bitflipper

I just tried out the "IDK" joke on my teenage granddaughter. She laughed, and then spent the next ten minutes patiently explaining to this pathetic geezer what "IDK" meant. "We short-ended it", she explained. Meanwhile, her mom was rolling with laughter.

Much as I'd like to hear more about "Beatle Infestations" (I know, that McCartney fellow is everywhere!), I'm locking this thread at the request of the OP.

MSpectralDynamics is one of my most-used effects. Absolutely love it. However, I really wouldn't bother with the new LE version. It's essentially MSpectralDynamics without the Edit button. IOW, it's presets-only. This is a dynamics processor. Who uses presets on a dynamics processor? It's like having a car with no accelerator or brake pedals, just buttons labeled "Slow", "Fast" and "Stop".

Sorry, OJ, I didn't notice your last post until now. Here are my thoughts on the Hum-X product... It's neither a filter nor an isolator. It works by inserting a series resistance into the ground connection. That limits current, which in turn reduces the amount of electromagnetic radiation from the ground conductor and thus reduces hum. It's a less-drastic version of what happens when you use a 3-to-2-prong "cheater" adapter. The cheater completely opens the ground conductor, so there can be no current. Unfortunately, it's a violation of code because without the safety ground you could, well, fry. To get around this, they place a pair of diodes in parallel with the resistor. The idea is that if the current ever gets high enough (e.g. due to a ground fault) that the voltage drop across the resistor exceeds the threshold at which the diode starts conducting, the diode will then effectively bypass the resistor, allowing full current flow and assuring that the circuit breaker is tripped and you don't die. Assuming, of course, that the fault current isn't so high as to destroy the diodes, in which case you now have an unsafe situation as there is no longer any safety ground. Even worse, you won't know that you're in danger without testing the Hum-X device with an ohmmeter to see if the diodes are still intact. So does Hum-X work? Yes. Assuming that ground current is in fact the source of your problem. There are other ways to pick up hum that Hum-X can't address. Is Hum-X safe? Probably. I'm guessing they had to demonstrate high reliability in order to be allowed to sell in in North America. They don't sell it in Europe, although I don't see any reason why they couldn't design a higher-voltage version for Europe. The principle would still be the same. Maybe they couldn't meet the higher EU standards of safety, I don't know. Is Hum-X the only/best solution for a studio? No. It's for situations where you cannot change the actual underlying problem, such as in a nightclub where you just have to make do with whatever crappy power is provided. A good thing to have in your gig bag for emergencies, absolutely. But not necessarily the best solution for your studio.

The dirty secret of the chip industry is that there is no physical difference between CPUs (or any other type of IC or transistor) that differ only in rated clock speed. They all come out of the same oven, but are subsequently tested to see how fast each one can go before it craps out and then labeled accordingly. The whole overclocking thing began when users realized that the manufacturers were being conservative with those speed ratings, and consumers could claim a bit of that margin of safety back by intentionally clocking CPUs a little higher. A reasonable gamble if you're not doing anything critical on your computer, such as playing video games, and it was gamers who originally popularized the practice. This is separate from the heat issue. The faster a chip runs, the harder it is to dissipate heat. Too much heat and you get premature physical failures. Manufacturers adopted a strategy inspired in the 1920's with the invention of the first electric cash register. A strict calculation of heat and power requirements dictated that a cash register should have an enormous electric motor, making electrification impractical. But an engineer named Charles Kettering showed that as long as the motor wasn't running continuously it could be severely overloaded and not burn up. Thus the concept of "duty cycle" was born, enabling such modern wonders as small but blindingly-bright LED lights.

I do the same thing, but with FLAC files. No data is lost when the hosting site creates the MP3 version for streaming, but upload times are half that of a wav. AFAIK SC was the first to allow wav uploads and raise file size limits on a free account. Since then, others (e.g. SoundClick) have followed suit. Competition has also spurred them to raise the streaming bitrate from 128 to 192 Kb/s and increase the number of format options for downloads. SC led the way there, too.

That's good. Assuming one takes the time to decipher what the heck "*****" stands for. The way things are going in our hyper-sensitive world, jokes may eventually become indecipherable... So a ****, a **** and a **** walk into a bar. The bartender says ****. Sorry, trust me, it's really funny. I just don't know how to tell a joke.

That's pretty heavy, Jerry. Although you're probably quite right about that, my mechanistic mind tends to think of it as a psychosomatic response leading to a release of endorphins. Any way you look at it, we all create music for an audience of one and just hope somebody else likes it, too.

Good stuff as always, Jerry. Definitely could imagine this as a lost Gershwin piece, especially if it was played in double-time. That big string-ish wash patch reminds me of Tomita's fat and juicy Moog strings. Suggestion: take a look at a regenerative pitch-shifting reverb such as Valhalla Shimmer or tritik's Irid. With automation you can make a string phrase morph into a lush pad. I have been experimenting with the technique - here's my experiment. That big wash in the middle of the piano intro isn't a synth, it's a pitch-shifting reverb. At 1:36 you can hear the same effect on a solo violin.

