Starise

15 minutes ago, Soundwise said:

If I already have ARC2.5, is the new mic a lot better or should I keep the mic and just upgrade the software?

I wondered the same thing. My mic has the orange ring around the bottom.  ARC 2.5 let me specifically identify the mic before corrections.

For me the decision was simple. I don't have Nimbus and I'm not the type that wants to play with presets for two hours. I need something I can dial in and make minor tweaks to it in a few minutes because I'm usually making music not previewing reverbs. I should have already familiarized myself with the plug. Nimbus on sale was 79.00 while Phoenix was only a tenner. It has most of the same DNA. No brainer for me. I must be nuts though because I just bought 2C audio's Breeze and Precedence with individual per track spacial positioning. I though it was going to be my last reverb...ever. Yeah, just like when I told my wife I had bought my last guitar. When will I ever learn? 

Neva say neva.:)

11 hours ago, CDK said:

Hey @Starise, thanks for your reply.

It's been suggested I place a heavy curtain in front of the window, do you think that would help a bit?

The desk is about 6 inches away from the wall and the speakers are indeed rear bass ported. I've actually been considering downsizing to 5 inch monitors, my current 8 inches just seem a little big for my room and the tweeter sits just a tiny bit above my ear level.

I've considered moving over to the side wall but that would mean the desk would facing across the room rather than down it, if that makes sense.  Not sure if that would present further issues?

 

Heavier curtains probably would not help much if they are typical heavy curtains. Portable recording setups sometimes use a much heavier fabric more like a blanket or quilt

and these have a similar effect to sound treatment when placed strategically. They are specifically made for that purpose but you could probably get something similar.

Even in a best case example those types of treatments control the highs and mids better than the bass. Too much treatment and you effectively kill the sound, so there's a happy medium and it really has a lot to do with something called room modes. These are resonances that occur at specific frequency wave lengths that have the effect of  re enforcing a frequency. Bass tends to be treated better by using corner bass traps. I once had a well known company give me an estimate on what I needed for my room.

It was basically wall panels to the sides and rear of my monitors, panels to catch sound toward the rear of the room, bass traps in corners and ceiling panels. One thing that many don't consider is the floor and ceiling even though they are probably the two largest surfaces. Hard floor, hard ceiling is often asking for trouble.  Carpets or rugs on the floor help. Most ceilings should probably have treatment. That can be several sheets of heavy semi solid insulation covered with fabric hanging from wires to make them look nice.  Odd dimension surfaces work in favor of offsetting room modes. There are specialty products for that, but simply having things in the room can do similar. I have an open closet with a curtain over it in my room. This acts as a bass diffusion cavity. I have lots of small furniture and gear in the room so the sound is redirected and dispersed better than a plain square room would be....the room still needs help so I use ARC2. I highly recommend the book Mixing Secrets by Mike Senior. Chapter one covers lots of issues regarding the studio room itself. The monitors should be somehow disconnected from the desk to avoid transfer of energy. There are isolating stands and pads you can get. I have my monitors on a thin sheet of foam. Better than nothing. Not as good as buying the pads made for it. I know my bass still isn't right, so I check it on the cans. Lots of things can throw off the bass. rear firing ports too close to the wall can skew the bass image since the ports are there to make sure the woofer stays in phase. Too close and that energy goes right back against the speaker. Using stereo for bass can really muck things up if one side is out of phase it will kill your bass. EQ adjustments throw off the polarity of the bass. This isn't always something you notice but it can be.

Two things you can do inexpensively that should help are to monitor at low volume. Lowering the intensity of the energy will give you a more accurate image and avoid mode build ups. I only mix a higher volume when I'm mixing the master and that's only when I'm mixing it for maximum volume.  Many monitor speakers have a bass reduction switch on the back that let you cut the bass by a few db. This is especially helpful when using larger monitors in a smaller space.

Here's a pic of my ARC 2 adjustment showing a before, after and the adjusted target. The first thing most will notice after setting monitors up properly is that there doesn't seem to be as much bass. This is because the bass you were hearing was artificiality being re enforced by room modes.

