Garpocalypse
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Spent a good chunk of time hammering out what I think will be my new studio PC. Here is a 32GB build that's about as cheap as I could get it.
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/V2cHCJ
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/V2cHCJ/by_merchant/CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($159.99 @ SuperBiiz)Motherboard: Asus H97-PLUS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($85.00 @ SuperBiiz)Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($144.99 @ Newegg)Storage: Seagate Barracuda 250GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($19.95 @ Amazon)Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($77.69 @ Newegg)Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($77.69 @ Newegg)Case: Thermaltake Core V31 ATX Mid Tower Case ($53.55 @ SuperBiiz)Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($24.99 @ Newegg)Total: $643.85Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when availableGenerated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-26 22:19 EST-0500Also going to be throwing in a $200 Juli@ internal soundcard.I have 3 internal harddrives. A small 250 gb one for the OS and project files. One for project specific recorded audio and one as a sample drive. I might go 1TB or larger for the sample drive since I want to eventually upgrade my EWQLSO Gold to Platinum.thoughts? -
DLC for two new playable characters is coming next month!
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Whoever has me. If you're dying to get rid of your Wii-U and Sonic The Lost World I certainly wouldn't mind the burden of taking it off your hands.
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Year Round McRibs.
Just be sure to save for the eventual colonectomy
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I'm in!
I'll take anything that's SEGA related in some form or another.
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One thing you might want to try is to compose everything just as you always have then pick up something like the Korg legacy collection and use an M-1 or Wavestation in place of your other samples. A lot of PC games that came out in the 90's used retro synths such as that to emulate the playing of real strings. It's mildly ironic now that we have samples at our finger tips and yet people still want that 90's fake orchestral sound.
I happen to love the solo string patches used in Myst. For some reason.
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I dug the rhythmic cut in the guitar at 0:19 a lot.
I'm going to give this thing a shot myself! Those special edition monitors look pretty sweet. Does it seem skewed to the people who enter earlier? The audience favorite award goes by how many likes it has. Which seems questionable to me.
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Nobody deserves to make money from covers and that's my opinion. Make your own music instead of stealing others. And that's how I say things, you can call me an asshole
As someone who is about to complete and eventually market an acoustic cover album I can say with the amount of time I have put into rearranging and recording each track that it has taken every bit as much time and effort to make my album when compared to the original releases, if not more so. I'll have each song licensed and will sell the album for something but I don't expect to turn a net profit on it at all. So, "making money"...? Hopefully just enough to cover the licensing fees and i'll be happy with that.
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Most commercial composers have machines with either 64GB or 128GB, along with slave machines hooked up over ethernet with VE Pro serving them samples that are processed off the main computer but (whose output audio is) still transferred back fast enough for real-time playback. Don't get confused either, VE Pro is by Vienna Samples, but it's not just for their products. It's a networking host system that you can load VST's in and set up the MIDI communications over network.
We had an independent horror film company come in to work a short time ago and I was able to talk a bit with the guy who did all the filmscoring for them. He had one of these beast of a machines and said that he also edited the raw video while he composed the score. Pretty much gave him the freedom to do anything he wanted but the time it took to render it all was huge.
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i'm heeeeeeere! neblix shot me a pm pointing out that i have info for people who need it =)
in short, if you're willing to spend 700 or 800 bucks, build your own, or have someone do it for you. you'll get roughly the same numbers for your CPU and RAM, but you'll get *way* better quality in the mobo, PSU, etc. that's the parts that let the system run for years and years without a hiccup.
the primary difference between these two machines is the discrete card in the dell, along with the dell having bluetooth, and the xps name itself (which is still a pretty respected name in big-box machines, dell dude aside). i would disagree that either'd be able to handle a big session, though, as 8gb is not much when you get into bigger sample sets. i can max out 8gb pretty easy doing any orchestral track, and the last time i did a rock track i ran that over pretty fast too with a few instances of guitars and the drums.
building a computer is rarely more expensive for the same level of quality (it's usually vastly cheaper). W10 is not the daw i'd be using right now (W7 is, still, although from a perspective of W8 vs W10 I'd go with 10). having an external audio interface is super nice (i had a saffire pro 40 when i was doing a lot of mixing), but not required.
i disagree with virtually everything supercoolmike said - sorry, i think you're still super cool =( RAM is one of the most important things at allowing your system to scale to bigger projects, arguably even more than CPU since you can always bounce tracks to wav and just load them after you've got them iced. additionally, raw straight-line speed on a cpu isn't as important as a good multicore setup, although this is less of an issue nowadays with everything being quad at a cheap price point. the thing is, RAM's cheap enough that you can just drop in piles of it and it doesn't matter. the cpu's the thing that's hard to upgrade if you don't plan ahead with your choice and what is offered in the slot you pick.
