analoq

It'll be interesting to see how this technology plays out. I know Apple in particular is making headway by integrating OpenCL into their next operating system. Good things ahead.

The one in Logic works good enough like avaris mentioned. However, your expectation that it would be a "huge time saver" is probably unrealistic. Pitch tracking is pretty volatile, so you'd still have to edit the results quite a bit to get what you want. cheers.

http://soundtracker.org/

Just finished listening to the album, good work all round. Kudos to all those who put this together. Glad as well to see my early contribution finally see the light of day, it's a couple years old and yet it's effectively the most recent remix I've made.

This is a must, I think. Very good idea. I like this idea too. It could be expanded to include all interested remixers. They could make their own videos explaining a posted ocremix and contribute them. cheers.

I like djp's idea. It's not easy for beginners to grasp concepts that you are executing in one DAW (i.e. Fruity Loops) and then apply them to their own (i.e. Reason) So keeping the videos as specific to OCR as possible would be most helpful, imo. Besides, there are plenty of videos on YouTube/etc that already cover general topics like beats/synths and often you can find them specific to the software you want. cheers.

They are. The problem isn't the MacBook Pro. The problem is the devices not in accord with the IEEE standard. Shoddy engineering on behalf of Presonus and TC Electronic. Apple had to tweak the power usage on the Firewire 400 port in order to accommodate the Firewire 800 port, but they did so in accordance with the standard. I do have an older chipset (Merom) so it's possible the newer chipsets (Santa Rosa) are more lenient in this regard, but you'll have to figure that out on your own. You can if you so desire. Get your MBP first. Purchase the interfaces from places with good return policies and keep returning them until you find something you like. That's what I did.

You have a Macbook Pro, right? If you have a firewire port you should go for a firewire interface. Though, models Macbook Pro (ones with FW800 usually) have stricter power requirements on firewire interfaces than other laptops. Devices that don't conform precisely to the IEEE 1394 standard don't work reliably on bus-power. I've encountered this problem with the Presonus and TC Electronic devices. Mackie Onyx Satellite is an interesting concept; effectively having two complementary audio interfaces for two purposes. I owned one for a while, but the pod's mic pres just didn't fare so well on bus-power, maybe another MBP specific issue. You're right about dismissing MOTU -- they're great products but they're more than you'll need, my 828 ended up being more than I needed in the end. You're right to forget about the mixers as well, no good for portability. My current interface is a Yamaha GO46. I've probably owned more audio interfaces than anyone here, so take from that what you will. Though, I'd really like to try the Duet sometime.

Yeah, max is right. Logic was recording MIDI from the controllers and audio from the analogue effects. I bounced it afterwards. I've recorded straight from my digital camera's mic before, but it's too noisy (incredible singing analoq)

The pedal-drum* was part of the Reaktor bass ensemble, so they shared the same note pitch and were just triggered differently. *hurr hurr

I made this for a friend, but I think it's apt here. It's my crib and me, doing what we normally do together: YouTube's compression always does strange things to the mix.. blah. cheers.

I more or less took the path that Kanthos suggested-- I studied CS and IS in college and took a music technology program on the side. What I found was: - I can write code for 8 hours a day, then come home and write more code for fun. - I can not write music for 8 hours a day, then come home and write more music for fun. I had more opportunities than most to pursue a career in music, but it would've destroyed a hobby I enjoy. I stuck with what I have the mental stamina for and now I easily find jobs and yet still have fulfilling hobbies. cheers.

Read the first post of this thread. Ostensibly his look thru the guides is what prompted this thread in the first place. Unrelated: Yes, because making music has never been so cheap in the entire history of mankind. Just wanted to quote this, it's an important point that many people seem to not realize.

Very sad news. I only had a couple conversations with the guy, I didn't know him by name, but I do sincerely hope his condition improves.

As a visual cue for educational purposes, the graphs are innocuous. What you quoted was in reference to dannthr's so-called "study". Peer review is a harsh mistress.

Your problem is that the encoding process works like magic to you. Voodoo. You think you can quantify audio degradation in a perceptual codec using spectral analysis because you don't know any better. It's not just my opinion that your tests are worthless, you simply don't know how to test your hypothesis. It's as if you're using spectral analysis to see if the guitars are in tune or not. There is a scientific way to test perceptual codecs: Double-blind listening tests. Until you're doing that, you're just wasting your time and everybody else's. cheers.

You've got it backwards. Just because a spectral analysis shows loss does not mean there's an audible difference. Do an analysis of a 256kbit MP3. There will be loss compared to the original, but you will not hear the difference. MPEG Layer III represents audio perfectly (to the human ear, of course) at that bitrate. Stop while you're ahead. If you're only using software analysis tools then you're wasting time. Whether your hypothesis is right or wrong, it's useless information. More/Less frequency loss does not equate to less/more accurate perception. Perception is what matters. Subwoofers are intended to represent the last octave of human hearing, i.e. 20-40hz. Most subwoofers will roll off anything below 20hz because our ears don't interpet it as a tone. So what's the problem with sub-20hz inaccuracy in MP3s? Answer: There is no problem. It didn't matter in the first place. I hope that was enlightening.

Unfortunately the best way to tell whether you need to up the bitrate on a song is by listening to it. They call it 'perceptual encoding' for a reason: It works by perception. MP3s work by fooling your ears, you can't fool the computer so most types of audio analysis (e.g. dannthr's graphs) aren't very helpful. cheers.

Trying to figure it out yourself and asking for help along the way is fine by me. maxZipcode is a bit off, though. The first chordset is Dmaj7, Em7, A7. The root and 5th in each chord are handled by the bass, in each half the (assumed 6/8) measure respectively.

Touché, touché.

I didn't even need to listen to the second sample; I knew the first one was correct because it had no audible artifacts. I listened on Grado RS2s thru a Yamaha GO46 connected to a very quiet MacBook Pro. I've had my ears professionally tested: my left rolls off after 18.5khz, my right after 19.2khz. Not perfect, but I take care of what I've got. I own custom-molded musician earplugs that I take to concerts, clubs and even the cinema. I own an SPL meter to make sure I don't monitor at harmful levels. I can metaphorically break boards with my ears, kung-fu style. If you think you can match me you got two choices: Either step up or walk off, bitches. cheers.

It's not a terrible example. Understand that the opera piece is not "quieter" than techno/rock, it's more dynamic. Lightly-mastered music can be more affected by perceptual encoding because more frequencies can be discarded. High frequency content is the benchmark, not "loudness". And their example provides enough of that to be discriminated by. The difference was very clear to me.

It wouldn't have made a difference with WAV or FLAC. 256kbps or more is effectively imperceptible compression. I don't know if all the examples are the same but for the one I listened to the percussion (not the drums) in the background was the give-away. It lacked clarity in the high frequencies and sounded less transient. cheers.

We've been through this before, it's in the sample sticky somewhere as well. They do keep adding stuff, though.

If you can record fine in Audacity there's no reason you shouldn't also be able to record in GarageBand (unless you're dealing with more than 8 inputs). There's probably something amiss in your GarageBand audio settings.