If they could find a way to actually put their DAW on sale more than once every ten years I might bite just out of curiosity.  If they want me to give their DAW a spin they should be thinking about a 199.00 or less offer for entry. Actually 149.00 would turn my head much faster. 

If it was my first DAW and I had a business that needed it actually producing income, even then I would feel raped at 599.00 especially considering I'll be paying update prices for life.

Upgrade pricing while omitting cross grade pricing tells me they don't really want me, and that's ok this is advertised on a site that offers one bangin' DAW for free.

..........Sorry I must be in rant mode. Where's my off switch?

PhoenixVerb is a nice reverb. Having so many reverbs spaces me out.??? Pardon my attempts at humor.

I found I could get a tight space reverb with this in addition to the really out there stuff..  Valhalla Room excels at this as well. Most reverbs are good at distant, far away, dreamy. Phoenix is mainly that but you can make it tight too. Valhalla Shimmer is good for "out there". Been tempted to try Black hole. So far I haven't . The title leads me to think it would be good for sci fi mixes.

I had the hub for awhile not really knowing what it was. Decided to check it a few days back.  They throw in a guitar amp sim and the Fat channel for free. For kicks I threw it into Cakewalk and it worked well.  On the same level as some of the Waves plugins to my ears. I believe there are plugin chains in the Fat Channel which make it very convenient to use for different applications fast.

I go back and forth between different DAWs,  find it much more efficient to compose in Cakewalk most of the time.  I wonder if I could put the hub into the Pro Channel ?.........now there's a thought! The Pro Channel is a nice tool kit and seems more centralized to the track than the Fat Channel  IMHO. Like an actual, part of  each channel.The most recent PC update adding presets competes well with Presonus Hub/Fat Channel.  It would be easy to run an A/B comparison to see how they compare.

I love choices and never have we had so many.

Hi mdiemer,

Tim here. Good to hear from you.Maybe you remember me from another forum.

That was a nicely put together orchestration. I listened on my ATH-M50x headphones along with correction by Sonarworks. Wife is working at home and on the phone so I can't use my monitors right now.

I listened in mono/stereo and in bass tilt mode. I took off the -6db ceiling to make sure i could turn it up. The issues I hear are easy to correct....no really. I only hear two issues that jump out at me right away. 

- Not enough bass

-Not loud enough, even for classical music.

The main reasons for this are usually you hear too much bass through your monitor system which causes you to ( falsely) think you need less bass when you really need more bass. The answer to this is a more accurate monitor setup. Possibly using ARC2, or at the least balancing the bass in the space to match the bass you really are hearing on other systems. Just seen an interesting video on the idea that many mixing engineers over use the high pass filter when sometimes it's important to keep bass information  in a lot of tracks people are rolling off, at least some of it.

The loudness issue could be corrected by adding stages of gain in small amounts here and there, then adding a nice limiter to the master. 

The loudness of the monitor system is important too since it should be set to a level that isn't too loud. If it's too loud you'll make the mix too soft. The K-system uses pink noise to get a level set. It's a good system. I don't always use it. What I sometimes do instead is mix to a place where anything past 60% volume on the computer volume control is getting loud and I'm within db, LUFS and K limits for louder material. It won't kill a mix if you go over in small amounts here and there. The best thing though IMHO is to find the few offending tracks and compress/limit them before going to master. 

Feel free to PM me any time on this. 

E-mu seems to be "almost" defunct. I found a site that sure looks like E-mu selling headphones with wooden cups. LINK

It's sad really. If they  or someone would take soundfont technology up for redesign it has lots of future possibilities.  I'm thinking of  where midi would be without any attention for the last 20 years.

It's still really cool for what it is capable of. They made some great keyboards and that tech went over to SF creation.

Done! I thank you. My hard drive thanks you.

I was recently doing some shuffling around and reorganizing on my PC. I came across this folder that appears to be the downloads storage for the older Cakewalk command center.

