Moseph

No, I was talking about the standard karaoke trick where everything in the middle of the stereo field is removed. The only way I can think of to cleanly remove them is if you have the just the vocal track and it's mixed the same way it is on the full song. Then you could reverse vocal track's phase and combine it with the full song, which would eliminate it.

Have you seen the "analyzer" on the MySpace music player? It has bars that just randomly bounce up and down.

My guesses as to why FL seems to have problems earning the respect of pro audio users: 1) It used to be a tracker. 2) It's named Fruity Loops. (Now a part of this complete breakfast!) EDIT: 3) It's not expensive.

Frequencies don't necessarily have to be evenly represented in a song -- usually the bass is slightly more prominent and the high frequencies start tapering off somewhere around 5 or 6 khz (IIRC). Also, even well-mixed music can look screwy on WinAmp's spectrum analyzer, and I would advise against trying to use it to evaluate your mix -- get a VST that does spectrum analysis (for example, Inspector) and use that instead.

Oh noes, not that!

Diddy Kong Racing NO -- Enjoyable, but not a must-have. The exploration/adventure elements are somewhat creative, but the basic racing action is inferior to Mario Kart 64 -- the control is just too clunky. (And no, the multiple vehicles don't make up for this -- you can choose a clunky go-kart, a clunky hovercraft, or a clunky airplane. Whereas in Mario Kart you get a go-kart that handles quite fluidly. Why would you want anything else?)

As far as I know, this is the first time Nintendo has acknowledged that a male Yoshi laying eggs is, in fact, a bit weird.

Banjo-Kazooie YES -- Probably the only Mario 64-style N64 game that can rival Mario 64 itself. Lots of big levels, fun characters, great nonsense speech noises ... the only thing about the game that is arguably bad is the focus on *ZOMG!!!1 COLLECT ALL TEH SPARKLY LOOTZ!!1* Rare's games tend to have problems with that, but B-K is not nearly as bad in this respect as some of their later games (coughdonkeykong64cough). Commander Keen I: Marooned on Mars YES -- That alone puts it among the must-haves. Still, back when I first played the game (when I was maybe around 6 years old) the floaty control and single-hit deaths were too much for me to handle, and I always went back to Duke Nukem. And those jumping blue kangaroo-looking guys were the most intimidating enemy ever. Mario Kart Super Circuit YES -- I'm borderline on this one. It's the best racing game that I know of for Game Boy Advance, which is the reason for my YES, but I never enjoyed it quite as much as the other incarnations of Mario Kart. ADDITIONAL NOMINATIONS (since we need PC titles and I got in on this late) PC ---------------- Project Eden Descent ZZT Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Riven Cave Story The Secret of Monkey Island Deus Ex (never played it, people love it, no one's mentioned it) Lemmings

Ha ha -- my family's got several GCN controllers (five, I think), and you can tell which have seen the most Melee action by the looseness of the control sticks and mushiness of the buttons. The newest of the lot is my little brother's Wavebird, but he says even that one hasn't been the same since he started trying to set Homerun Contest records with it.

Haven't gotten it yet, but I'm going to. I've wanted to play this game ever since I read about it on IGN way back in the day.

Go to the scene panel (F10). In the format box, click the second dropdown list and choose the file-type you want. You can also change resolution, etc. Hit F12 to render the frame. This stores the render file with an obscure name in whatever temp folder you're using. If you want to save with a better name in a better location, after rendering go to File > Save Image .. (or hit F3), type name, choose location, hit save, and you're done.

Hmm ... I know how to get rid of vocals, but I don't know any good method for extracting them unless you have both a copy of the song with vocals and an identical copy except without vocals. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that the big names who remix pop songs have access to all the audio files from the original mixing sessions -- i.e. they have the unmixed audio files that have just the vocals in them.

Ctrl + Alt + Delete and check how many processes are running. I'm not sure what a normal number is for other people, but I have 38 running right now. If the number is really high, it might help to get rid of some of those processes. Disabling startup programs can lower the process count -- Go to Start Menu > Run ... and type MSCONFIG in the box that comes up. The system config utility will appear -- go to the startup tab, Google all the startup items that are checked, and then uncheck the ones you don't think you need to have run on startup. Then go to the services tab, check "Hide All Microsoft Services," Google what's left, and turn off what you don't need.

For what it's worth, Giorgio Moroder -- the guy who wrote the Neverending Story theme song -- is the same guy who wrote Berlin's "Take my Breath Away" (i.e. that song from Top Gun).

I love James Newton Howard's soundtrack to The Village. Solo violin is featured so heavily that it almost sounds like a violin concerto.

I was randomly browsing Musician's Friend this evening and found ... Battery 3 on closeout for $71.28.

In my experience, it has a lot to do with hardware. I can't tell much of a difference between 128kbps mp3/ogg and CD-quality on my computer's lousy integrated sound card, but the difference is painfully clear on my portable mp3 player. As bitrate goes up, my objection is less about quality and more about being tied to a specific format. I prefer to have the raw audio data so I can do whatever I want with it.

I'm waiting to jump onto the downloaded music bandwagon until these places start offering FLAC/WAV files. There's no way I'm going to pay CD prices for reduced-quality files that don't transcode well. I'd much rather wait the 3-10 days for shipping, rip the thing myself, and do my own encoding. EDIT: Also, what are all those people who downloaded 128kbps files several years ago going to do with them? Re-buy them at 256kbps? What happens to the 256kbps files when the next bump in quality comes? The technology changes so much faster than it does with the physical media.

Check with your local video store. They have to repair their own scratched DVDs, and they may be willing to repair your discs for a small fee.

I and a few friends attended NAB 2007 earlier this year, and a bunch of those music library people had booths. Regarding one of the freebie CDs that he got, one of my friends said something to the effect of, "The music on it was actually really good. When I got back to the hotel, I just put it in the CD player and listened to it." People just have low expectations for "canned music." I think maybe people make the assumption that if someone is willing to license away all of his rights to a piece of music, he must never have cared about that piece of music, and so it must be garbage.

And when that doesn't work, they'll change it so you have to physically go down to the corporate offices and present two forms of photo ID and a birth certificate.

One of the reasons that I use Sonar as opposed to Cubase is that Sonar doesn't require a USB key and Cubase does. I hate those things.

All of this is why I hope to teach music rather than attempt to make a living as a performer/composer. A steady paycheck is a very good thing. If that doesn't work out, I guess I'll move to LA and try to find a big-shot composer who needs an office assistant or a recording studio that needs someone to make their coffee.

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3483 has some recommendations that might be useful.

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