here's my requirements for a good mixing pc:
-discrete OS drive
-8gb ram *minimum*. buy it in 8gb sticks so that you can expand easily...the bonus in speed from dual-channel 4gb sticks ain't worth it for the loss in potential slot use
-big quad for the CPU. plan on spending as much money up-front on this so that you don't have to upgrade later
-a good cpu cooler, since you're going to stretch the cpu most of the time
newegg's site's having an issue right now with searching for components, but if i was spitballing it, this's what i'd see.
cpu: i7-4790, 310$ (might as well pick what those machines you looked at had). 30$ more gives you a 4ghz cpu with an unlocked multiplier.
cpu cooler: hyper 212 evo is my go-to, 35$
case: cheap micro-ATX like the tx-381, 40$. and a sweet handle, too! =D
mobo: H81-based micro ATX mobo, 75$ range
psu: corsair CX500, 45$
ram: 40$ for 8gb is standard
os drive: either a samsung evo or a kingston v300 (evo for performance, v300 for cost), roughly 120gb is good for an OS drive on a pure music machine. figure 80$ for the evo or 50$ for the v300
sample drive: 1-2tb internal drive - i only buy WD, usually a Black model. 70$ for the 1tb and 120$ for the 2tb.
going with the v300 and the 1tb internal, and 8gb of RAM, that's 665 or so for the parts for a machine that's got waaaay higher quality parts in it than those bigbox versions, and it's got a lot more features (like the aftermarket CPU cooler, the OS drive, and a better sample drive). you'll just need a flash-drive with the windows install disc on it is all, or drop another 20$ for a dvd burner.
if you want to talk specifics for a custom system, ping me and we can chat. i can just about always make a system work for a good price.
You are awesome. I'm planning on building a new machine this winter. Going to try making it a 32gb machine which will be a huge difference from my current 4GB one.
EDIT: does anyone have any recommendations for a case around 100 bucks that would be mid tower sized and quiet?
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I like the Myst the Last Message track but can't find a midi. I completely suck balls when it comes to playing things by ear. Might have to give this one a try. Although the Myst Main Theme might work too.
check your inbox.
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Seriously though do another The Winds of Inishmore-esque remix.
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1: Why, if applicable, don't you comment on new mixposts on OCR?
I used to leave feedback as much as Crulex some days... Then I ended up working nearly every day for almost a year and disappeared from here. I'd put my reason in the 'over time you will lose people for no fault of your own' pile.
As for the workshop forum, I tried posting for a while in there. I had a back and forth with one mixer over a piece, giving feedback as best I could, but eventually I said I couldn't give them the technical feedback they needed -- they'd need a musician's reply instead because I didn't know how to help more. After that, I felt too embarrassed to post anything else there. I may do again, though, after reading MindWanderer's comment here. (I could point out which parts don't work or merge together well.)
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I know as well as anyone what that can feel like. The relationship between musician and listener is a complex one though and any insight that can be given to that relationship should always be welcomed in my opinion.I had an epiphany of sorts a short time ago when i was talking with a friend of mine who is also a psychologist. For the record he has a fairly (ridiculously) high IQ and yet he has always enjoyed listening to aural garbage and can't even relate to anything with more than three chords. During one conversation we ended up talking about music with mass appeal and repetitive chord progressions when he said "Most people can't hear chord changes!" meawhile i'm thinking how could anyone not realize that something in the framework of a piece is changing? Does it sound completely static to them? Is that what they are seeking in music they can relate to? It's kind of like listening to that one guy in a crowd trying to clap the same rhythm that everyone else is and he's just not quite pulling it off. And the whole time you're thinking how does anyone not develop a sense of rhythm? Did they not watch enough Sesame Street? This got me thinking about how much you can get away with as a musician or an engineer without the listener even knowing about it. (turns out it's kind of a lot)To give you an example of a key difference between someone with trained vs untrained ears, from an engineer's perspective, people with untrained ears can't detect a change in volume that is less than 5 db. Compared to someone with trained ears that can detect a change in volume within 3db or less. This means you can quietly manipulate the listener's attention without disrupting how they are perceiving the piece of music. It's entirely possible that someone with untrained ears could notice something (or more importantly NOT notice something) that someone else would figure was just "good enough." Such as an entrance for a lead instrument not being attention grabbing enough for the average listener to know it was there.So don't think that because your advice isn't specifically "This is what you need to do in order to not suck" that it isn't valuable in some way. It's possible the advice you give could clue a musician in on something they had no idea about before. -
Very smooth. Is that a Martin?
