Lord Tim

It was cold out, and the cops said it was fine for such a small thing. ? ... wait ?

Actually I just noticed a couple of your posts have been flagged (I un-hid them). Looks like there's a keyword in there that's set to auto-hide because it's similar to something commonly posted up by those big spam flood posters. Kind of annoying it's grabbing legit posts but I guess it's better than a forum full of spam...

The thing about music is it's art and it's entirely subjective. It's not a competition as to who is being the "most honest." I'd be fairly upset if I was watching, say, a talent show and it was revealed later that the singer was using real-time autotune on their voice rather than competing fairly in the competition, but this is NOT a competition... if this is a recording and someone feels that this is the sound they want on their voice, who are we to argue? That's THEIR art, and we can choose to like it or not. Same goes for adjusting timing. You also have to wonder where the line is too. "I didn't use any studio tricks to get this recording... well, except for mic placement to get it sounding nice, compression to even out the levels, EQ to add some presence to the sound, reverb to make it sound more spacious, tape compression to give it some grit and then mixed it in with everything else in a flattering way. But other than that's this is EXACTLY HOW I PERFORMED IT IN THE ROOM." I'm still pretty firmly in the camp that just because you CAN fix stuff, it doesn't mean you SHOULD fix it. Some stuff just works better a little bit looser. Perfect is the enemy of greatness. But if perfect is the goal of the artist, then why not use the tools we have to get us there? And it's exactly right what was said earlier - absolutely NOBODY cares that you spent 10 months trying to nail that one drum part to be exactly on the beat as opposed to 20 minutes fixing it with software. It's how the listener feels at the end of the day. For a studio recording, both things are absolutely valid!

Bah. Now I have to reply with only memes written in ASCII

Get out of here with that crazy talk! ?

Yeah, mastering stuff to commercial levels is kind of a bit of a black art (although MUCH easier now due to all of the AI tools available), but to a degree it's kind of irrelevant anyway trying to blast stuff at those levels. The loudness war is truly dead and buried. Most music services will suggest you mix FAR quieter than commercial CD mixes now and will actually turn a hot master down to suit their levels. The only reason to really crank stuff now is if you prefer how it sounds - some music really benefits from being pretty smashed so you get that "everything louder than everything else live show energy" kind of vibe to it. But yeah, getting things that loud is usually much more than just a single plugin. My chain usually has several different kinds of EQ, tape simulation, multiband compression, single band compression, stereo field manipulation and a mastering grade limiter on there, and sometimes even more stuff if I have to do some specific surgery on a problem mix I've been sent, that for whatever reason can't be remixed to fix those issues. If you like the sound of it, I'd suggest maybe trying one of the online AI mastering services and see if that can add the final bump for you. But if you're just distributing to Spotify, Apple Music, etc. then you're probably honestly fairly good to go now.

That other music is mastered, usually going through some various compressors and limiters on the master bus to push those levels higher. This is worth a read: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-is-mastering.html

Yeah, absolutely. There's been a few times I've had a vocalist come in and do a "ehh OK???" take that was generally kind of pitchy, so we'd comp the best bits, tune it to hell and have it running while they re-sung it. The new vocal was generally HEAPS better, just having the original tuned one there as a confidence guide. And yeah, arranging vocal harmonies too is super useful!

Ehh, I'm not finding it particularly unstable honestly (YMMV) but I think you could probably build a decent chain yourself anyway. Sonitus Gate to get rid of noise between phrases > Sonitus EQ to pre-shape the vocal > Sonitus Compressor to tame the peaks > Sonitus Multiband with only band 4 enabled and tuned to clamp down on sibilance to act as a de-esser > Sonitus Compressor to level the vocal > final Sonitus EQ to shape the vocal sound. Put all of those in a FX Chain Preset and you have an instant vocal channel strip, and you can even assign custom controls to each thing. If you want saturation, drop that FX Chain Preset into the ProChannel FX Chain module and add Tube or Tape emulation. Obviously you could also build on that by putting in the Sonitus Delay for slapback, etc. - it's kind of limitless what you can do, and super easy once it's just there as a single FX Chain you can drop in without ever needing to think about it, and entirely free so you don't need to grab any paid vocal channel strips.

I got nearly 120 Exposures once at at gig

Mixing the follow-up album literally right now. Kill me ? HAHA!

Perfect is the enemy of great at the end of the day. Sometimes re-singing a vocal might not be as "perfect" as locking in the tuning, but the attitude really sells it, so I'm on board with that! About the only time I really just suck it up is with backing vocals. I've hated out of tune harmony vocals since forever, so I'll lock those in fairly tight for the most part, and then do additional untuned takes over the top to make it sound natural and adjust the blend to find that natural balance between perfect and real. But yeah, leads... sometimes the best lead is something you just don't "fix" for sure!

