Nabeel Ansari

No, because I play Street Fighter so that I can thrash other people/get thrashed by other people. The only "mode" I care about is training mode to hone whatever it is I can't hone with a moving opponent. If the game satisfies that criteria, really well, I don't care if it lacks other things I'm never going to use/play. From what my friends have told me, Street Fighter V plays a lot like III mechanically, which is worth $ to me way more than Street Fighter 4 even considering the content quantity gap.

I did specifically mention that the numbers are dependent on what the content of the music is, or at least tried to imply it. I wasn't trying to say -10 dB is a catch-all. To me, when I listen to that mix, I'm not surprised when you tell me it is -6 dB RMS. I also don't think it's too loud given the content. But do -6 dB RMS on say, a contemporary jazz trio, and I certainly would find it too loud and quashed (and have an unpleasing amount of harmonic distortion given that it's on pure acoustic instruments). But the RMS isn't of direct importance, the crest factor is (and it's dependent on RMS, obviously, these systems aren't linear); even if I turned my speakers down a small crest factor is still loud. Maybe not sound pressure wise but certainly dynamic range wise. dB SPL is a whole different aspect of loudness; but sound pressure is something you can't control no matter what. You don't know what sound pressure output a person's headphones/speakers are, so it's not worth mixing for, at least to me. (Unless it's for a specific sound system, car, venue, etc.) I also would venture to disagree simply because when people are new and try things themselves by ear they will almost always have bad results and have to be given feedback and try to reduce the effects until feedback says it's okay; whereas explaining how crest factor and RMS play into "pumping" and limiting => harmonic distortion (maybe you don't have to give concrete numbers like "shoot for 6 or 8") makes them able to see what happens when they change the numbers around. It's more about how the sound behaves when you change the numbers to me that's the important learning aspect, less about fixing specific numbers like -13 or -10 and creating so-to-speak archetypical loudness profiles to aim for. But that's just a math student's approach to it. Keep in mind this is mainly fueled by the consideration that dynamics processing isn't a linear system. It's very hard to just intuit things by ear when you're new in the dynamics world, compared to say, turning feedback down on a delay or changing an EQ gain.

I have found that the harmonic distortion from limiting the primary reason I try not to push the limiter; the squashed dynamics and smushed peaks are actually next in line.

In the absence of our curated guides forum that disappeared at some point I forgot that only things tagged as "tutorial" are to be treated like ones, so I guess I overreacted. I really don't understand why the whole broadcast loudness standard thing came in either, seems way irrelevant to me. My entire deal is that if you want to explain (or, really, if you want to learn) how limiters work, you need to become familiar with notions of loudness and dynamic range. Put simply, loudness is not a result of high peaks (high instants of energy) but rather how that energy sustains over time. If a single has loud drum transients but not much else and it's a sparse signal, it's perceptually still quieter. When we compress things (and when we limit them, which is just a more extreme version), we reduce their dynamic range. That means we shove the peaks down closer to where the average signal energy is. So what happens then? The whole thing is quieter, but it is more "sustained" so to speak. So then we jack the whole thing up because we gained some headroom, and now the signal is much louder, because it has more sustained, constant energy. This is where RMS comes in. RMS isn't a direct measurement of loudness, but it is much more accurate than straight peak values for telling you how "strong" the signal is. Think of it like an average (it's not exactly, but I don't want to give a math lesson). So when you limit things, what you're doing is squashing higher peaks and giving everything the same relative energy (the degree of which depends on your threshold). The distance between your highest peak and your average energy (how your transient/peaks compare to your sustained energy) is called your crest factor, and that's really what we mean by dynamic range. When we use limiters on the signal, we want to consider the numbers like RMS and crest factor of the signal. If the RMS is too high, or the crest factor is too small, that's the "pumping" we hear. Good transparent limiting gets our RMS up while maintaining a level of dynamic range we can still perceive as not being squished out. For instance, in the old days when engineers were really trying to push the loudness war, there were metal albums that would get mastered at like -8 dB RMS. They sounded squashed and terrible, honestly, but in metal, that's kind of the expectation. It's gotta be loud and harsh. But compare that to classic rock? You want those numbers to be different, RMS to be much lower; get that crest factor back, have the nice distance between transients and sustained energy. It's more organic that way. The indisputable fact is that compression of any kind squashes transients, it turns drum into mush and kills tightness, same goes for any instrument. Of course in modern day, you still want it to be kinda loud, but definitely not as pumped as metal or EDM. When I did more electronic/breakbeaty stuff, I would push it to -10dB RMS, and even that was a bit much. Now I go between -13 and -12 for most stuff because I work more with acoustic samples instead of synths and processed layers. So while using your ears is great, it doesn't help newbies in particular, because dynamics processing takes a good ear. Going by some reference numbers gets them closer to the result, faster.

