Starise

That's an awfully expensive window stop. Could have saved a few bucks using a PC.

The Spud Muffins

The Fuzzy Peaches

Half a Mermaid

The Thumb Clubbers

The Nose Pickers

 Blue Grasshopper

The Flying None

Dunlap Distress

Vapor Caper

Mystified Susan

.............................you want more?

22 hours ago, StudioNSFW said:

I'll bet she had babies. Just a guess.....probably in her 50's now and wishing she still looked like that.

Oh....was this supposed to have something to do with tools?

No worries Dave...I frequent a paid service that augments some of my violin training. They have a forum there. Someone asked if we knew of any online service that could allow a live playing experience. A few of the players tried  Jamkazam with little success. Though I'll admit, the video you posted made it look very appealing. Seems to be working for a few.

My internet connection at home is decent. I don't pay for the skunk works version. If the total success is dependent on the slowest connection in the group I'm probably screwed. Most musicians I know are far from tech literate and probably don't have a clue as to how to max their systems. I don't intend that statement to be derogatory. Just the way things are. Don't get me wrong. I doubt Bill Gates would hire me as a custodian. I know enough to get by when it comes to servers, routers, internet connections etc. I can put computers together whoopee. 

Obviously now would be a good time for someone to rake some $$ in if they could come up with an idea to make the process work better. 

The Roland offerings are no better or worse than  most of the other prosumer interfaces such as Tascam, Steinberg and the like.

They don't  touch the  quality of something like Apogee or RME. The Clarett line is in that range and a good value in comparison. The Scarlett range is more similar to those others. I think the pres sound a bit better than something like Tascam to my ears. Presonus has some decent interfaces too. If you use a decent outboard preamp into line inputs  mic preamps become less of an issue. 

You really have to sort through the sales jargon and the specs to get a better picture. At the end of the day all preamps have some noise and harmonic distortion. Most of them have very little noise at 60% volume or less. A Scarlett pre might have 10% more noise than an RME pre. If the input signal is healthy there should be no need to push them up much higher. It goes deeper than that. You need clean power filtration in the interface and I think Focusrite have done a good job since they use wall warts. Good RF protection is another factor. The better interfaces have  lower S/N ratios than the less expensive ones. The A/D converters are usually stable enough that  most human ears can't detect a huge difference. Presonus uses something called XMAX that's supposed to stabilize the crystal oscillations. That's a company trademark term and it might be more fairy dust than reality. Sort of like the "waveguide" technology JBL uses on their monitors. It's patented. It's probably an improvement. How much I can't say.

Scientists and techs like to see hard data on an oscilloscope to determine how much noise is in the electronics. Musicians on the other hand, use their ears. The differences are not huge unless we are comparing Apogee to M-audio low end  sub 100 dollar interfaces. 

If you don't have a touch screen this is great, or maybe if you can't be close to the computer. Looks interesting! 

FWIW Elgato has a free phone app as well.

Stream Deck Mobile

In addition to carrying hot keys over I especially like the multi functions that are capable of combining multiple actions together that will all happen with one touch of a button. This goes way deeper than DAW control since it can tie into just about any other controls system. 

5 minutes ago, msmcleod said:

If you want the same options as the Clarett without the expense, you could look at the Scarlett 18i8 - it's essentially the same, but with the Scarlett pre's rather than the Clarett ones:

 

This is the one I have.

Quote

So basically the Clarett gives you the option of connecting a Clarett OctoPre at some point too.

....or as another option, The Behringer ADA8200. 8 "Midas" preamps .

In spite of the lack of full customization, Cakewalk's touch screen capabilities are pretty cool. 

If you want further customization and a faster workflow I recommend you look into Elgato Stream Deck. You can set it up with any DAW including Cakewalk

This guy is using it in FL Studio.

The main advantage to the Clarett over the Scarlett is better mic/instrument preamps. I have the Scarlett version of the 4 pre and it works well in my home studio setting. I'll probably replace my Scarlett with a Clarett when the time comes. So far though the pre amps in my Scarlett are just fine. In an actual recording mix I doubt the difference is night and day. 

What your main question is though concerning the  S/PDIF. I don't see how there could be any difference in that digital signal between the two. Lots of users are taking advantage of the S/PDIF to add 8 extra mic inputs to the interface.  I haven't heard of it used for guitar input so I can't comment on how it worked for that. I would be confident it would work just fine if sample rates are matched.

Vimeo!

Looks like issues with the keyboard audio. That's Dave? 

Doesn't look anything like his pic here to me. You sure?

For NI it probably doesn't get any better than this. I see one or two additions I could maybe use. I would be updating K10  so I have most of it already. The acoustic looks like a nice program. The orchestral additions and changes look nice. Not sure how much I will use them though. Usually it isn't as much as I thought I would.

If you had an older version and want to upgrade this looks like the time to do it.

Interesting read. 

I try to remind myself that any time I use compression it plays with dynamics. I know that should be a pretty straight forward thought, but it helps me to see it that way since often when people use compressors they  might be trying to do something else, like make the material louder. For me that isn't  the goal.