This is the bane of my existence. We do all kinds of stuff vocally, from super clean pop or prog/power metal style vocals to bluesy grit, to extreme metal (pretty much all of those things in the one song HERE in fact). Opening up Melodyne and having it go "oh you're trying to do a polyphonic instrument?" when you've decided to tighten up a vocal line is the most heart-sinking feeling ever, then you redetect as monophonic and get what you're seeing there. ? I'm the same, I'll do comps first to get stuff in the ballpark and then run a final pass with Melodyne to catch any rogue stuff that is sticking out as weird then, rather than just a blanket "fix this" pass. You get a better vocal that way anyway, I think. What I've found though is if you are tuning a growl/scream/vocal fry section and it's flipping octaves or thinking it's sibilance, make sure you cut it between the breaks in the jumps first, then only select the stuff you know is the actual note rathe than the jump, and tune that. Then you can go back and decide manually if you need to adjust the rest, or it's a fool's errand - sometimes those notes just don't tune at all, and it's best to just leave them.

It *can* be useful in part of a chain (in fact, the reason it hasn't been removed entirely, I think, is because it was part of a lot of FX Chain Modules) and I do like the saturation and quick EQ, but the doubler is a bit ehhhh and, I agree, the de-esser is kind of rubbish. That said, it's definitely found its way into a lot of my mixes over the years - it's a handy tool to have in the arsenal.

This is why we never got the Cakewalk Hovercar, isn't it?

Pfft, you've heard my music - I don't need software to make that kind of mess ?

From everything we've been told, Sonar will be 100% compatible with the current CbB. The initial release will mostly be the UI update and whatever bug fixes and a few features added since this version of CbB is officially released. The EA release is pretty much exactly that - an Early Access, so the wider userbase can try it out on a MUCH larger range of environments to catch the stuff that the devs and beta team couldn't. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of EA for Sonar when it's out too for exactly the same reasons. I think if anyone is holding out, it's more the unknown pricing structure rather than compatibility concerns.

HA! Yeah, big Maiden fan and that song in particular has a big Maiden influence so I'll take that as a compliment! We actually have done a couple of Maiden covers over the years, most recently Stratego and Judas be my Guide. We kind of sit somewhere between Maiden, 80s hard rock, melodic death metal like Soilwork, old school thrash like Kreator and prog/power stuff like Queensryche and Helloween, so we're pretty much all over the shop... which has been fun when reviewers who are new to the band are baffled by an extreme metal song next to a piano ballad...! HAHA! Oh well. My guitar is a custom shop ESP E-II LT-27, based on the Horizon FR-27 model. Scalloped from 12th fret up to 27th, so you can actually get some decent grip on the strings on a sweaty stage. It's funny that you say Mark looks like a nerd there, these days he looks more like a built Viking with a big Thor vibes. I think his bicep is bigger than my entire guitar ? HAHA!

Well, do we even know the schedule? Nope. Do we know how far along each of those new applications are? Nope. How are you jumping to the fact that the devs are stressed? They simply haven't divulged any specific timelines or prices publicly. Everything else is pure speculation. @Canopus made the best call of these new threads that just popped up:

... this is a remarkable conclusion to jump to here, I gotta say.

To be clear though, there most definitely *are* bugs in CbB, of course, like there is in all other software like this. But it needs to be reproduced by the Bakers in order to get them fixed, which requires proper steps to make it happen and as much information as possible about hardware, software environment, what you were doing before it happened, any crash dumps, etc. Without that, just saying "this is a bug" is absolutely useless. It might be. But the people that can actually do something about it need to know what it is first to fix it (if it is indeed a bug - Noel even mentioned in a recent thread that most crashes are plugin related, usually due to the very loose VST spec - the crash dumps clearly show that).

But we're NOT talking about cars. We're talking about software. This isn't an apples to apples comparison. My point still stands. Name me one bit of complex software like this that has no bugs, and the developers promise their next release is bug-free and they'll do the work for nothing. I'll save us both a bit of time: you can't, because this does not exist.

Yeah we were there in 2016 (video proof!) - absolutely brilliant festival, and the crew are all fantastic. Such a family vibe! (Although if you run into Milton, the day 2 promoter, tell him the LORD guys called him a jerk... ?). I was talking to Johnny from the Doro band the other day and they had a great time apparently, so I'd expect this year to be pretty great - wish I could be there! It's getting harder and harder each year to book stuff though. I remember the lengths their visa guy Marc went through to get us there and it's only gotten exponentially harder, so I can appreciate Glenn wanting to take a break from it all. I'd be surprised if Milton or Nathan don't pick up the baton and do something similar once it shuts up shop though.

But everyone does have a Bandlab-linked account due to the activation requirement, and there is in-app messaging as well, so even if people don't spend their lives here like some of us (I really need to get out more ?) then I very much doubt they'll be left in the dark. Even if you want to be cynical about it, if this is all moving to being a commercial product, they'll want to make sure it sells, right? Having an existing customer base already contactable directly is a good way to market it, and let people know what's happening so they can make their own choice about what they want to do.