The TelenatorFirst of all, I note that no matter how nice your machines, it appears everyone here is using Podium on a single CPU core, which is just asking for trouble. Do I understand correctly that one PC is a monster quad-core i7 and is being used with the free version of Podium? That’s a little like driving a Rolls on a muddy footpath in a moor.
I don’t know the status of brand new M-Audio interfaces but they used to be crap. Same with many other makes under, say, $300 and more than a year or two old. I use mainly ASIO4ALL right now and get anywhere from 12 to 16 ms of latency, depending on how many plugins on the given track. My interfaces are both Digitech units, and using the Digtech ASIO driver I can get latency down to 5 ms, and I would use that driver more accept it doesn’t like to ‘let go’ sometimes when I shut things down or make major changes.
At 20 ms latency, you will hear a chorusing effect that gets worse as latency goes up from there. This would probably not be a huge issue on slow passages, but on highly syncopated and fast parts it could be a real problem. Up higher and you start to hear true doubling — you can basically forget recording in the doubling region. Under 7 ms is the zone only some experienced audio engineers claim they can hear but the average person cannot. I find the range from 7 to 18 ms or so to be managable in most cases. I notice none of you are reporting your actual latencies. I also suspect that some of you aren’t aware of how to measure true latency properly. Most DAWs only report what they see — totally an ITB number.
You can have the ballsiest PC on your block, but if you have DPC and ISR latency issues with your kernel, you are dead in the water before you even get started. Have you all tested your machines with the DPC Latency Checker?
The TelenatorThe best plugin amps there are. You can’t go wrong here.
The TelenatorS-Gear has been updated to 2.11 now, which includes one new effect, RoomThing, which is a flexible reverb. You can activate up to two instances of it in the S-Gear rack when playing. There were a couple of other tweaks to this update but I don’t remember them. New manual, too.
Biggest news is that S-Gear 2.11 is going to be $99 US after the end of 2012. It is still $79 until the end of the year.
The TelenatorDon’t cry, sobaka . . . Cubase has finally added a real mixer panel to the new 7. It’s a clear improvement. And it looks . . . gee, it looks just like what REAPER has offered since version 3.x.
The TelenatorHere’s the PR release from Steinberg, published on the KVR site (so you don’t have to wade through Steinberg’s ‘state of the art’ website for 10 minutes to find the right page):
http://www.kvraudio.com/news/steinberg-announces-cubase-7-and-cubase-artist-7-20579
The TelenatorI want to caution readers that the 55 offerings here are all in some stage of BETA. A couple of these don’t work at all, a few others don’t work correctly. One of them I tried — a plugin that claims to be a tube-emulation warmth-addition onward to tube overdrive — shook my system to its core when scanned and changed the color of my UI on REAPER temporarily (until I removed that plugin and ran it through my file shredder).
The VOS ThrillseekerXTC (exciter-type plugin using their latest ‘stateful saturation’ technology) seems to work just fine, as you would expect from an outfit such as VOS, and I did find a bundle of presets by rmus7 quite useful for a couple of VSTi’s I use, but otherwise, you have been warned. I suggest most of these are not so needful or earth-shattering that they can’t wait until fully tested and released later. Good luck — you’ll need it.
The TelenatorI may/will/should/ go to x64 when every one — ALL — of the plugins I know and love and others I might ever want go to x64. Some of the most popular and very best plugins are still not being offered in 64-bit.
Of all DAWs, only REAPER will let you run mismatched, and even then it is not 100% safe and guaranteed. I use REAPER too, but, sorry, that’s just not good enough for me.
There actually are ways you can coax more memory when using 32-bit, but it can be risky. It requires messing/hacking into your software programs in question. It does work. I have both seen it and done it. It is not 100% safe. So it’s really not true what they always say about this, BUT I WILL NOT DO IT again. (And it really is not worth the effort.)
I use a 64-bit machine running ALL 32-bit for audio. It works fine — no, it works perfectly, no crashes now or memory issues in 6+ months — and I’m sticking with it until the entire audio world is 64-bit (see starting comment above).
J-Bridge is a great idea but will crash everything maybe a minimum of 10% of the time (depends on what software we are talking about). I suggest it ONLY if you absolutely must use some odd plugin and no other recourse. I don’t even have a copy of it anymore (I think).