I was recently reminded of this when I worked on a live broadcast pushed out to a social media channel. The audio feed is in mono and bass is almost non existent. If you really want to hear compression at work just listen to a lively piece of music on an AM radio station. Almost no dynamics. It's alike everything is closed into a small box. Yes you can still hear everything but it isn't ANYTHING like the real performance.  Now imagine how everything sounds attending a live music event. Admittedly a mix of an event  well done often sounds better than actually being there. In that sense the mix can be an improvement. Too many conflicting dynamics  in a live situation .vs  the compressed world of AM.

In folk music you probably want to hear the detailed plucks of the acoustic instruments, so playing too much with those peaks will kill the feel of it. I never have a single way I make my mixes. If there are some really powerful attacks coming from acoustic instruments or drums I might tackle  them by simply  dealing in a narrow db range with only the tips of those attacks. You might not hardly ever see the compressor indicator at work in that case. I would do this at the track level sometimes if there are some crazy loud attacks that didn't break 0db. If it went above that just re track that part. A compressor isn't a mixer and it wasn't intended to make things louder even though many compressors have a makeup volume control which is really dangerous in the wrong hands. If you go too far with all of that you will be making your own AM radio audio. 

If anything I'm often using multi band compression over a whole track approach because often only a small segment of the audio needs any compression if at all. Another really viable option is to use side chain compression. I often find issues in the master concerning bass and it's easy peasy to run the offending track in to a master compressor side chain.

I don't see limiting and compression as the same thing. Limiting is like compression on steroids. I seldom use it on anything but the master. As with compression I prefer multi band limiting as a 1st stage on the master and then if necessary I'll add a master limiter set lightly for folk music. It is usually suggested by mixing pros to track at low db levels for the mix, say -6db or less. I have tracked some parts at -12 db or less. 

There are other things we can do to get around feeling the necessity to compress. If there is only a few offending places in the master why not use volume automation instead?

Thanks Craig!

I didn't do so well in English class though I could read and spell at collegiate level in 5th grade, which never made much sense to me. It was the terms designed to explain a thing in English. The scientific break down and terminology I didn't grok. Didn't help there were 30 students in the class and if you didn't understand anything they didn't wait for you to get it, which means anything else you leaned from then on had no foundation because it was all built on everything else.

..........so I guess what I'm trying to say is this gives me a great excuse for flunking.

The synths in this look to be pretty good. Not to mention all of the other additions.

I admit I would feel a little odd using it without ROLI hardware. For 50.00 I might forget the ROLI keyboard.

20 minutes ago, InstrEd said:

I'm trying to be but I would get all this even some doubles but I would get this all for lower then what I almost was going to spend on Miroslav Philharmonik 2 late last year. I held off because I knew I wouldn't have the time to play with the software.

Same here. I have had it now, maybe a month. The first few days I played with it. My intentions were to dive deep into the program. Then  life happened. Hopefully I'll swing back around to it soon....if you don't use it, you won't loose it. Eventually I'll get there.

It would take some getting used to for me since I have been working two monitors for so long. Console view always goes on my right, everything else on the left. Or I can collapse the console temporarily to mix a movie. No bad or good or best way. Old dog. New tricks. Just sayin'. I'm sure I could make just about anything work if I had to.

Thanks Craig. Nice areas. You hid those wires well. I used to work with MC which is the external covering cable you showed. I still have the cutters for it. I much prefer buying the higher voltage type with the wire already in it. It's a real pain to fish wires though MC conduit. I might actually end up using that or something similar. From an electrical emissions standpoint I wonder how much it will help because the sub panel is  25 Ft. away in a closet located in another room. I could still have issues from the panel.

In doing a search for how studios are wired I mostly encountered the audio cable connections info and the notorious issues with ground loops. All important for sure. I don't tend to buy the most expensive cables for my audio gear. I would say it's mostly mid grade. You hear very little about the high voltage. I say high voltage relatively speaking because I've been around 13,800 volts. This is only 115 volts/120 volts. Still enough to bite you if you touch it. 

There's already a 220 volt line running in the attic above my future studio for the heat pump. It isn't shielded but it is grounded well. It wouldn't be  very close to my audio gear.  The other lines will come into the space from the attic area and down through the walls. I'm sure the unit outside is well grounded ( I installed it). Looks like lunch for a thunder storm though with all of those circuit boards in it . 

7 hours ago, Christian Jones said:

Way better off today as I was drinking pretty heavily back then. I won't even tell you about that one morning towards the end of my tenure where I came in to the office still drunk and had to be there for the quarterly meeting where I had to address a large room of staff and upper management. I did fine because I was used to functioning like that and I'm not proud of that but it was what it was. Guess I did tell you about it lol. I left that gig to become a property manager which I was until two weeks ago. I'm in here because I'm holed up and restless and I don't want to work on music right now and I'm really starting to hate my TV.

