Harmony

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-3-thx-sound.html This story was terribly interesting to me. Having to write music like they did "back in the day" really separated the musicians from the wannabes.

*maybe* but this is actually a vocal track, not a synth. Although, yeah I guess some of the FX or automation could be throwing it off. You can't generalize like that. As you said, it simply depends on the number of VSTs you have loaded. I seriously doubt that ANY modern computer could compete with my reckless use of FX plugins. I have a "singer-songwriter" template that loads up 21 plugins for a single guitar and a single vocal track. Don't judge me.

I regularly freeze tracks to conserve resources while I'm recording, and I had always just blindly assumed that the frozen track is exactly the same as the normal track. However, I just noticed that one of my frozen tracks is panned differently than the unfrozen track. This scares me because I have mixed down a few songs with frozen tracks in them expecting everything to be a-ok. So my questions are (1) should there be a difference in the frozen track, and if so what types of differences should I expect? The SONAR manual doesn't seem to indicate that there should be any difference (2) does anyone else export final mixdowns with tracks that have been frozen, or is that just bad practice?

I suppose I should have said compared to dynamics, condensers typically have a much lower max SPL which means it's easier to push the condensers too far in terms of input loudness. As I understand it, gain doesn't affect the max SPL because it is applied after the sound has been captured by the capacitor.

If all you care about is clean vocals, a dynamic mic will be fine. Plenty of people use them with for vocals to great effect. The SM58 has a cult following in the world of vocal mics and BGC has recommended the Audix OM2 as a low budget dynamic vocal mic which outperforms the SM58. Condenser mics generally have a flatter frequency response meaning that they record the sounds more accurately without adding or dropping certain frequencies. So that's one reason why they're good for picking up the subtleties of a vocal performance. However, they are generally more sensitive than dynamic mics which means that unless you have a quiet recording space, the condenser can pick up the garbage truck outside, your a/c turning on, the hum of the mini fridge by your bed and everything that you don't want, leaving you with a noisy recording. Plus, if you're going for some edgy loud vocals, you really can't yell into your condenser because loud sounds can easily overload the circuitry and ruin the recording.

No phantom power means you can't use most condenser mics or some DI boxes (for your guitar). No big deal for now, but if you get more serious about recording you'll likely need to upgrade to something with phantom power.

I think this is the best clue on that page: Based on that, my guess is: jpeg

No popping and no perceptible latency? MME sounds like a winner. And it sounds like it was a driver problem with the new soundcard. Maybe bad or non-existent WDM/ASIO support? I dunno.

FYI: In SONAR, if you don't want to go with the ASIO drivers, the buffer settings for the default WDM drivers are in Options > Audio > General Tab. Just increase the number of "buffers in playback queue" and the "buffer size" and *poof* no more popping! As Brian said, there's no free lunch here so your latency will increase. I'd say that if you can keep the latency less than 10ms without popping, you and your system are doing well

That's interesting. I haven't heard too many complaints about Ozone in particular. I am semi-seriously considering buying it in the semi-near future so I'm interested: Are you saying that it will do more harm than good because of some limits of the program, or are you just saying that a person who doesn't first have the fundamentals down will most likely do more harm than good?

Nope, you don't need anything besides what you already have to make great sounding tracks. Just FYI, Kjaerhus Classics are a popular group of all-purpose plugins that look and sound pretty good. TLS Maximizer is similar to the W1 limiter and CLAS works sort of like the WOW button in Windows Media Player: it superficially makes your song sound "better", but can mess with timing and kick out some of the frequencies that you actually want. I'd stay away from it.