Understanding what you're talking about isn't semantics. It's understanding what you're talking about. Oversimplifying and omitting crucial details as to what goes into a technique and how the associated tools work helps no one. You said the equivalent of "turn the knob and the music pumps. you want it not to pump, so turn it back until you stop hearing the pump." That's obvious. That's not informative. That doesn't explain anything about why limiters are used in music, why they were invented, when they are used, how they are used in different styles of music. You didn't talk about the difference between RMS vs. peaks, or crest factor, or anything remotely technical that greatly assists a person in giving very simple instructions on how to get effective limiting. You didn't talk about what "pumping" actually means in a technical context. You didn't even post any sound examples to show the difference between "more pumping" and "less pumping". And ironically, in a thread about using a mastering limiter, you didn't once use the terms "compression" or "dynamic range". In fact, you said "cuts the peaks", which is factually incorrect. Cutting the peaks is what's called hard clipping. @APZX Watch/specify who you're replying to. You lumped Brandon and dannthr together.

Perhaps save explaining music production tools and techniques for people who actually understand them, then? Making a long post saying "this is how I figure limiters work based on my narrow experience with them" doesn't really help anyone. Limiters are technical systems, and they're deterministic. You can explain how they work, theoretically, and how different plugins/implementations of them differ. But you didn't, you basically just said "this is a picture of Ozone's limiter. When I lower this control, the music pumps more. Also, even I don't understand how it works. LOL"

GAINZ MODE: Nando's Peri-Peri: Eat a half chicken for every meal of the day.

Under warranty? Send it back for repair (make sure you back up). If not, try a reformat to see if anything in the operating system was the culprit. If not, it's a hardware issue (suspect motherboard) and you need a new machine. If you're not used to regular reformats and don't like the hassle, swap in a different hard drive with a fresh OS install. If it works after that, you know it's either the old hard drive or the operating system on it.

Would just like to notify everyone here: The Journey Live performance (score to Journey played live to gameplay) is at 2:00PM, Saturday 2/13/206. The OCR panel is at 1:00PM, Saturday 2/13/206. This means the OCR panel is going to run through the start of the Journey performance. If you want to go to see Journey Live, you will have to skip the OCR panel or leave halfway through. I also recommend planning to eat before the OCR panel because the Journey performance lasts until 4:00PM. Additionally, the Mega Man Zero anniversary concert is at 8:00PM the same day. Our How to ReMix panel is at 7:00PM. Same deal, they will overlap. Same deal with skipping/leaving halfway. Also, DiscoCactus is at 4PM. If you're seeing Journey, just stay in the room after it's done. Same place.

Actually... Shaggy can I grab that?

EDIT: Derp, you meant the drop, not the lead up to the drop. @zircon uses ISW Juggernaut for this kind of stuff, but since he made Juggernaut with some other sound designers I'm sure he has insight on how it was constructed, so I tagged him.

I'm sorry to say there's no reasonable professional on OCR who would give you advice for what it is you want (which you maintain is neither legal action nor letting it go, the only two options that are productive), because what it is you want is inherently unprofessional and a waste of your own time and effort. It'd be sending you on a wild goose chase, and no one wants to do that. It really just seems you like need help separating your business life from your personal feelings, because the latter is largely what is fueling your question right now. I am NOT asking this rhetorically: Have you tried counseling?

Disclaimer: Do not interpret this following post as legal advice on how to interpret your contract. That being said, every proper WFH contract that I've seen has had a termination clause(s) that detail how to prematurely terminate the agreement. What goes to who, time windows, etc. Without it, things get very sticky if someone tries to simply leave. If you're not going to let this go, you need to seek legal aid. You not having a case against someone could very easily translate to them having a case against you, and you never want that. EDIT: I just read you said all you signed was a one-paragraph NDA. Unless that one paragraph had USA Declaration of Independence level sentence structure, it doesn't seem like there's any security of your rights. 1. It seems the paragraph didn't have a termination clause. I would seek legal advice to inquire about whether this contract is still in effect. If it is, you're in a really tough spot if you try to make noise or take action. If it's still in effect, then you getting mad about them posting your music and crediting you is actually a bit unreasonable (this is a strong reason to move on and forget about it before it backfires). Unless you also had writing detailing that they couldn't post it without your express approval.

