dannthr

It would have to be really strong, and it would require your cabling to probably be coiled somewhere along the way.

You have a grounding problem it sounds like to me or an induction problem, though I'm not much of an engineer. Grounding along the cable--there could be any number of reasons along your signal chain why you might have a grounding issue. Induction along the cable--there could be a significant electromagnetic field inducting current along your cable that you interrupt when you touch certain things. I'm feeling like it might be grounding though.

For me, I don't see the benefit of Ultimate over Classic, mostly because all of the additional instrument libraries (for me) would be redundant--I've already amassed a large collection of various and some times superior libraries to what is offered, so it doesn't really appeal to me. You'll have to decide whether or not the difference is worth it to you. The regular Komplete, though, is a no-brainer if you're just starting out. Kontakt and Reaktor ALONE are worth more than $500. The Scarbee MM-Bass is a really spectacular library (I own the same library under Scarbee's original name: Black Bass). I've never seen Komplete go on sale, maybe I just never noticed, but it's one of those products that are already so HEAVILY discounted that additional discounts are rare. There is no student discount available for Komplete.

I'm not trying to call anyone out, I asked the OP a question. S/he could be mastering for 192kbps MP3 for all I know. On the last game I worked, it was an iPhone game which used a seamless mp3 system for procedural music, and I had to master for mp3 and create an mp3 file which was specially encoded so that it did not have the normal gaps. Not a difficult process, but it was specific to my needs.

What do you master for? Red Book? The process of mastering is supposed to result in a "master" copy from which all subsequent copies can be rendered. That means mastering is about adjusting the final 2-channel (in our case) mix-down to sound its best on whatever the intended final media is supposed to be. What are you mastering for?

I never guaranteed anything. The OP asked if that was an appropriate purchase "in the long run." The OP specifically stated that s/he was having issues with Audio Buffering. I made an alternative suggestion which satisfied the need for an audio device, which fell within the scope of the OP's current dilemma. It's important to be accurate in your responses and while there is a lot of good advice to be found in this community, there's also a lot of misinformation or partially accurate suggestions given. With respect to the community, most of us are self-taught, but all that means is accuracy is all the more relevant to the conversation. A professional level audio device will provide, at the very least, more flexible audio buffering options which can increase session performance. Adjusting your audio buffer is one of the simplest (and goto) means of balancing audio throughput against session I/O latency.

Yes, but if you have an audio device which does not natively support ASIO or does not allow you to control your buffer settings, you could see an instant performance boost on DAW sessions large enough to cause stuttering and pops.

Mastered for what?

Unless you want to work in games, in which case you do need at least a mid to high level video card to work efficiently.

Actually, in some ways, while not general, the ProTools HD cards and the Universal Audio cards do provide offload processing for hundreds if not thousands of audio effects. Furthermore, the performance of your audio drivers and the ability and options available to you with regards to buffering is audio device dependent. Additionally, your ability to operate DAW sessions at different samplerates is also audio device dependent. Basically, sampling and audio buffering are a component of the IO services provided by your audio device and they are factors in performance.

Be aware that Avid sold its entire prosumer line off to other companies including M-Audio. As far as silencing goes, check out this website: http://acousticpc.com/

To be honest, I'm not sure if that card would perform any better than the one you've already got on your laptop. I would save up. http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlett2i2/ You're probably not going to get a performing USB audio device for much less than $150 (maybe used, for less, check ebay/craigslist/etc).

VSTs are applications or plug-ins for applications--they do NOT stream from your hard-disk, the only performance gain you will experience is a minimal decrease in load-time on instantiation. There will be no true performance increase. The only thing that does stream from the hard-disk is DATA, and for you, specifically audio data--as in an associated sample library or impulse files. You will experience a performance increase installing libraries on a separate drive from your OS--but only if that separate drive is quick, as all samples must be loaded into RAM before playing (or streamed from disk by loading portions of samples into disk) and thus you want the data flow from sample installation location to RAM to be quick. This is NOT necessarily through your USB. If you have several other peripherals plugged in to your USB, or if you're busing information through the USB besides your VST libraries, then you may notice a performance DECREASE.

VSTs are an application, and should be installed on your main OS drive. The extra hard drive is only going to bring you speed when installing the library associated with a sample-based VST instrument.

Moreover, it would be better to have a separated graphics processor to offload the work from your central unit. Audio production is processor intensive and unless you're using Protools HD or a UAD Card, you're going to need all the juice your CPU can pump. Better to have a separate GPU, plus, you can run games and more importantly, Game Engines, if you're interested in working in Games at all.

