kim_otcjI actually gave up a DAW with good time stretching (Acid) to use Podium instead. These days, there are so many VST instruments that can generate interesting sounds in real time, I hardly ever find myself resorting to sample loops. And even when I do, I find that more and more loops are defaulting to a few common tempos, so I rarely need to stretch even then. Maybe loops are getting a bit old-hat these days.
kim_otcjAs for limiters, I’m using MLimiter from the Melda free software bundle. I A/B tested a whole bunch of them (including the W1), and Melda was by far the most transparent.
For a compressor, though, I prefer something a little more colourful, like some of the ones from the Antress Modern plugins. I’ve been using Modern Lost Angel on vocals quite a bit recently.
kim_otcjI had similar sorts of problems with epicVerb (and several other Variety of Sound plugins — I can’t persuade BootEQ to do anything at all). I’m using the Lexicon Pantheon II reverb these days, but for a while I was using Ambience, which I found to be pretty stable:
kim_otcjNow I just need some more time to play with it all…..
Yeah, that’s always the way of things, isn’t it.
I bought myself a saxophone a couple of months ago — haven’t had time to look at it yet.
My local retailer for music instruments is going out of business, and bought a whole heap of stuff cheap in their closing down sale — haven’t used any of it yet.
Torque 3D open sourced their game engine — haven’t looked at it yet.
Nanowrimo is on this month — so far I’ve written half of a first chapter…
Being a Renaissance man is a tough job…
kim_otcjHehe. I just listened to those two songs. It reminds me of the early days of trackers, back in the 80s when I bought myself an Amiga 500 — my first computer. People used to create all sorts of quirky, blippy music just out the sheer exuberance of messing with the software. 🙂
kim_otcjI haven’t had much trouble running 32 bit programs in 64 bit Windows 7. The exceptions tend to be things like games and freeware that’s not being updated anymore.
kim_otcjThe last version of Reaper I tried was 64 bit, and I didn’t have any trouble running 32 bit plugins under it. And Reaper is pretty seamless. But I still use 32 bit Podium, because I don’t want to have to muck around with J-bridge, and to be honest, I don’t really need the extra RAM for what I’m doing.
Under Windows 7 64 bit, I’ve found that Sony Vegas, Soundforge, and Acid work well. The latest version of Audacity works. 32 or 64 bit Podium both run well. But GTA: San Andreas doesn’t work very well at all.
kim_otcjWhat’s the problem getting a 64 bit OS?
I’m still using the 32 bit version because some of my favourite plugins are not 64 bit. I don’t feel limited by that at all. I’m still able to do everything I want, without making comprises. But then, I’m not doing projects with hundreds of tracks.
kim_otcjThe more I learn about ProTools, the less appealing it is to me. Avid drops the ball on way too many things. It says something when a one-man outfit like Zynewave can deploy 64-bit before the “industry leading” program.
At places like Gearslutz, you see an awful lot of people turning their noses up at digital recording and clinging to their old analogue setups. I’m half convinced it’s because their only experience of digital recording is with ProTools.
kim_otcjSo, with a 2 GHz single core processor, and 1.5 gigs of RAM, believe me I know everything about bouncing, although I prefer freezing, because you can unfreeze the track in a second and tweak, well, whatever you need to.
Go ahead and use bouncing exactly as you would freezing. When you bounce you get a “B” button in the track header. Press that and it will unmute all the tracks so you can edit them. Press it again, and it will bounce the tracks with all your changes. So, from your point of view, it can be functionally the same thing as freezing.
You can also use it like a regular bounce, and move the bounced sound-clip to a track of its own. But I don’t bother. I use group tracks, bounce groups, and just leave the bounced sound-clip on the group track.
And if you’re particularly ambitious with your track counts, you can even nest them. So you can have a group of groups, and bounce it separately.
kim_otcjPodium does everything at 32 bit resolution. It doesn’t just up-sample to 32 bits for the plugins, it uses 32 bits for bouncing and on the mix bus as well. That’s a good thing. You wouldn’t want it automatically down-sampling stuff in the signal path.
The only time Podium isn’t working at 32 bit is when you set it to save audio clips at a different bit-rate (e.g. when saving a clip from the audio editor).
If you’re recording a large number of tracks and you’re concerned about running out of processing power, then you should arrange all your tracks into groups. That way you can bounce groups of tracks to create sub-mixes, which will free up all the space that the individual tracks and plugins were using.
kim_otcjThanks! I have visited your website yesterday: it must be a great satisfaction to make a whole album and play live!
My next goal is to combine the two. I’d love to play my own compositions live, but my band only plays covers, because it’s so difficult to get people interested in unfamiliar music.
kim_otcjThe last version of Energy XT I tried was limited to eight audio tracks.
kim_otcjIt was the introduction of the 64-bit version that got me to pull the trigger. And with version 3.2 here now, there’s an even bigger gap between free and licensed Podium. Since you’re doing something ambitious it might be worth the upgrade so you can use multiple cores.
But if money’s tight, it still possible to do a “seamless” album in free. You just have to be a bit clever about how you organize it. You’d definitely want to be using groups, and bouncing groups to free up processing, so you don’t run out of computer juice halfway through.
I will be getting a new PC soon, due to some saving, which will still be single-core…
Have you considered second hand? I picked up a second hand Acer laptop from my local pawn shop for about half the price of a new one (I know that, because the exact same model was still available new — second hand doesn’t mean old). It had been cleaned and the OS reinstalled. Best bargain I ever snaffled, because people still have that “upgrade once a year” mentality with computers. You should be able to do better than a single core.
No MIDI inclination, since I have no way to control it as of yet.
You can still construct midi parts in Podium’s piano roll editor. There are so many free VSTi’s it seems a shame to go without. I understand you might not want to emphasize the electronic stuff, since you’re going for an acoustic sort of album, but occasionally having a few different sounds can add variety and really lift it. And it doesn’t have to be complicated.
ending in a pro-sounding album (for sale) that will open the door for a little more than momentary success.
Sounds great, but don’t count too much on being able to make money. These days, I’m gigging professionally at the local level, but the money I make from it barely covers the costs. I’m happy just to come out ahead and not lose on the deal. It’s a tough market out there at the moment.
kim_otcj@Me le suono! wrote:
Hello eveybody!
I have added my first Podium track to the group “Podium Poppetts” on SoundCloud:
Interesting. It’s kind of like a mixture of old school funk/soul and modern electronica.
@levendis wrote:
…I can easily picture the player’s facial expressions.
Heh. I doubt the reality lives up to the hype. I have this really bad habit of biting my bottom lip when I’m concentrating. I’m trying to train myself out of it. I’ve gotten halfway there, because at least I don’t stick my tongue out any more. 🙂