Great!! I think everyone goes through something and eventually comes around. We all have vices. Nothing wrong with a drink. I hear what you're saying though. Not sure about you but my music has been suffering some lately.  I was working from home, but they made me come back. I was beginning to enjoy it at home. I had plenty to keep me busy, so I didn't think much about the time or seclusion. My wife was around. That doesn't always work well though. I saved a bunch of money on gas and car expenses over something 8 weeks or more.  I go shopping around here, just throw on the mask.

TV is great for me in the evening sometimes. I try to stay away from the news most of the time. Can you sit out back and watch the birds? That always helps me.

In case you couldn't read this directly. He wants to add a colored piano roll.

Bitflipper, I hope you know my intention wasn't intended to be anything but helpful. I figured you were probably already very aware of the pros and cons. I think I threw that out there for anyone who might read this because I hate to see people get sick from anything no matter what it is.

I didn't know anything about  CBD and thanks for the info. 

My personal opinion on the subject is we have much bigger fish to fry here in the US than such a trivial thing as cannabis. For goodness sake, why not go after the real problems? Is it abused? Anything can be abused.  I didn't come from that "culture". Wouldn't know where or how to even buy it if I wanted it as a straight product to be smoked. I guess that's because I never had the inclination. In my location at the time no one ever offered me any of it. I suppose I have been sheltered to some extent. Does that make me any better than anyone else? No. I still managed to get into plenty of other trouble without it.

Did you select the installation path or let the installer do it? If you can  locate the folder and see the plugin in the folder this would not be the problem. There are some folders that look similar but aren't , for instance there is often a VST folder located under X86 Program files and a second location in Program files. X86 is typically where older of 32 bit versions of plugins were installed. Installer would have likely put this somewhere under Program Files. 

Have you tried looking under "insert" heading instead of looking in synth pane on the right?? 

https://youtu.be/0T8BdlnNEmQ

Hi Tom,

Yes this is a 50 amp sub panel  using 6 -2 with ground  wire coming from my 200 amp service. The breaker for that panel is actually in the 200 amp panel since the sub panel doesn't have the option for a main breaker. The sub panel has a 25 amp breaker for the heat pump and four  20 amp breakers all ran using 12 wire. Two of those breakers are in another location. One is only for a large ceiling fan that probably doesn't use over 5 amps. The other breaker is for outlets in another room where nothing more than a vacuum cleaner, reading light or  fan will ever be plugged in. The other two 20A breakers are designated for the studio. One for lighting and the other for gear.

Since I'm getting some low hum in my system now I was attempting to eliminate hum in the other studio. The hum I get now is likely from emissions coming off the wire or bad wires since I'm only on one circuit in there. There's a lot of spaghetti though and I think it shares the lighting.

A dedicated 20A should help. I looked around and the closest thing I could find non MC was something called "tray wire". They use it for electronic cash register runs and similar. It's also called instrumentation wire. That wire seems to have an aluminum shield.  Maybe the wire my electrician friend mentioned as actually some kind of special MC that lets you ground the jacket or has a wire fused to the outer jacket ? Still looking.

Wiring standards and descriptions are different between countries. My question concerns the US wiring standards.

I'm finally getting around to pulling some wires for a future studio from an electrical sub panel I put in for another project. An electrician friend of mine mentioned there is a special high voltage wire (115 volts) I could get that comes with a shield to reduce interference into the line. It basically sounds like NM-B wire with an integral shield made into the wire that goes to neutral in the panel. Not an external conduit. Does anyone know what this wire the electrician is referring to is called?

I originally planned to run two 12-2 with ground NM-B wires 20 amps each.  I was thinking one for lighting and one for the computer and equipment. I won't be running a bunch of outboard hardware gear. Just a computer, interface, monitors, some keyboards and maybe a guitar effect or two. 20 amps is probably overkill. I already have the heat pump installed on a separate breaker. 

This is probably something I will investigate in the future. I agree with those who say the screen can be too close and too large. In my current studio I use two large monitors. My eyes aren't the best up close so I have been either wearing computer glasses which are supposed to offer some protection from screen emissions which still exists to some extent even on lcd monitors "or" 1.75 readers. Those glasses really pull everything up clearly for me.

If and when one of my monitors dies I will probably take a look at those large curved screen monitors first. The thing is, I am perfectly content with what I have right now. I can split everything up between the monitors and I like that. No reason for me to change really until or unless I have some kind of a failure. My video card is a mid tier gamer card which is mostly ok, but I'm sure  when I eventually look into a new monitor  replacement I will also be looking at what's available in the most recent video cards. As I say though. It isn't really needed now.

I've seen those setups that use a combination of maybe two monitors lower and a high rez screen sitting above them as a third option. I don't like it because my neck wasn't made to bend up as comfortably for long periods of time as it was made to bend down or look on the level. I guess those who make music for film might use a setup like that more often. In that case I  would prefer looking at level height at something smaller. I have a 55" TV mounted over my fireplace at home and from 15' away it's still plenty large enough. I can't imagine kissing one from 2' away.