Just for Bapu: An A, a C and an E walk into a bar. The bartender says "we don't serve minors".

The length of one full cycle for the lowest note on a bass is 24 ms. Attack times less than that will therefore alter the waveform itself at that frequency, causing distortion. In the microsecond range you probably won't even notice it because that's such a tiny percentage of the cycle, but at around 3 ms and above it'll become more and more noticeable as you lengthen the attack time. You'll also need a short release to get the maximum impact.

Got an email from vi-control titled "I hope you took your heart attack pills!" The text went on: "...the heart attack will be worth it, because there's some cool stuff going on at VI-Control this week." Now, I've had three heart attacks. Thinking back on them, I gotta say that not one of them was worth a forum thread, or even a great Black Friday deal. Not even the morphine. OK, I misled you with my own title, so here's some Grandpa humor. That's like Dad jokes but with more miles on them. A priest, a minister and a rabbit walk into a bar. The rabbit says "I think I might be a typo".

I just re-read my post and realized that I said "avoid extension cords" and then proposed an extension cord as a solution. That's actually not contradictory. Use all the extension cords you want, as long as no two ground lugs are more than 3-6 inches apart. So yeah, any 3-inch extension cord would be fine. Old Joad: run down to the hardware store and pick up a cheap outlet tester. Or an expensive one, if you like, which can catch more wiring problems, but usually isn't necessary for troubleshooting most grounding f-ups. Bear in mind that the electrical code does not address power quality at all, only safety. So the wiring could indeed be "up to code" and still be crap.

Back in the day I worked on large computer systems that were susceptible to EMI. For two years I was part of a team that addressed power quality and environmental issues. My job was to audit computer rooms, test power quality and check for proper grounding. It was a nice break from my other duties that involved sitting at a desk all day flippin' bits. One day I was called in because a system had been experiencing intermittent crashes that seemed to implicate one of the power supplies. I replaced the main CPU power supply, looked over the wiring, and could do nothing more than wait and see. Sure enough, two days later the system went down. I joked with the system administrator that they could always pay me to sit and watch the computer, since it never crashed when I was there. No sooner had I made that comment, it crashed. It was pure luck that I happened to notice somebody using a copier on the other side of the glass. Rebooted, used the copier and within minutes it crashed again. It was the frickin' copier! Nothing else was supposed to be on the same circuit as the computer, but the copier installer had unwittingly placed it outside the computer room and plugged it into a circuit that shouldn't have even been available there. Bottom line is that in addition to proper grounding, what shares the circuit is most important. Ideally, your computer, interface, mic pres and any other electronic gear should all plug in to the same circuit. Extension cords should be avoided if possible. That single circuit should be isolated from other circuits, meaning all THREE wires go straight back to the distribution bus. Things like lights, fans and refrigerators (!) should be on separate circuits. Anything with a motor, anything that doesn't operate on a 360-degree duty cycle, which includes LED and flourescent lights and (shudder) any light with a cheap dimmer. Granted, we can't all custom-wire our studios, which are probably located in a basement, attic, garage or bedroom. Many of us live in rented digs where the landlord might frown on holes in the wall for installing dedicated circuits. Here's what you can do, though. Get yourself a power distribution box, basically a fancy extension cord, which might have a surge suppressor (but don't worry if it doesn't, most of them are crap anyway) and/or a toroid choke (better for noise suppression). You can easily make one yourself using inexpensive parts from Home Depot. Make sure it's well-grounded and has enough outlets for all your stuff. It still may have to be plugged into an existing outlet that's on the same circuit as other things in the house, but you'll still have better, of not perfect, isolation from EMI. If you really want to go all out, go to an electrical supply store and tell them you want an isolation transformer. That's as good as a dedicated circuit, and will isolate your gear from just about all noise that's injected into your home's system from other devices. Note that this does not address RFI, just EMI. However, you will probably find that with good grounding you'll also be less susceptible to RFI as well.

