bitflipper

When Keith posted this question, I thought "Oh! I know the answer to that" and brought up Sonar to take a screenshot. However, when I tried it the "+" button doesn't appear to do anything. You can select a factory preset and overwrite it with your own, but can't save and name a custom preset. I don't know if it ever did, because I don't use export presets myself.

Don't take this as a sarcastic reply - that's not my intent - but pretty much any equalizer with an integrated spectrum analyzer can do all that. You might also take a look at multitrack analyzers such as MMultiAnalyzer from Meldaproduction or SPANPlus by Voxengo. Both let you overlay spectral graphs of multiple tracks and reveal spectral overlaps that are likely to result in loss of clarity in your mix. Conflicts can exist across the frequency spectrum, not just kick/bass vs. everything else. A piano or distorted rhythm guitar might be masking a vocal, for example.

Listen to "Rainbows". I hope they played that at her service.

Thanks! I usually take an organ solo in that song but that day I had just happened to discover a nice sax patch on the Montage and switched to that on impulse right before hitting Record. I think it'll be part of the arrangement from here on out - at least until we play in front of any real brass players. If Notes is ever in the audience, I'll be switching back to organ. Or kazoo.

Very sad indeed. Seems like it's the nicest people who leave too soon. I opened this post with the intention of linking to Janet's music, which seems appropriate when a contributor passes. Unfortunately, her SoundClick account seems to have been deleted. I don't know if she shared her stuff anywhere else.

True. You can say that because their interfaces both conform to the ASIO spec. "Interface", in this context, means a set of standard functions that a host program uses to communicate with the driver. From the host's perspective, they do not appear any different from any other ASIO driver, since the host has no knowledge of what goes on under the hood. But ultimately it's Windows that talks to the hardware, not ASIO. Where ASIO drivers differ is how host calls get from the interface to the underlying Windows audio components. Some gain efficiencies by skipping over some of the Windows audio components and shortening the distance to the hardware. But ASIO4All and similar universal drivers are sometimes referred to as "wrappers" because they don't do any real work themselves but rather pass along the desired actions to the O/S. In the case of ASIO4All, its purpose is to translate ASIO calls into WDM-KS calls. According to FlexASIO's author, his wrapper calls a third-party library that in turn calls WASAPI. Although this provides an easy path to code for multiple operating systems, that intermediate library will necessarily impose a small but unavoidable performance cost. I wouldn't expect it to match the efficiency of a DAW such as Sonar that is designed specifically around Windows audio and that calls WASAPI or WDM-KS directly. As with ASIO4All, its value is to users who want to use ASIO for some reason but whose hardware does not have a bespoke ASIO driver. IMO, though, if your audio interface doesn't support ASIO the logical solution is to use WASAPI. But I'll admit I'm thinking in terms of a Windows environment. It could be a whole 'nother can 'o worms if you're on, say, Linux. [P.S. My audio interface has a fine ASIO driver but I use WASAPI. If there is a difference in performance, it's too small to notice.]

Occam's Razor. Laziness takes far less effort than malfeasance. Plus how stupid would it be to deliberately overwrite something that currently works - and that the user has paid for - with something you know won't work? Even NI isn't that evil.

Sounds great, with ducking, freeze and reverse. So yeh, even if "all the reverb you'll ever need" might be a bit pretentious, I think this would indeed be a pretty versatile reverb. Just one question: why is an algorithmic reverb 200 MB in size? Downloaded the installer and let it install the plugin, but was unable to take it out of demo mode because it's demanding a password. I never gave them a password, didn't create an account. Went back to the site and tried to create a profile, but it was rejected with an "invalid sign up" message. Sorry, UJAM, this is too much bother. I've got plenty of reverbs.

Thanks for the heads-up. NI should not be listing anything as "update available" if it's incompatible with your installed Kontakt version. That's just lazy programming.

I'm sorry, did I delete those posts before you had a chance to write down the phone number?

Unfortunately, the video captures their only gig this year. "The A&R man said, 'I don't hear a single'".

Locking this thread. Giving out this type of discount code is essentially software piracy. I don't think it's the OP's fault. It probably stems from this video. Note that Plugin Boutique has rescinded the code because of this abuse, so don't bother trying the method shown in the video.

I found this, which says it's just a contact mic and a bunch of fx and a looper. And, of course, played with exceptional panache. Hmm, come to think of it I have some bassoons in my Kontakt collection...

Please upload your submissions to dropbox. A great compliment coming from you, Geoff.

