bitflipper

I'm a big fan of everything OTS, including Pear. Sounds great and is easy to use. However, my favorite acoustic basses are in Trilian from Spectrasonics. Not only is the main upright really well-sampled, you also get three other acoustic basses in the package. All have the necessary woody airy tone, plus great slides and glissandos, the main features I look for in sampled basses, whether acoustic or electric. The only downside, IMO, is that Trilian is clumsier to program than OTS. Another often-overlooked plus with Trilian is it can be easily integrated with Omnisphere for some interesting layering possibilities.

You clearly haven't spent enough money on plugins, JB! ? As was suggested above, that claustrophobic effect has nothing to do with sample rates or plugins, but rather almost always comes down to one or more of the following: 1. Too much spackle between the cracks, with reverb and compression being the main offenders. Gotta leave little holes between the notes/hits. 2. Using a lot of thick synth tones and layers of distorted guitars that have been manipulated to sound wide on their own. It's counter-intuitive, but mono tracks make for the widest mixes, while lots of wide-stereo tracks actually dilute the overall sense of panorama. 3. Lack of contrast. Equality is fine as a social ideal, but it has no place in a mix. Trying to make every element equally loud, equally full-spectrum, equally dry or wet or equally broad - will add up to a wall of mush. Not everything needs reverb, not everything needs to sound great in solo, and not everything needs to be full-spectrum. 4. And of course, you can easily undo a good mix with bad mastering. Mastering should always be icing, never remedial. I've got a whole bunch of old mixes that suffer horribly from exactly the syndrome you describe. How I wish I could go back and re-do them! Sadly, all I can do is analyze them and swear to be less timid in the future. If it's to be panned left, then dammit, why not 100% left?

Playing around with the new Hammerstein feature...so far it's more confusing than enlightening. Of course, one can always consult the manual: Well, then. There ya go. Mystery solved. Currently reading this document, which purports to explain the method. Basically, it's a way to more accurately break down the harmonic components of a test signal. I'm having some difficulty because the top of the graph is 0 dB. This appears to be relative to the test signal amplitude, since lowering the signal does not change the display. That means if I place an EQ under test and apply a boost with it, the trace disappears off the top of PD's display. I'm missing something, I'm sure. Maybe a scaling option somewhere...

Just one of many reasons I live in the far north. Granted, up here we're missing out on many of the South's distinctive charms. Hookworm, killer bees, black widows, wild pigs, hurricanes and backwater sheriff's deputies. Good thing you folks have the music thing going for ya.

That would be a useful technique when playing with some tempo-challenged drummers. A buddy of mine plays solo with a drum machine, and has done so for decades. He's done it so long and has developed such a strict sense of rhythmic consistency that he now finds it frustrating to play with a live drummer. Fortunately, my band's drummer is rock-solid, tempo-wise. Unfortunately, once he decides on a particular tempo, there's no persuading him that it should be slower.

Does it do the same thing if you run Kontakt standalone? If you let it sit for a long time, do the files eventually show up? Does it do it on a brand-new project with nothing but Kontakt inserted? I can't imagine how a DAW could affect Kontakt's ability to populate the file list, as that's purely an interaction between Kontakt and the O/S. I've seen it take a long time before, but only after installing a new library, installing a library incorrectly, or having corrupt files within a library.

^^^ That would be my first guess, too. It's typical for plugins to either periodically go silent or insert a noise burst when they're in demo mode. Try bypassing each plugin in your vocal chain one-by-one and you'll probably identify which one it is. Crackles and pops are an indication that your CPU is sometimes unable to process data fast enough to keep the input or output buffers filled. When the data stream is interrupted, even for a millisecond, that manifests itself as a click or pop. There may be things you can do to help your CPU out, such as killing background processes (wifi adapters being the most notorious culprit) that are monopolizing the CPU. But the quickest solution is to increase buffer sizes, which gives the CPU more time to do its thing. Some people like to set buffers low (128 or less) while tracking and then bump them up for mixing. Personally, I just keep mine set to the maximum value (2048) all the time for convenience.