Every instruction your CPU executes, every piece of data it handles, they all come from either cache or main memory. In other words, from RAM. That means that before any code can be run, before any sample can be loaded, the data has to first be moved from disk into memory. Once a given chunk of data has been read, the next time a program needs it it'll be found in RAM. But the first time, the data isn't there so the program has to stop what it's doing and wait for the data to be transferred from disk. That's a hard page fault. After the page fault has been handled, the program can now re-request the data or code block and it will be there waiting. That means when you first start up Cakewalk, you'll get page faults because the program hasn't been run before. When Cakewalk loads Kontakt, another page fault occurs because Kontakt hasn't been loaded into memory yet. As Kontakt loads samples, there are more page faults. Wait for a minute or two and the page faults fall off because everything Cakewalk needs has been transferred from disk to RAM (assuming you have enough RAM, of course, and ignoring the vagaries of DSD). So the presence of hard page faults isn't a mystery, it's just how virtual memory works. Seeing page faults is not necessarily an indication of too-little RAM. But why would there be more of them when anti-virus software is enabled? What you're seeing represents extra disk activity initiated by the AV. If you think about it, an AV program works like every other program, in that it can't read data directly from disk and must load any file it examines into memory first. And you get hard page faults. But, you say, wouldn't that result in a soft page fault when Cakewalk subsequently requests those files, since they've already been loaded into memory by the AV? Sadly, that's not the case. Remember, the AV is intercepting CW's requests and wants to examine the files before allowing those requests to proceed. That means the AV opens each file, loads it into RAM and reads it. It tries to do this transparently so that the requesting application doesn't know it's happening. For that reason, the AV closes the files, releases the memory pages and flushes the cache so it's as if those blocks had never been loaded. When Cakewalk then finally gets to go after them, they have to be loaded again via a hard page fault. Which is a long-winded way of stating the obvious: real-time AV "protection" slows things down. The solution: tell the AV to keep its mitts off your sample libraries. P.S. I don't believe this has anything to do with thread scheduling, but I can't be certain. When one thread is blocked (e.g. by an interrupt) other threads may or may not be able to continue executing. Since all threads share the same memory, I would expect them all to blocked by a hard page fault. But I'll defer to Noel's expertise on this question.

Disk drive manufacturers thank you.

OT: the rain and wind have returned and air quality is now good again.

Going back to the original question of whether interleave makes any difference on vocal tracks beyond loudness... Short answer: no. You are simply duplicating the vocal and not affecting it in any other way - as long as the track remains "mono". If, however, you insert a stereo effect (e.g. ping-pong delay, reverb or chorus), then the track needs to be treated as such, in which case you'll want to change the interleave to stereo. Sure, there are subtleties regarding panning, but those really only come into play when you're automating panning. Normally, you drop the lead vocal into the center and nudge the backing vocals outward, then you set their levels and leave them alone. Pan laws aren't a concern.

^^^ Good point. It may go against conventional wisdom, but not every mix needs both, or either. Sometimes, the limiter is little more than a volume control. At least half of my mixes get no actual limiting at all, and for half of the other half the limiter might only catch a handful of stray peaks and thus have no impact on the mix. But that's just me. And apparently, Synkrotron too. Depends on the genre.

What the ME brings is not better limiters, but better monitoring and the objectivity of a disinterested set of ears. If you've brought the levels up to your desired target using a quality limiter, and have then subsequently made any mix changes due to the limiter's emphasis, then the ME probably isn't going to make it sound so different that you will feel a need to re-mix. I think a poll of users here would indicate that most of us mix into a limiter. Personally, I only add the limiter late into the process, after the mix is 95% complete. That way, I can distinguish between what my mix is doing versus what the limiter is doing. In the past, when I was trying to settle on a favorite limiter, I'd often try several of them. The difference from one to the next was always so subtle that in the end I adopted the one that was most ergonomically friendly and easiest to use.

The way I read the OP was that Mark was listening to the uploaded files using WMP and heard they'd been altered. Not realizing it was the player that had been messing with the file, he assumed something had gone awry with SoundCloud. We've addressed similar issues many times. Usually it's in the form of "why doesn't my exported file sound the same as in Cakewalk?". The problem is that music players aren't designed for objective evaluation, but rather think it's their job to "improve" the sound (e.g. auto-normalization, boosting bass, etc.). One player that doesn't do any such thing is the previously-recommended Foobar2000. There are plugins for it if you do want to alter the sound, but those are always intentionally applied by the user, never automatically. It's also handy for other things, such as editing metadata, batch normalization and format conversions. You might want to also check out Boom. I haven't used it yet, but it purports to be a simple player.

I'm not sure how this is related, but it's what I was reminded of while reading everyone's posts. I've been remastering and fixing up an album for a friend. It was made in 1980 on analog tape and has never been in a digital format. So we got an original copy, liberated it from its shrinkwrap and found somebody with a high-end turntable to record it. Must have been cheaply pressed, because there were a lot of pops and crackles even though the record had never been played before. Fortunately, the de-clicker in Adobe Audition was able to remove 99% of the pops, but the few that remained were going to require manual editing. That meant lots of close listening once the most obvious artifacts had been identified and the remaining clicks got more and more subtle. After a while I began to hear tiny pops that I could not see in the editor, and they'd frustratingly occur in different places with each playback. I was beginning to doubt my sanity and/or editing abilities. Then I noticed it was raining outside.

I used to get intermittent EMI. Attempts to track it down weren't going well, so I went down to the main service panel and started turning off circuit breakers one at a time until the interference stopped. Took forever because, as I said, the noise was intermittent. In the end, it turned out to be a refrigerator in the adjacent garage. Which, unfortunately, was on the same circuit as my studio/office/garage. So in the end it wasn't my brilliant methodology that solved the mystery - I just happened to remember that there was a fridge next door and unplugged it. Then I had to go around and set every clock in the house.

Great job as always, Chandler.

I put in a support request to iZotope. First time, so it'll be interesting to see if, when and how they respond. BTW, that Interpolate tool is almost worth the price of admission by itself.