bitflipper

I came here to suggest that one as well - you beat me to it. That one's written by a guy who has a unique perspective, in that he was a music producer for many years before abandoning that career to become a psychologist. I have just downloaded Nina Kraus' book after reading a short sample on Amazon, so thanks for that suggestion. I've long been fascinated by sound perception as a hack for mixing. Like what a "wide and deep" mix really means, or how masking works, or why some note / timbre combinations are pleasing while others are not. These, I believe, can all be explained in mechanical terms. There is a contributor to this forum that I greatly respect for his mixing chops, but who once perplexed me by stating that "Science to me in the audio field is a waste of time". I had a moment of cognitive dissonance, wondering how he could be so good at something he'd never attempted to understand objectively. Right brain left brain something something.

Billy Hume, my newest favorite music educator / commentator, talks about why someone might not be able to sing on pitch no matter how hard they try. My bassist really works hard on his vocals, and does fine on leads but often beats his head against the wall trying to find his harmony part, and is often flat when he does find it. He's asked me how I do it, and I honestly don't know what to tell him. I said I just "see" harmonies in my mind, similar to Melodyne blobs on the computer screen. This might suggest that this may be an innate skill, meaning something you can't train for. Or at least a skill you have to pick up early in life, like learning a second language.

I recently tried to pull up Netflix on two of my TVs, only to be informed that "Netflix no longer supports this device". One is a smart TV with network features such as a built-in Netflix client, the other is an older "dumb" TV that gets Netflix via a DVD player that has the client built-in. I'm guessing they found some weaknesses in their access control / user validation and have forced manufacturers to put additional security features into their firmware-based Netflix clients to circumvent password sharing. I am not inclined to buy new TVs, as I just don't watch enough television to justify the expense. But I don't subscribe to cable TV, so those sets are now just video monitors for watching DVDs. Consequently, I am looking into Firestick-type devices so I can get Netflix back on those receivers. Thanks to Shane's comment, it has just now occurred to me that it would be nice to get YouTube on them as well. But I haven't actually looked into how (or how well) Firestick works. Does it require a monthly subscription or any other additional costs beyond the initial purchase? Or is it essentially just a little computer with HDMI outputs?

€19, about what you'd pay for a Diva / Zebra / Massive / Omnisphere 3rd-party patch library. So a fair price, assuming you're into Kontakt synth libs.

Thanks to mastering guru Ian Shepard for bringing this to our attention. It's called "Stable Volume", and it applies a primitive leveling compressor to YouTube audio. It's supposed to turn itself off when it detects music, but let's recall that YT doesn't have a good track record with such things. What happens when you watch a video that's mostly talking about audio, but with audio examples? Think of your favorite YT educators such as Dave Rat, Audio University, or Dan Worrall. Much of their content would become pointless if you couldn't hear small differences in audio. To make sure this feature is turned off, click on the gear icon for YT options and make sure Stable Volume is disabled. You cannot disable it globally.

The Flakiness Index falls off the further north and west you go, but increases exponentially to the east and south. To the east, you come to Sultan/Gold Bar, tweaker capitol of the northwest. To the south, the murder/carjacking/drive-by nexus of White Center / Federal Way. And it generally gets worse the further south you go. The longtime northwesterner knows better than to cross the Columbia River, as Thar Be Dragons.

Here just north of Seattle we are on almost the exact latitude as Montreal, but unlike Montreal we get little snow. So far this winter, not a single flake. I'm good with that.

Translation, courtesy of Google Translate: I gatherJoel has created his own autotune plugin. Cool!

Yes, I think it is a great deal. It, or something like it, is essential if you're mastering for streaming or just want consistency between projects. I use this on every project. I did not pay $199 for it, though, and probably wouldn't have ever discovered its value had it not come bundled with Ozone Advanced.

So did the blonde singer, at least back in Roger's pretty-boy days.

That's why doing your own thing requires a certain level of courage. Assuming, of course, that you're self-aware enough to recognize the concept of cause-and-effect, aka "FAFO".

I've never liked punk and always thought Johnny Rotten was a total fraud, something he himself later admitted. But I do get the underlying attitude and applaud the desire to do your own thing regardless of what's popular or respectable.

I am always encouraged to see young people adopting classic rock, and these folks have done an exemplary job of interpreting one of the greatest classics of all time. Note the refreshing absence of over-the-top post-production, auto-tune and reverb washes. Just a legit live performance from some extraordinarily talented and dedicated musicians. The principle lead vocalist even manages to project in the original keys, showing great technique. And of course there's the YouTube-famous drummer grinning all the way through, just like Keith used to do. I literally shed a tear during I Can See for Miles (22:20), it was that good.

I stand corrected. I guess I just assumed it was a new product because I hadn't seen it before. Then again, I didn't even own a pair of decent headphones until c. 2004-2005.

I didn't so much jump off the train as simply sit back and watch it leave the station without me. That was about three years ago, when I realized that Black Friday had come and gone and I hadn't bought anything. Since then I've picked up a few too-cheap-to-ignore sample libraries and that's about it. Although I have to admit to one relapse, having jumped back on very briefly to buy ProQ-4 on release day. But I don't regret it, and it'll likely be the only purchase I make over the coming year.