IF you want real improvement overall, do this: Get a really powerful machine and use the 96kHz rate whenever you can. Not because of just finer sampling and making music only dogs can hear; it’s about the NyQuist frequency boundary fold-back and things like there is a trade-off when plugins have to convert to 96k internally (as many do these days), then deconvert to 44.1k or whatever. It would take me a whole 3 pages to explain the three main factors, but too much work. You can, however, research this yourselves. There are some gains to be had, but they are not huge IF you are careful about your levels and everything else you do when recording. I am careful; I don’t need 96k yet. Perhaps someday . . .
The TelenatorUncomfortable with MIDI, aye? Yes, from the bio bits you just offered it sounds you are old enough to have MIDI issues. We did not grow up with it. I remember when MIDI came slinking in during the ’80s. I would do modern pop in various bar bands, but my real band and life was all Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rock Blues things. Musicians doing MIDI were those guys with the pink hair, or guys like Dolby, or classical nerds who wanted to take Bartok into the 21st Century. I’m all fine with this . . . for them . . . except it is not my bag. For my crowd, though, it would get you funny looks, perhaps even shunned, if you even mentioned the word unless it was part of a joke line. Some considered it a crime. And the MIDI gadgets that were any good cost a fortune then, and to look at those early computers with the primitive versions of sequencers made me think those chaps were stark raving mad. As proof of both remarks, I offer that the Synclavier was going for $60k (US) and the first Kurzweil $10k.
Back when I started with Cubase 4, I went into it for the sake of audio only. Much of our history contains common threads. My free access to studio time had been cut way back. That major studio had budget issues just like 99% of them do now. The party was over. It was the beginning of the end — what we see now in the entire industry. Some studios had already closed, others bought and turned into cartoon mills or movie edits only. Engineers and their owner studios couldn’t afford to just ‘hang out’ anymore and keep all the machines up, tapes rolling, and lights on — unless some big name had the studio booked and was paying the full rates but didn’t show half the time. I don’t think even the biggest names can afford to do that nowadays.
I actually began engineering with tape back in ’76, but anywhere I went I always hoped someone else would do it for me; I just wanted to be a musician, even though I took an interest to the craft and learned it rather well. So my jump to full digital was a Do It Yourself move and designed to keep me in access to recording ability. All along, a little voice in my head was always saying, You know, Cubase does MIDI really well. THEN it happened. I saw the second generation of software synths and learned that they don’t change key when warmed up or sitting in the sun for two hours. I had seen all the nightmares my keyboardists had faced. I saw the potential of those first minimoogs and the Arp and later the Prophet 5 — I found opportunity to fool with them some — but I also saw the huge expense and work it took to own and maintain them. Suddenly, I learn that I can have all that in a decent computer cheaply and stable, you say? Time to learn something hands-on about this MIDI. I, too, could play keyboards well enough, though not as my first instrument. I had been required to take a year of it at university.
I’m using the fantastic Scuffham Amps setup as my main amps for recording and playing at home. They sound as good as any vintage Marshall or Dumble or Dr. Z amp you could own. They come with full MIDI as well to help control things when used live, though I haven’t made that move yet. Some of my friends and colleagues have — and with great results. That’s probably next for me too. So I’ll have to become even more comfortable with MIDI, won’t I? So far I’ve only learned each bit as I’ve had to. I understand about as much now as any House or Dance MIDI composer, but I’m slower and have to double check to be sure I’m hooking up and controlling things correctly. It certainly isn’t second nature yet, but I hope and imagine it will be in another year. I’ve discovered there is a big gap between understanding something well in theory as opposed to being able to use it the way we tie our shoes without any thought.
In the end, I think MIDI is pretty interesting and have discovered it is much more useful than I had first thought. But it still isn’t music in and of itself. To me, it is just a means to an end, that end being music. Just as in the industry, you learn to make friends with all manner of strange beings, if it will help you get those notes out of your head and instrument and deliver them to wherever they need to go.
Cheers! Tele
The TelenatorMaybe RoughRider’s biggest issue is that may end up suffering from its own popularity. “Oh, listen. He’s running his drums through RoughRider.” Still, I love it. I’m keeping it as one of my standard favourite flavours.
I warned about Strings1 because I had posted earlier here that it was one of a couple of plugins that brought me to the list of D.C. 2012 free beta offerings. This gives me excuse to mention also that, while I have kept Piano1 on a flash drive somewhere, because the one free piano you get with it — the Yamaha Concert Grand — is exceptional, I had dangerous volume pops when switching certain parameters on it. Not that you really have to change the default sound, but it requires muting when you do. If you want one stock no-hassle ‘real’ piano around that is close to perfect (and for free) just in case, you can keep it in a folder like I have. It’s fat — at roughly 300 MB for the entire plugin altogether with its sound.
