bitflipper

I saw that video. It was an eye-opener. The scope of international shortages is quite surprising. The container issue, at least here on the west coast of the US, seems to be because China is no longer taking our garbage. That's what used to fill the containers that returned after delivering Chinese goods, so they sit unused in US ports. Nobody's going to pay to send them back empty. This may be the video you were thinking of...

Ah, so you've simplified! My solution is even simpler: spend gobs of money on a single instrument that's a sampler, synth, sequencer and audio interface all in one. Yeh, it cost as much as late-model used car, but it's just one thing to drag in and hook up. Unfortunately, it's also a backbreaker, weighing 88 lb. in the flight case. I've often wondered if I shouldn't have gone with a laptop and a MIDI controller; even after buying a second laptop as a backup, that would still have been thousands cheaper.

One of the ways local mom 'n pop retailers get screwed is by sweetheart deals between manufacturers and big retailers. Years ago I went to order a synth through my local chain, paid for it and waited. And waited. I went in and asked what the holdup was. They called Yamaha and let me listen in. The message on the phone: "If you are calling from Guitar Center, press 1. All others, please hold." Basically, GC and others like it get first dibs on everything. Small dealers often don't get products directly from the manufacturer, but through a middleman wholesaler, whose deals with manufacturers work the same way. Another way small retailers get screwed: being forced to buy things like guitars in bundles so they have to take mostly slow-moving products and just one or two of the big sellers. And they can't just re-order the top sellers, only another bundle. It's the same reason there are fewer independent drug stores, automotive supply stores or lumber yards left. I realize this probably isn't why you can't get your guitar. But it's definitely a supply chain issue. The pandemic has revealed many weaknesses in the global supply chain, for many, many products. Like new cars. Who'd have ever thought we'd run out of new cars?

Good advice and FU, Glenn!

Cantabile is really good. I have used the full (paid) version in live performance. I wanted to have Omnisphere and VB3 on stage. It worked well, although I eventually gave up on it because of the extra time and hassle of setting up a laptop. I have also used Gig Performer, which takes the idea even further, letting you define custom UIs for instruments and effects and making set lists. There is also a free version available. Of the two, though, Cantabile strikes the better balance between flexibility and ease of use. Next up on my list of products to test is Camelot, from Audio Modeling. It looks very interesting. There is a free version, an iOS version and a full version that runs on a Mac or PC. At $150 it might not be what the OP is looking for.

Yeh, some people are really good at duplicating a performance. So good that you don't even notice it's double-tracked. David Gilmour was one such performer, both on guitar and vocals. But the overdub will always only be close, never perfect. And that's kind of the idea. Our ears are really good at discerning differences, even when those differences are very small. As John notes, it's most noticeable on headphones. But beware, many things sound great on headphones but get thin on speakers, where the channels can blend in the air before you hear them. Headphones don't have that crosstalk, and can hide things like phase cancellation. Years ago I did an experiment. I double-tracked a vocal and then used V-Vocal and AudioSnap to make their pitches and timing match very, very closely. It didn't just kill the double-track effect, it sounded awful. Like it had been recorded in a concrete pipe. To my surprise, I'd gotten the two tracks so similar that they were suffering from comb filtering. Something that can also happen with guitars, especially when you use the same acoustic guitar for two tracks, with the same mic position in the same room.

OT: I clicked the link in your sig out of curiosity. Mark, that is some good stuff.

No, dither is only necessary when changing bit depth from a higher one to a lower one. (btw, the correct term is bit depth or wordlength; "bitrate" refers to sample rate, e.g. 44.1KHz vs. 48KHz, and only affects frequency response).

Short answer: no. At least, not in the way you describe it. If you simply copy a track and then pan the two opposite, it will sound like it's one track panned center, just a little louder. That's because our perception of stereo depends on each ear hearing something different. Now, if you clone the track and then do something to make the two tracks sound different, cloning can work. EQ and delays are the most common methods for differentiating cloned tracks. However, as lapasoa notes you will get better results by actually recording a second part with a different tone. This is because you get additional differentiation by virtue of the fact that the two separate performances will not be identical.

