanted a quick off-the-shelf vocoder effect, not to have to reverse engineer an alien spacecraft. And to do a vocoder-esque effect that doesn't have a basic "Autobahn" or Tupac "California" preset? Also, it didn't allow feeding it an external signal as a carrier. Just not for me. I'll figure out the routing in CbB to do the external carrier with TAL Vocoder next time. The SONIVOX probably has its uses for other things, but IMO, it falls short at "basic vocoder sounds."

The Mixcraft vocoder is great, and it loads in Cakewalk, but apparently it doesn't expose its sidechain in a way that CbB can Send to it. Not that I could figure out, anyway. And yes, nice collection of plug-ins with Mixcraft, especially the Pro Studio suite, which has Melodyne Essential, and Pianissimo, a nice low-resource hybrid grand. Their GM player also works in CbB and has some good-sounding instruments.

Glad you found something that worked for you. Many of the plugins in MX9 load into CbB. The synths do too and they have a decent line up of those including a sampler. Not many DAWs allow cross pollination like that including CbB. Some of the stuff is dated but not all of it. Not trying to sell their vocoder as the only reason to buy it, but for a DAW that is in the 100.00 range as compared to many others that start at 399.00 it isn't too shabby. Reminds me of the way Platinum once came all loaded up with additional programs. It's a lot for the  $$ IMHO.

This video was helpful to me for Vocalizer Pro. It is a little "different" than traditional vocoders. but to me that's the beauty of the plug in. 

Intel Core i9 Coffee Lake 8-core , 3.6 GHZ,  5 GHZ OC.  449.99 LGA 1151  95 w desktop processor.

I don't think this is a bad price for these right now. If you have a MOBO with 1151 this might be a decent upgrade.  ASRock MOBOs are in the 175.00 range.

This is a free expansion pak if you already have Elements HERE.

Check it out HERE.

11 minutes ago, Hidden Symmetry said:

Tape's good & not a bad price. I sometimes use that on tracks.

I've been wanting the Weiss since release but can't justify the price. (luckily Unisum was released this year)

Same here. Weiss plug ins are no game. Are they a little salty compared to others? Yes. Firmly in Fabfilter price point territory and above. Good stuff though...I can't presently justify the price right now either. Not that I won't later on. Having the Console One hardware probably makes those plugins all the easier to use.  I'm making some gradual changes that add up to larger changes here for my studio. I'm not there yet, won't be for while, but when I get there this ecosystem will be a real consideration.

HERE-  Admittedly these aren't low end plugins, but hey a sale is a sale. 

I am interested in the console 1 hardware. I'm guessing these plugins work with all of their hardware.

Use code HAWKEYE-4999   HERE  ....offer ends July 15th 11:59pm California time.

Maybe offering a free interpretive dance in 4K would help? 

Second thought, scratch that idea.