LimiterNo6 is a keeper but I must confess I’m not completely ‘at home’ with it yet. Did you look over the fancy stuff it will do? — ordering of the separate modules, 4X sampling but only if set a certain way, CPU savings if set such and such? Blah, blah, blah. I’d really rather use the quaint old Russian GUI on that, but it makes me distracted and takes up a little too much of my efforts.
What I really want to post about just now concerns our talking about testing new plugins. I have basically a 3-stage process. Like you, I look at CPU and basic stability — it must work well in Podium and in the (all-forgiving) REAPER. It also helps if I can stand to look at the darn thing, but UI design has improved so much overall that this is not much of an issue anymore.
Next comes whether I actually think it works in a way I will be happy in using fairly often if needed, AND does it have a sound — that colour — that I think should be on my producer’s palette. Colour and Parameter possibilities. Also, can it justify being in that particular FX folder when so many great other free or ultra-cheap plugins are competing for a slot?
Assuming it gets this far, it goes in the folder, say, Compressors/Limiters, of which I am currently carrying perhaps 16, because of the great importance of having good comp capabilities.
After this comes time. My freezer is only so big, so a can only keep around X flavours of ice cream and don’t want to lose or forget about some flavour lost in the back. This is the final thing about flavours, or “Colour” as we’ve been talking about. I believe every good musician and producer should have his/her own distinct recognisable sound. It’s what makes great artists out of good ones. Assuming my schedule doesn’t go crazy, this final testing can run anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. In the end, the goal is to have a folder for that particular type of processing that contains extremely reliable plugins whose sounds and controls I know well and provide me with some choice for whichever way I decide to take a given track.
The best news lately is that I’ve noticed I’m not turning over entire folders of plugins anymore. Even though new freebies hit the market all the time, I’ve found certain ones over the last few years that have in some ways become my ‘friends.’ In those cases, I just keep an eye open for occasional updates, new editions. My folders have, as you might expect, the ‘usual suspects’ filling them, with the rare oddball here and there.
Regarding ‘usual suspects’ — for free instruments and especially the awesome assortment of synths out there that they have for us, I’m pretty well settled too. Although I have a few of the ‘celebrity’ free synths out there, at various points I always come back to the freeware softsynths such as Synth1 and Oatmeal. I don’t know about you, but of a few of the supposedly must-have softsynths, free or not, like Sylenth, Glitch, IndependenceFree or daHornet, I honestly can’t stand to muck about with many of them. I think this is mainly a matter of personal taste, but it is also a function of time. I’d rather know a small handful of great free synths really well than to spend half my life learning the confusing inner secrets of the much-touted Sylenth. How about you?
The TelenatorAh, alex . . . I see you have been playing with Red Phatt Pro as well! Isn’t that compressor+ truly something? And did you know there is a switch and setting on it that, if set, will also butter your toast?
Or perhaps I should have saved that remark for Smash from that bundle. Have you tried that one yet? It does so many things — and fairly well — that I could hardly decide which folder to place it in. Exciter? EQ? Saturation? Etc.
WAVES. I suggest, unless you are sticking pretty well with Pro Tools, that there will often be issues now and down the road for you with most of their product. Great plugs no less, in fact ‘industry standard’ in some ways, but just be aware. It’s been an ongoing thing.
The TelenatorForgot to add — I tested the ThrillseekerXTC from the D.C. 2012 contest, an exciter-type affair. It uses that ‘stateful saturation’ of their ‘LA’ comp, and speaking of colour, I like that one quite a bit. It works great as well. 2 models — ‘black’ GUI, a ‘cooler’ emphasis and the hotter ‘blue’ I went with the conservative black edition.
I think RoughRider is great on some drum tracks, real snap and so easy to use.
I mentioned LimiterNo6 in reference to Molot above. Have you tried that? It is a little heavy on CPU IF you use all 5 or whatever processing function and full oversampling, but each can be deactivated separately if needed. It comes with a much more modern GUI if the old WWII Russian design drives you batty (it did me). You can make it as complex as you want it, quite unique and full feature.
The TelenatorYes, it really is a great time to be recording music. I recall when tape was on the way out, dat and adat had come in, but the prices were through the roof for even the cheapest units. Then we heard about Pro Tools and saw the weird assortments of other ones now long abandoned. I looked at some of these proposed solutions and shuddered!