Cream of the Crop M/S Plugins: http://www.brainworx-music.de/ Also, amazing plugs that aren't quite so creamy, but still awesome: http://www.fabfilter.com/

It's called Rap. It's just that Rap has fallen into such disrepute that we all forgot it was supposed to be poetry.

It's not an engineering problem, the cue is suffering from bad orchestral writing. It's sounds like a synth because you treat the orchestra like a synth keyboard instead of a dedicated ensemble of 50-80 individual musicians. The best samples in the world would only marginally help this track sound better. It's perfectly okay to over-reach your abilities when "remixing" or arranging or even writing--but recognize the real issue when you encounter it, it's not that you don't have the write gear, it's that you haven't developed the right ear. Keep going, keep writing, but listen, listen, listen and analyze orchestral music played by live orchestras. With time, patience, and a lot of work, you will get better.

That assertion makes no reference to context. How many gigs across what size SSD? If you have a 100gb SSD and write once a day to the whole thing and it lasts 10 years, that's not that much. Write twice to one cell, and that one cell lasts 9 years while the rest lasts 10, but the SSD doesn't know that cell is bad. Write twice a day and it lasts 5 years? Write 10 times a day and it lasts 1 year? No matter how you slice it, you are limited by the number of times you can write to an SSD--be careful, it will fail, every write brings it that much closer to failure.

To clarify a couple of points on memory: Information stored in RAM is placed in little memory cells--each of these cells has an address, like the address of your house on your street. The problem older computers face is that there is a limit to how many different simultaneous numbers it can use as an address for your information. This limitation is a mathematical one based around binary math. Remember, computers store information as combinations of 1s and 0s. A 32-bit Operating System is limited to a string of 32 1s or 0s. What this means is that the maximum possible combinations of 1s and 0s for a binary system as expressed in base-10 math is 2^# where the # is the bits. So for a 32-bit operating system, this means that the maximum number of memory cells that can have addresses is 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 or (keeping in mind that each memory cell is a byte and that there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte) 4GB. Conversely, a 64-bit operating system is limited to 2^64 possible addresses, a mathematical limitation that is unmatched by computer hardware (at least on the consumer level): 1.8x10^19 bytes, or more appropriately expressed as 16 Exabytes (EB, an Exabyte is a approx. billion Gigabytes) A computer dedicated to sample based production should turn off page-filing/virtual memory. Virtual memory uses a drive as a temporary storage place for stuff that hasn't been used in RAM in a while. Page filing is certain to accelerate the Solid State Drive's failure rate because it writes to the drive all the time.

I make rough drafts and sketches all the time. There are two reasons why I would create a sketch first: 1) I often times compose through exploration and improvisation, so I will record my improvisation sessions as I articulate ideas so that I can reference them later. Sometimes these sessions result in fairly formed concepts or ideas. If I really like a theme or motive, I will write it down on paper so that I can reference it without occupying screen real estate later on. 2) If the music demands some measure of precision or complexity with respect to blocking musical ideas or instrumentation, I will compose a fairly precise preliminary sketch on the piano roll to monitor my orchestration across registers. Here are a couple of examples: 2008, Wonderland Adventures Wonderfalls Piano Sketch Wonderfalls Delivered Version Here simply used the initial sketch to seed my ideas, and from there composed the rest of the work, only blocking out on paper sections of the composition. [A] - - [C] - [A alt] - [b Alt] - [D] - loop 2012, Fix the Leaks Phixing with Fysics Piano Sketch Phixing with Fysics Final Version

I've made my warning, the choice is yours. Unless your Orchestra Samples are crap, you won't be able to load them all into RAM. My base orchestral template is 10GB DFD (Direct from Disk), if I were to load all of that into RAM, I would have to load well over 60GB, maybe even as much as 80GB with a full session. DFD is the only way to manage that.

SSDs use flash based memory to store information. The problem with this is that each flash memory cell has a finite number of write times before it becomes unusable. What that means is you should avoid installing anything which accesses the SSD to write data. Your applications/executables should be installed on the same drive as your Operating System and because your Operating System updates itself frequently, I would not recommend using an SSD (even though that's the trend right now). SSDs will fail, it's not like it might fail, it will fail, it's just a matter of time--it is certain. The fewer write actions performed on an SSD, the more likely it will last a long time. They are recommended for sample libraries because sample libraries are RARELY updated and you only access sample drives to READ, which SSDs are exceptionally fast at doing, so they're great for that. SONAR should be installed on your OS drive, you can then designate a HDD that is separate from your OS drive as a project drive, this is recommended.

That's right, you can approach this as a performer or a composer. You can play what's in front of you, or you can understand it.