I use a lot of SONAR’s default Sonitus plugins, but here are my favorite other free mixing/mastering plugins: Dominion (saturator/harmonic exciter). I primarily use it for the high frequency exciter. It can add brightness and clarity to your mix without the harshness of just amplifying the high end with EQ alone. The saturation controls also add some subtle warmth. This one is great for individual tracks as well as the master bus. X-cita is pretty good too, but it didn’t play well with SONAR; I kept getting crashes so I kicked it to the curb. W1 Limiter (limiter): Great simple brick-wall limiter to get mixes that should be punchy, punchy. Supposedly a clone of the popular yet expensive Waves L1 limiter. Blue Cat FreqAnalyst (spectrum analyzer): nice spectrum analyzer that gives a lot more detail than the default plugin in SONAR. Very useful for trying to weed out troublesome frequencies, or even to attempting to match your frequency spectrum to your favorite zircon or DJP track T-Sledge (multiband compressor): I don’t use this much because I have better non-free ones, but it does get the job done. Put it on your master bus, select one of the mastering presets and most likely your mix will sound better balanced than it did before, even before you start to tweak. On vocal tracks or a vocal master bus I’ve recently become a fan of Spitfish which is a de-esser. Works much better than MDA de-ess imo and is easier to get right than simply using a multiband compressor to kill those annoying SSSSSS’s. Just make as much music as you can and don't stagnate. Try out new techniques and new software all of the time. Try to emulate a sound you like...that has helped me a lot. Read a guide on mastering and try some of the stuff out. I don't think there's a secret. Practice makes perfect.

and I'll second how really awesome it is

Wow, I see that little thesis project has really taken flight. It's got the specs and the look (not to mention the price) to be a real contender now. And I wonder what exactly this is supposed to mean:"Most intuitive MIDI-mapping system available" Do they believe their PRV is awesome, or are they talking about assigning midi channels or something along those lines?

Donated. This place and its people have been so great to me for the past 5 years. Thanks OCR

That's pretty cool for a thesis project. However, in terms of usability... ...what am I supposed to do with that!? Gate -> Compressor -> ohnoes! Same here. But I have seen the terms used in this way outside of OCR.

Aw man, that was my game back in the day! In the first level where he flips the coin across the room into the jukebox and Smooth Criminal comes on...ahhh, memories. Definitely one of my favorites on Genesis, but I'm an MJ fanboy , what can I say? That's why any Michael Jackson related music gets a thumbs up from me, especially if you use sfx from Moonwalker. Nice work Txai

Bah! Thou shalt not speak against my favorite piano plugin.To disable key damper noises: 1) From the midi mixer page, click the green edit button. This should take you to a page with 3 horizontal yellow bars. The lower left one represents the damper release sample trigger. 2) By default the sample is set to play when you release a key (as in a real piano). That's what the "RelTrig" stands for. Click on "RelTrig" and change it to some midi controller that you don't plan on using (say, (80) Gen. Purpose). 3) Now the horizontal bar should have a numerical value (between 0 and 127) displayed somewhere along it. Click the number and drag it left to zero. To disable pedal damper noises: 1) By default the pedal samples are mapped to the D7 and D#7 keys and are triggered at random. Towards the bottom of the edit screen, set the "kbd select" mode to "individual regions" 2) Click on the tiny white (or yellow) rectangle just above the D7 key on the keyboard. If it wasn't yellow already, it should turn yellow to indicate you've selected it. 3) There are a number of ways to eliminate the sound, but the easiest is probably just to turn the volume down. With the D7 key selected, lower the volume knob towards the upper left of the screen to -inf. Repeat for the D#7 key. Voila! No damper noises. Hmm, that sucks. Works for me in sp3, but I installed it when I had sp2. Guess the programmers got lazy when writing the install program compatibility checks :/

wow, that's sweet man. Network primetime!

Congrats man!

...and it made me smile Very fun and even though it's got your stock dance groove as an anchor, there's a good amount of ear candy to keep it interesting. I like how the source is used, and although I'd like to hear more of it, I think it's cool that it sort of teases in and out of the background. Nice work so far.

Frank Wen's site used to be www.fluidfonts.com, but it doesn't appear to be active anymore.

Vocals? Guitar? Can't help but mention this: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22361

http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01455/

Not true at all man! If you're looking for cheap, software is the only way to go. Check out zircon's article on the best free software, and the links in my sig. Without spending any money, that'll get you started with tons of excellent effects and synths.