Unless you're doing contemporary R&B with lots of Cher-effect vocals, stay away from automatic pitch correction entirely. That includes Melodyne's algorithm, which is actually quite good. Always edit pitch by hand, and always determine where corrections are needed by ear alone, ignoring the visuals. That will get you the most transparent pitch correction possible. Great vocals simply don't need to be quantized to exact pitches any more than drums need to be quantized to exact ticks. Except for those genres that are built around machine-like precision, such as EDM. Listen to Paul McCartney or Paul Simon vocal tracks - both are masters of pitch, but neither are precisely on the note. Not ever.

Perhaps the most common mistake hobbyist composers routinely make: picking a tempo and stubbornly sticking to it for the whole song. Tempo changes are the easiest way to liven up a recording, especially if your base tracks are MIDI. Something as simple as a subliminal increase of one or two BPM on the chorus will make your track more interesting, even if the listener doesn't know why.

abacab, it could be worse. You could have a 20-year old copy Adobe Premier. My brother has worked at Adobe for decades. He came to the company back when they bought Aldus. He's a tech geek and not in marketing so he won't be embarrassed that I've outed him. As an employee he can buy software at cost, so I had him get me Audition and Premier. Premier just sucked something awful and I uninstalled it. Audition, though, seemed like a good investment. I had liked its shareware predecessor, and the idea of having it maintained and enhanced by a big corporation seemed like a good thing. Then they decided to go to the cloud with it. I was disappointed, but Audition 3 was still a good program and it still worked. At least, until I had to replace my computer after it was stolen. Audition didn't work anymore because it had to be authorized online and Adobe had taken down their authorization server. Instant obsolescence. Wouldn't Toyota or General Motors love to be able to remotely disable every car over 5 years old? Brilliant move. Luckily for me, Adobe still had a shred of conscience back then. They issued a universal license for Audition 3 users. I still use it to this day. I'm guessing some up-and-coming marketing dweeb stood in front of the conference table and pointed to a chart showing many AA3 users had not migrated to the new product, making the case that the company needed a heavier hand to keep its customers in line. And here we are. Will there ever be a consumer backlash? Not likely. After all, there are still Apple customers.

Sorry, all my fellow hippie dreamers, but here's how open source and shareware typically go... Cool Edit Pro (shareware) -> Adobe Audition (buy once) -> Adobe CC (subscription only). Yes, sometimes it does go the other way. The MP3 encoder is an example of that, but it's atypical. CbB users would do well to reflect on what a great deal they're getting.

That's literally why it's called "recording". It's supposed to be a record of a real event. We need a new term for whatever it is we do nowadays. "Construction"?

Yup, Dave's here and off his painkillers.

Unfortunately, it's an increasingly popular strategy for software vendors looking to establish annuity income. I have a critical utility that I use in my day job that I originally bought 20 years ago for $80. It did everything I needed. Then one day it stopped working, and I was forced to re-purchase the product for $240. Two years later it stopped working again and the price had gone up to $360. When I reluctantly went to buy yet another forced upgrade, I was informed that I can now only rent the software for $36 a month. And they had the audacity to try and convince me they were doing me a favor. Fortunately, we currently have the option of switching to another vendor. But only for as long as the industry is still in transition to the predatory model. There are already sectors in which that option has been completely removed. Microsoft has made no secret of the fact that they want to make Windows a subscription. Here's how I see it progressing: 1. Initially, the subscription model will be optional. It will appeal to some business users. 2. Subscription will then become the only way to "buy" Windows. Many DAW users will be unaffected, as they have stayed on Windows 7. 3. Older versions of Windows will be intentionally made obsolete. This will be done through developers, who will be told they must do X in order to qualify for the Windows logo, and X is incompatible with older versions of Windows. 4. The end game will be to make running older versions illegal.

Well, CH is the forum equivalent of the short bus. But I say: embrace that specialness. It does not preclude one's potential for a top 40 hit, becoming a reality star, or for attaining the highest political offices.

Actually, Marc, I think you do qualify for membership. The quality of your posts has always been good, and anyway we do offer half-price junior memberships for youngsters in their 50's.

Voxengo SPAN version 3.,3, adds two important features: LUFS metering and true peak / clipping detection. I did not see any mention of these enhancements having been implemented in the paid version SPAN+, but presumably that'll be announced very soon.