Hey, lighten up guys. I know neither of you are mean-spirited, but Marcello came here looking for advice and encouragement, not ridicule. OP: what folks are trying to say is simply that yes, work on the mix first, then apply mastering as the final polish.

Make sure they are assigned different MIDI channels. That's how multiple MIDI devices and/or multiple MIDI instruments keep track of which notes are "theirs".

I'd suggest trying a few other reference tracks to get a broader view of what's out there in the world. How about one of the best-selling hard rock albums of all time, AC/DC's Back in Black? You may find it illuminating. It was mastered by Bob Ludwig, an industry legend who definitely knows what he's doing. Make sure you use the original, not one of the subsequent "remasters" (gotta wonder what kind of ego an ME has to have to think he can improve on Ludwig's work).

Here's a chart showing which Spitfire products support NKS. Note that even though it's not supported natively in the free LABS series, you can get it from a third party.

The old Shimmer & Shake was my go-to tambourine/shaker instrument for a long time. I, too, hesitated to get Shimmer Shake Strike because it seemed redundant, and an unnecessary self-indulgence. But it went on sale and I caved. I haven't touched Shimmer & Shake since. The new one is that much better. Advantages: more instruments, better-sounding instruments, more options, and a fairly intuitive sequencer. (As an aside, I have to mention Skaka. This simple and inexpensive percussion instrument gets even more use here than Shimmer Shake Strike. That's because mostly I just want subtle shakers and tambourines and don't need to get fancy. Skaka is a lot quicker to set up. Just an observation to keep in mind in case you see it go on sale.)

When you say "pan themselves", does that mean you see their pan sliders or knobs move? Or the pan slider in the track header? Or that nothing visibly changes but the sound moves?

It's very good, especially that weird Quartz mode. When bought, I did not think I needed yet another delay. Turns out, I did.

Been playing with this for the past two days. When I started the download and saw its size, my first thought was "100 GB for a percussion lib? wtf?". Turns out there's a lot more in there than initially meets the eye. The huge size isn't because this is the ultimate percussion library - there are no cowbells - but rather the depth of content.

You're on the right track, Marcello. Lots of trial and error and experimentation to figure out what works and what doesn't. There is, unfortunately, no recipe book. As I said, it's a process. Much like learning to play the guitar - the more you learn the more you realize you don't know. Every experienced guitarist knows this. And yet many of them, including those who've been playing for 30+ years, are confounded and frustrated because they're still struggling with mixing and mastering after a whole year of practice.

Save As will only save audio files that are referenced in the project file. Things like deleted tracks won't be copied into the new folder.

I last used the cleanup utility circa 2006. It hosed a project and I haven't used it since. If I want to clean up a project nowadays, I'll do a Save As to make a copy and then delete the original folder. But that's going to be quite tedious if you want to clean every project you have. Now, if there was just some convenient way to identify and delete all my never-completed-and-never-will projects. That would give me a lot of disk space back!

You're assuming that they are also opening their own studio. But that would make sense. After all, what else are they going to do with all those Gibson studio monitors?

I was unable to duplicate this. Here's what I tried: opened a blank project inserted an Instrument track with LABS added some MIDI data verified that it played back deleted the track Is that how you did it?

It's really about dynamic range (the ratio of the quiet parts to the loud parts) and average RMS to peak ratios (crest factor). These things are objectively measurable and therefore controllable. How impactful a snare hit is isn't about how high its level is, but how it compares to the audio surrounding it. The short video below illustrates the concept, using a snare drum as an example.

Yes. I'm on Ozone 7 here and it does that, too. What Steve was saying is you can't put anything after Ozone. So any metering plugin hosted within it will be showing what's happening before the master volume sliders. I don't think that's a problem, though. Why would you want to fiddle with your mastering limiter's output levels, Ozone or otherwise?

I have always recorded my keyboards via S/PDIF. Yes, the quality is marginally better because you bypass the D/A-A/D conversion, the output amplifier circuitry and cables. There is never any EMI/RFI interference, and you never worry about distortion. The only downside is that the levels are often too low, at least out of all my current and past instruments, requiring a gain adjustment after recording.