My goodness, this vocalist has got pipes. Her pitch control is better than some analog synths. I can't tell if the bassoon is going through an exotic fx chain or being translated into MIDI to control a synth.

I knew my mixer could be used as a recording interface, but Yamaha documentation seriously sucks (always been that way) so it took a few trials and errors to get a proper recording. I still don't know how to adjust send levels over USB, so some tracks were very quiet and others were very loud even though the mix we heard while playing was balanced. Fortunately, the result is extraordinarily clean and even massive gain boosts didn't result in audible noise. I've been meaning to try this for awhile, ever since the whole band went amp-less and everybody now goes through the PA. I've done simple two-track recordings of rehearsals - that's as easy as plugging in a USB drive. But we're in the process of building a new promo package that will include a thumb drive of music samples, so I needed multitracks that can be properly mixed in Sonar. The hardest part was switching to an alternate interface. Windows would get confused, seeing a new interface and deciding on its own that from that moment forward I was to forever listen to Netflix through my stage mixer. Ultimately came up with a batch file to easily switch interfaces by swapping aud.ini files. Here's my first test: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=14852856 This is a cover of a Janis Joplin tune, recorded here in my garage at last Sunday's rehearsal. There's been very little done to it post-recording, just some volume automation and added reverb/delay. It doesn't sound particularly polished, but it's an honest representation of how the band sounds live, which is the purpose of the exercise. I'm considering adding some fake crowd noises - would that be dishonest?

A Janis Joplin cover, recorded live, no editing other than some volume automation. This was my first experiment recording direct from the mixer. The drums are a little unbalanced because all I had was a stereo mix of the whole kit. But all in all I think it came out OK, and is an accurate representation of what the band sounds like live. https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=14852856

I smell a hit!

"Saturation" is one of those words that has been abused and misused for so long that it no longer has any real meaning beyond whatever magical properties the Marketing department has decided to imbue it with. As self-defense against BS claims, it would behoove everyone to read up on the history of the term and understand its actual definition. It comes from magnetics and refers to a magnetized substance reaching a point where it cannot take on any more magnetization - iow, the medium has become magnetically "saturated". When you push magnetic tape hard, beyond the range in which its response is linear, you begin to approach saturation. This results in non-linear compression due to the tape gradually becoming less responsive to higher frequencies as you push it harder. And of course a side-effect of compression is harmonic distortion, which in this case is also nonlinear. Hence the modern definition of "saturation" has come to mean nonlinear harmonic distortion. Except that nowadays even that definition has been watered down to just mean "harmonic distortion". And there are a gazillion ways to create harmonic distortion. What Plasma does is apply distortion to specific frequencies. FabFilter's Saturn does this. Meldaproduction's MDistortionMB does it, too. iZotope's own Exciter plugin does it. Any of these will give you more control than any automated distortion effect could possibly achieve. Plasma's purported contribution is the application of "AI" (an even more abused term and universal red flag) to determine which frequency bands it thinks will benefit most from distortion. Distorting specific elements is a valid approach, potentially much better than just distorting everything. A little distortion on a lead vocal can make it pop out of the mix. Drum distortion can make it sound more percussive. Distorted basses throw more energy into the higher harmonics that can be more easily reproduced on small speakers. But such techniques are not new, and they are most effective when validated by ear. So is Plasma snake oil? I don't think so, given that what it does is valid. Is it a waste of money? Absolutely.

The problem was not caused by FoH. It was excessive stage volume, from the guitarist's amp. We've all had the misfortune of being onstage with a guy like that.

When I first saw the video my kneejerk reaction was "singers, amirite?" Then I found out the reason for the blowup, and it was something I can absolutely relate to: guitar was too frickin' loud.

Fortunately, CTL-Z works for every edition of Melodyne. Which of course doesn't prevent a truly motivated user from screwing things up. I have some old projects from when I was first finding my way around Melodyne to prove it.

Unfortunately, this is part of the "Sound Editor" feature, which is available only in the Studio edition. Here's a comparison of features between each version.

Although I am a longtime Melodyne user - going back to version 1 with a now-discontinued 8-track version called Cre8 - I use it so rarely that every session sees me re-learning many fundamentals. It's a deep application. Did you know you can also use it for compression?

I fiddled with Melodyne's EQ window for about 10 minutes back when the feature was first added, intending to go back and explore further. I never did. But today this video was recommended to me and I am now inspired to revisit it.