"It's not my computer I swear"

There are two practical solutions to this problem. 1. Take legal action. Teach the developer what happens when they "fuck with you" (I think your reaction to what they did is super questionable, but it stands regardless). This actually solves a problem and you've definitively reduced the risk of someone else getting "fucked with" because the developer will be more cautious with how he treats his contractors. 2. Move on. If it's not worth the effort to do number 1, it's not worth the effort to do anything. Trying to put out a big word to stop random sap freelancers from working with some team making a dreamcast game in 2015 is just going to be a waste of tons of your hours. It's not possible. You don't have the public outrage or industry pull; no one does. That's a monumental task. Even getting a big article out on all major game journalist sites (no journalist site would actually run that article anyway), they'd still very easily find some clueless freelancer to work with. You can't discredit someone without virality, and your story, truth to be told, isn't really crazy enough to go viral. A viral story about "some dev who's still making dreamcast games giving their composer freelancer the cold shoulder and thinking it was okay to put up their song and credit them but then taking it down when they saw it wasn't" isn't really the kind of thing people would get excited over. Seriously, I'm not saying this to be demeaning; if this is about wasted time to you, the best thing to do is stop wasting your time on it. Realistically, you can't really expect anything from passion projects, and neither can you even with contracts if you're not ready to take legal action -- contracts are functionally useless unless there's the possibility of actual legal action, otherwise they're just words on a paper.

Why fix your problem when you can throw money at it instead?

You can say that again. Side note: don't call yourself a "grown man". Saying "grown men don't make subtle jabs at each other" demonstrates you've actually never been in the real world and have never hung out with "grown men". Again, when you're ready to make coherent sense and try to learn something from people who have extraordinarily more experience and skills than you (and actually understand how computers work), then we'll still be here. Until then, don't start threads and then act like a jackass to people who take time out of their busy days to help you understand a pittance of what you're talking about. P.S. Stop using Sampletank 3. Eliminating your system being at fault (for the incredibly idiotic reasons you've put forth), Sampletank is the only possible culprit left.

Grades show that you can follow directions and please other peoples' arbitrary standards of what your art/design should end up like. So they don't actually matter from a standpoint of resume-style evaluation, but learning how to please instructors is good practice for learning how to please clients, and far easier because when you argue with an instructor they'll know what the hell you're talking about. So it's not important to show other people how good your grades are, but it is important to be able to get them. A common rationalization of slacking grades is it's for stuff you don't like, and doing stuff you like will turn out better. It's a rare case where your work doing what you love will only ever be doing it for things you like. Professionally speaking, you're going to end up working on some crappy stuff time to time, or working for crappy people. Learn to put up with it and excel despite it now -- this is coming from experience. Another important thing to note is that grades at the right school under the right instructors ensure you're actually learning industry standard skills. Again, clients don't care, but you should. You're not gonna find those skills outside of learning them from people. tl;dr learning how to earn good grades is good practice for learning how to deal with other peoples' standards they set for you

I find it ironic that you quoted that considering how you responded to it in the source thread.

There's something else entirely that's actually holding you back, but it's bad form to say it in public. Here's an attached image that uses facts and simple experimentation to blast your claim. As you can see, it has loaded 7.6GB of samples (more than your computer can actually hold) from resource-intensive library METROPOLIS ARK 1, playing a thick voicing of Cmaj7#11 sent to all 12 ensembles that totals around 228 voices. Also, this is Kontakt DFD, which only stores sample attacks in memory. When notes are played, actual full samples are called directly from disk (DFD). That places strain and load on my disk path, so I got an SSD (what Flex said earlier) to make that not an issue. My CPU usage sits at 16%. All 8 threads are being used just fine because I enabled multi threaded processing, on an i7 that predates your i5. Assuming losing hyperthreading means the usage per core doubles (that's not actually how computers work, by the way), that's still 36% for a big RAM heavy sample project in FL Studio. No pops, no clicks. So to answer your question: "good DAW that can take advantage of modern computers?" Try FL Studio. It's pretty cool, lots of people use it. Handles big samples and multi-core processors really well. Decent learning curve, lot of remixers and professionals use it.

I'm lookin' mighty fresh for MAGProm.

EY LMAO

Tell me, what other applications in your computer process real-time audio? Clearly a lot, because the video explained the difference between real-time computations and normal computations. "My computer works fine outside of FL Studio" because non-audio programs don't demand real-time processing. I'm not going to explain how it's different; I already linked you an excellent explanation.

The issue with emulating direct ear is that it's usually done via HRTF, and the HRTF is good enough to appeal on a general use-case basis, but isn't nearly as good as actual surround. I'm not going to get into the insane details as to why, but basically it's because everyone has a different shaped head/ear geometry. When using HRTF's, it's done using IR of a recorded stereo pair with some average dummy head geometry. It doesn't actually work for everyone, though; two people hearing the same IR convolved HRTF sound won't hear the same effect. Because their head geometries are different, the phase differences that would occur to one person hearing sound are not the same as the ones of another person. To one person, it's fully immersive 3D, to the other, it's kinda skirting a bit around their head and sounding comb-filtered. Which brings up another point; 3D emulation kills sound quality, since it's intentionally damaged sound (phase filtered) to try and appeal to your ears instead of having pure sounds come from the actual locations and letting nature do the work for you. Cue the ensuing joy when you're developing a 3D DSP module for a project and the 3D effect doesn't work on your boss. P.S. I kind of interchangeably mixed up "3D emulation" and "surround emulation", they're both not great, and surround emulation is actually worse.