I didn't know those were so cheap! The only time I've heard them was at the Sony booth at NAMM, c. 2008. They sounded wonderful. At the time they were a new product, and when I asked the rep what they retailed for, he said $500. I set them back on the rack and moved on.

It's a generally-accepted principle that whatever your speakers are weak at is what your mixes will overcompensate for. Usually, they're talking about deep bass. If your monitors can't reproduce very low frequencies, then gauging your mix's bass levels can only ever be a shot in the dark and likely to come out too hot. Conversely, speakers with hyped bass will encourage bass-light mixes. Consequently, the "you can make anything work" concept assumes that your budget speakers/headphones meet at least bare-minimum requirements. Laptop speakers and stock Apple earbuds will only ever translate by accident. A good example is Audio Technica's ATH-M50, a longtime favorite for cheap-ish (~$150) but good-enough headphones that will do the job pretty well. They are far from flat (no headphones are), with hyped bass and uneven highs. But spend enough time with them and you can create well-balanced mixes. Personally, I'm a speaker guy. For me, headphones are either a secondary reference or for fine editing. But then I don't mix in hotel rooms or on the beach. I'm always in the same space, seated in the sweet spot and surrounded by absorption. Consistency is the key, regardless of what you're listening on. That's because the HS-80s are rear-ported speakers, which can cause bass buildup between the ports and the rear wall. I've seen the benefit of moving them away from the wall first-hand, and it was a dramatic improvement. They didn't get stronger bass (they're still relatively small enclosures) but the bass response was smoother and flatter. The studio's owner later reported that the quality of his mixes had noticeably improved and he spent far less time fiddling with bass. One potential solution for you would to add a sub and cross it over at a relatively high frequency, e.g. 100 Hz. You could then move the sub around the room until you find the ideal location - it doesn't have to be in front of you or equidistant between the main speakers. One neat trick I learned back when I had a sub was to set it on the chair in the mix position and then crawl around the floor until it sounds good, then move the sub there.

Please start a new thread for comments unrelated to this specific topic (ARA integration into Next).

There is a ProChannel module for tube saturation, called Saturation Knob.dll. It can be found under cakewalk\shared utilities\internal, along with all the other ProChannel plugins. I don't know how it would come to be missing, given that it's part of the basic install. Do you get any warnings when you open a new project? At any rate, you should be able to simply ignore any missing-plugin warnings if you're certain none of them have actually been used in the project (they could have been used at one time but were subsequently disabled). The warnings should go away after saving and re-opening the project. I've often had missing plugins after opening old projects, plugins I'd forgotten even existed. Sure enough, though, if I went through every track and bus I'd find a grayed-out entry for it. Most of the time the plugin wasn't really missing but had been moved to a different file location, in which case you can right-click on it and use the "substitute plugin" option to point it to the new location. When one of your problem projects aborts, do you get any messages at all, or does it just quietly exit? When that happens, is there an orphan process listed in Task Manager? That usually indicates a problem with a plugin that's seriously broken, e.g. missing a file dependency. Such problems can be identified by running a full VST scan (click Reset before running the scan). Any third-party plugins that are missing dependencies will fail the scan. You can also enable logging, which writes a blow-by-blow history of the scan to a log file, making it easier to search for failed plugin initializations.

Well said. I just bought some fancy earbuds last week, for stage monitoring. At first I was disappointed that at $400 they sounded way worse than my $200 Sennheiser headphones. But after several hours listening to a wide selection of music, and then using them during a 3-hour band rehearsal, I concluded that they didn't sound that bad after all. They're gonna work out just fine. I had the same experience when I had to replace my studio monitors in a hurry, to replace a pair that had gone *****-up. With no money set aside, I settled for some speakers from Focal that were noticeably less flat and bass-light than their predecessors. No, these aren't the good Focals that I'd lusted after since the first time I heard them, but a far cheaper entry-level model. Yes, there were translation issues at first, as I foolishly tried to compensate for their weaknesses with EQ. But after a couple years with them, I actually like them quite a lot now and have no issues with translation.

I know, right? But I'll not speculate whether that's the name his mother gave him or a nom de guerre, lest I violate some rule.

This is a point I've been making ever since I read Floyd Toole's excellent book Sound Reproduction. Regardless of whether you have high-end speakers in a well-treated room or you're making do with cheap headphones, your own brain will, given time, come to recognize what a good mix sounds like on those speakers. That's why I always recommend spending a few hours listening to your favorite records after you've bought new speakers or headphones. Many people (incorrectly) believe that speakers sound better after they've been "broken in", when in fact they just sound better because your ears and brain have become accustomed to them and will automatically compensate for whatever those speakers are lacking. Always feels good when an undisputed expert agrees with you.

Love those kinds of gigs, the ones that end at an early hour. Seems to be the trend nowadays. Back in the day it was a rare treat to be done by 1:00 AM, and that's what we called an "early night". Saturday Night Live had been a much-discussed cultural phenomenon for more than a decade before I got to watch it for the first time.

Played a regular gig on the 28th, took NYE off and went to bed early. Great way to avoid homicidal drunks at 3:00 AM. Got together with the band on NYD to hang out and jam. Great way to start the new year.

You sang that, Ed? I'm impressed! "When we go to the circus and see a dancing bear, we're delighted - not because he dances well, but that he dances at all." You're a man of unexpected talents, bapu.