You mention another good point, too — not only is there plenty of quality freeware, but almost every week now (part of what takes a lot of my time in chasing them down), some formerly commercial and reputable plugin becomes freeware. That’s about a third maybe of my current freebies
The JB Bundle, by Jason Breebardt (sp?) is now being offered free. Know about it? KVR and Producers Blog lists it or Google his site. Some of those are like freebie Waves or something. I kept about half of them. Great stuff.
And this thread prompted me to do another cleaning because I edged over 110. I’ve got an awesome bunch currently and should note that almost 40 are of those must-have instruments — Juno synth emulations, the Redtron model of that rare Mellotron 400. I rarely use some but know I will at some point again. Got the free Arturia minimoogV original the one day they gave those out. Stuff like that.
I look at latency as well as CPU use. Some are ridiclous. This is why my Ableton Live is only a toy — because its never-fixed plugin latency compensation. You know, all word is that the pending Live 9 does not have it fixed either!
Finally, I should warn: that Strings1 (aka Orchestral Strings), made by the KVR forum #2-rated PianoOne people that is featured in this years KVR Developers’ Challenge 2012 . . . DOES NOT WORK. What a waste of fooling with 200+ MB of VSTi and samples. Doesn’t work right for anybody.
The TelenatorThe Melda plugins all work pretty great. The GUI’s on the ones before the last update were sort of too busy and cluttered for me, but they have fixed some of that. Other than this, the only issue I ever had was their attempt to go online and push their commercial versions if I wasn’t really careful to click on them in the right places.
The W1 you mentioned to me is a simple and useful limiter — very low CPU. I think for the most part, people want limiters to be as colourless as possible, but it also depends on what limiting method you’re after. I recently had to record a local metal band, so I used one that could hit the sound pretty hard in places. For compressors, though, I think I’ve got a dozen now of all types in that folder altogether. That’s a place I usually do want some significant colouration. Personally, I haven’t heard one yet that didn’t have its own sound to it. Maybe something like a $5k unit can claim transparency, but free and cheap ones fall rather short to my ears. That Modern Lost Angel you like, I think, is supposed to be some kind of clone of the LA-2A opto comp. Some love than method of compression and some hate it. Vocals, yes, but I would never apply it to drums. I’ve had mixed results with ModernAntress stuff. Their line of comp clones seemed good, but some of their other plugins were a bit questionable. I think some one of theirs I tried even crashed me once. All fun to play around with they were. If you’re into spending very modest amounts of money, the Stillwell stuff from one of the REAPER devs are incredible clones and no more than $35US, some even less perhaps.
The TelenatorGood point, alex: running light? Keep it on highest quality. Running heavy loaded? Knock down that CPU usage. Depending on how strongly the reverb is turned up and featured on the track(s), you may not even hear the difference.
HEY! Speaking of cool plugins, especially brand new ones, check out this year’s KVR Competition! I haven’t tried any yet but did grab a couple. The people who make the free PianoOne, which was rated as the #2 all-time best VSTi on the KVR Forum, has released Strings1 for this contest. So that’s originally what drew me to the page. But, OMG, the quality and variety of new stuff is incredible this year! Note that a brand new VOS exciter called ThrillseekerXTC is on this page, too. If anyone tests any of this page’s offerings, please do report anything you like a lot.
Finally, is it just me, or is the wealth of new and constantly improved and updated plugins starting to make your heads spin as well? Instead of cleaning out 2nd-rate plugins from my folders perhaps once a year, it has come down to every 3 months now! I truly love all the free and excellent-sounding tools we are being offered these days, but I find it is taking just a little too much of my time and efforts. Now, I’m not like some of my mates with their 500-plugin addictions — in fact, last year I set a personal 100 maximum plugins rule (including the instruments) — but trying to stay informed and current with all the innovation going on is some real work today. Believe or not, I lean toward minimalist, but I do want the best also. What are your thoughts on what’s going on right now?
The TelenatorIt might have got mention in this thread or related — Molot is made by the same Russian guy who makes the fantastic LimiterNo6 (that also offers a newer, easier GUI). Must check out that mastering plugin if you haven’t yet. Molot adds a good bit of colour, if that’s what you are looking for in a comp.
I swear, everybody uses Ambience, or has used it. It’s a hungry one, but lots of parameters and sounds great — commercial quality. I also love and use NastyDLY — a little hungry, too, but has chorus to add and other cool functions.
That BootEQ — it’s a must-have for me ’cause it now offers that extra ‘bump’ and control in the very low mids/high bass region, along with decent tube-style warming.