I usually hate to make this kind of suggestion, but maybe it's time to let go of Session Drummer and migrate to something else. It's been a very long time since I've used SD, but IIRC it uses standard GM mapping by default, so it should be easy to drop in a replacement drum sampler without needing to alter your MIDI data. In the meantime, you can substitute the TTS-1 so you can continue to work on your project.

Thanks, guys. Yep, it's gonna be great to get back to gigging. Loving this new mic. "I been singin' with my band" ... Saturday's rehearsal, the first song I tried it out on was Fat Bottom Girls. Hitting those high notes and pulling back from the mic, the tone doesn't thin out like the '58 does. Not that the Shure sounds bad. I still think it's a good mic and an amazing value. But you need to stay right on it in order to get a consistent tone. I think the Sennheiser will work well for recording, too, which I hope to try this week. Sunday went to a performance of the Seattle Rock Orchestra. That's a group of maybe 60 players, mostly young and mostly amateurs, consisting of strings, brass, choir, drums and electric bass. And four excellent vocalists. They cover classic rock albums. The concert was in a nice-sounding old theater (The Moore for people who know of it) in Seattle. Sound reinforcement could have been better, and the performers flubbed a few cues. But overall it was very, very enjoyable. They played all of Abbey Road and several selections from the White Album. Maybe it was just the edibles, but when they did four part harmony on Because and Sun King I floated out of my chair a little. The encore was Long and Winding Road, which got a standing ovation. In November they'll be back at the Moore doing the first two Led Zeppelin albums. Next Mother's Day it'll be Revolver and Rubber Soul. If I'm still alive then, I'll be there.

The goal of replacing the human component is well on its way...remember when buying gas or groceries, going to the bank, making an airline reservation, browsing for books, getting product support - all involved some kind of human interaction? Humans are complicated, and therefore complicate and reduce the efficiency of everyday transactions. In 20 years you won't drive your own car anymore. (At least that should eliminate automated traffic fines; of course if you do get one, well good luck contacting a human to appeal it.) In far less than 20 years, all pop music will be mostly generated by algorithms. Heck, many are seriously predicting the end of conventional male/female unions. Why endure the messiness of interpersonal relationships when a robot can service all your needs while never complaining about any of your limitations? The ultimate end game, I fear, is finally achieving a perfect world wherein mechanical perfection replaces all human activity. Problem is, that will make us unnecessary, and by then, the machines will be smart enough to realize that. We may be the last blemish to imperfection to eradicate. Or not. After all, jazz never died, it just left the Top 40.

I've tried to convince my band that if I could just record my parts in MIDI, take them home and doctor them up, that when I came back the next night my live performance would then be impeccable. Oddly, they insist on real-time sound generation. "The audience won't wait around while you edit the PRV", they said. Luddites! Next, they'll tell me I have to use a real tambourine instead of samples. Now, that's just a safety issue - those things can give you bruises.

Point taken, Craig. I'm not innocent. I'll admit to moving around a few kick and snare hits now and again. And I start every song with a click track, regardless of whether they're programmed or played drums. But that doesn't mean one has to be a slave to the grid. The click track goes away after the initial guide tracks have been recorded, and then every subsequent track is played by hand. Everything but shakers. My arms get tired.

I know some of you guys are old enough to remember when the IBM keyboard was the standard. Tough as a brick, those things were. And you could tell when you'd activated a keyswitch by the feel of it in your fingers. That meant fewer typos and faster speed. Nowadays the main market for high-end keyboards is gamers. As a gamer, it does make a difference. As a touch typist, it makes a difference. As a speed typist, it makes a difference. Of course, if all you do is alternate between the spacebar and CTL-Z, then that Office Depot doorbuster special with the ten dollar rebate is all you need.

Think of it this way...when you play a center-panned mono track through your speakers, they are playing the same exact waveform through both speakers. This happens whether you're playing back in "mono" or in stereo. The end result of what comes out the speakers is exactly the same. So if it's impractical to re-export, just tell the engineer to whom you're sending the file to convert it to mono on his end. No harm will be done. Even then, he might elect not to bother if it's a centered instrument such as a vocal, kick drum or bass.

On a related note, here are some timing tips from bass legend Carol Kaye. I especially liked the bit about making a metronome groove.