Most of it looks like installers. What concerns me is some of it is marked "application". 

This folder is huge at 88gb. Would it be safe to simply empty it? Or will I loose valuable plugins? 

Word has it Led Zepplin used a Pignose for some of their recordings.  The inventor gave them out as prototypes to some of the big bands back then. This guy apparently was able to get pretty close to that sound here.

If there are no other tracks try selecting all midi for input. On a singular midi track you should be able to record midi but you won't hear it. You will see the recorded representations of it. 

You should see midi in the instrument track when you record it. Do you see midi?  I suspect you are hearing the loop preview and not recording midi or hearing it through the virtual instrument. When dragging a loop from a drum program it's easy to think it is playing in the track because the drum program is also locked to the tempo and might be playing at the same time.

I would bet you aren't getting the midi to the track for whatever reason. I've never used the QWERTY method so I can't comment there. Do you have another way to connect something that might give you midi? Most keyboards no matter how cheap had a midi out or usb.

TheSteven, do you have this? Dang, I was surprised at it. Best 20 I dropped all year.

I hope you have fun playing with these. I noticed some nice SF can be had for orchestral sounds through Musescore.

 I sort of compare playing with SF to working on old car engines that still have capacitors and points when we have electronic ignition  I mean, even some keyboards have built in hard drives now and the samples are so much better. JMO.  I don't claim to know all about SF. I "guess" they can also call up huge sample libraries? Mostly they don't though and use lots of stretched samples. For synth work I think they still have a place. If going for realism though sample libraries are tough to beat.

One place I can still see them really shining is in portable devices. Even though they are way more powerful now, they could still take advantage of less weight on their cpu. But what do I know? We all have opinions. I can't have one if I borrow someone else's.

These guys are really *****, they even update their freebees

I would move away from the window to the other wall if it were me. A lot probably depends on the weather  and how the room is oriented toward towards the sun.

I personally would not like it there but that's me. Not sure how tall you are. The monitors should be at ear level. Most people don't do that and only recently did I move mine to that height. For ergonomics the monitor should be at face level too. If the monitors are lower you miss a lot of the information from them. You want to be in the "sweet spot".  Some monitors fire the bass from the rear of the cabinet, some from the front and some cope with it internally. Mine have bass ports in the back so I have them over three feet from the wall behind them. In typical residential room such as yours bass is usually more of an issue.

"IF" it was me I would

-Move over to a side wall

-add some sound treatment if possible. In either case I would

-Use ARC 2 or similar for monitor correction

"IF" it was me I would also

- lean on headphones partially, also corrected with something like Sonarworks. I find headphones are best to get the bass right and monitors for everything else. In a pinch cans make a great way to mix without bothering others i.e late at night. Then sample mix on both.

I've used those. Still too much for my room when cranked up. I would go ITB.

If you are shopping for a Channel strip I recommend to also check out the McDSP stuff. 

Plug in boutique has this too for a similar rice.  Another Sonivox product that was a no brainer for me-

VOCALIZER PRO

This is now going for under 10.00. It's a vocoder and so much more. 

Already downloaded and looking it over...sweet!

That seems odd. There are several effects software on/off switches. If you look at Scook's video you will see a small green indicator on the left of the effects bin. The effects bin can be toggled off and on with a similar button on the efx box inside of the effects bin. There's also a master on/off button to the right of the time counter.

Any of these can turn off the effects.

There are a few videos on the site. Lots of presets. Seems to be a learning curve. Probably not the kind of thing I'll throw on and immediately know how to use it.

Shouldn't take much to get around it though with a little investigation. I'm guessing it can be automated.

Didn't see that one. I just ordered this.

They threw in the Punisher for free plus I earned a little virtual cash.

I bought Phoenix on a deal  and had hoped they would have a deal like this for Nimbus. It is discounted 50% at PB . Still around 80 clams.

Upgrade from any Izotope product. $8.01   Regular price- 119.45

EXCALIBUR