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http://nichegamer.com/2015/11/nobuo-uematsu-is-not-working-on-the-final-fantasy-vii-remake/
On the 1 hand, they can easily take the source music and orchestrate it with live orchestras, etc -- we've seen Distant Worlds
On the OTHER hand, and what I think would be a lot more interesting, is a whole new score -- the more the merrier? Two brilliant soundtracks for Final Fantasy VII? Will it live up to the demand?
I'd be against a whole new score but it wouldn't surprise me if the new OST went the direction that FF7:CC did. Something new but somewhat influenced by the original. Besides, and this may sound sacrilegious, after hearing this I'm starting to think Uematsu is losing his touch. (though a significant part of the hatred I have for this theme probably comes from that poorly sequenced piano)
There may be some opportunity here to get some OCReMixes in this game.... jes sayin'!!
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RE2 REMIX!! I know the sources aren't the easiest to remix but there aren't enough of these.
Posting work on OCR forums is both thrilling and intimidating. The important thing to know is that no one is here specifically to attack you or your work. Some can get passionate about a few topics but we are all here to improve our own sound and give advice to let others do the same.
Your instrument choices are all solid for what you are going for but they do lack a lot of humanization. Music is supposed to be played so it needs to sound that way. If you are intentionally going for an 80's vibe, where the attack on synth patches was much more consistent/repetitve then some of what you have that makes up the groove works well enough. (though the bass part needs some variation on several fronts) If you are not intentionally going for an 80's sound then you really need to play around with the velocity on all of the instruments and try to get some more life into them. I always recommend picking up a midi keyboard even if you have to peck in the notes one at a time and fix them later you are still going to get a better result in less time than using the mouse alone. If you have the spare cash that is certainly a great option. On a side note what are you using as an oboe sample? The artificial vibrato on that is metaphorically but close to literally killing me. If the vibrato is part of an envelope that was moused in it needs some variation. If it's part of the sample itself you might want to check with the Recruit and Collaborate thread for someone to run you off the part with a better sample. It's not horrible but it's featured so some extreme care needs to be given to it.
Another standout is the piano that was sampled from the game and then followed up with a very different sounding piano that has way too much reverb or was recorded with the mic's too far back. It doesn't work. You have some options, make the sample from the game so obviously different that people don't try to assume it's the same instrument playing, or get the piano part you have where you want it go back and try to play the sample from the game with the same instrument, or stick with the sample and nix the piano entirely. Piano parts are extremely time consuming to humanize as you literally have to go note by note and make slight adjustments to the timing and velocity of each key. However it would be fantastic humanization practice.
There are some things to be said about the production but honestly even with flawless mixing the remix isn't going to be what it needs to be due to the life lacking from each instrument. When musicians play together there is a sort of shared vibe that coordinates the emotion they are all feeling and it's reflected in their playing. Treat this remix for awhile as humanization practice and you could certainly have an OCR worthy remix before long.
Good luck!
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How did I completely forget about Decap Attack?!
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First rule of ReMix Club. Don't sell your art short.
Seriously, there is a lot of music out there and if you can't get behind what you do then no one else will either. You have the start of what is an epic track, it's just not organized to be that way yet. To get as big of a soundscape as possible, which is what I think you are going for, you have to organize your sonic space perfectly which is no small task. Have a foreground where your leads are clearly audible and then multiple layers of background where more and more distance has to be covered in order for the sound to reach the listener. If you want to think of it as Art of the drawing kind, An artist uses lots of shadows and manipulation of size on a flat 2D canvas to give the viewer the impression of size and distance. In audio we use Volume Control, Delay, Reverb and Low Pass Filtering for the exact same thing. Decide what you want to have the furthest away, Then far but not quite as far, then close. For the furthest sounds Reverbs/Delays will be at the wettest, the LPF at it's steepest(to a degree, If you are going for really far away sounds you'll want to switch to a HPF and cleave away but it depends on the instrument itself and where you intend to put it) and volume relatively low. Then you can work your way up. Warning that it's really easy to overdo reverb and delay but if you practice the techniques for creating distance enough you'll be able to easily set up HUGE soundscapes this way for anything else you do.
Also a huge Mass Effect fan myself. Good to see some ME inspired remixes!
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The story does seem to have gotten better but still it has not been able to grab my attention. Things happen, people come and go, and nothing is really emotionally engaging. Which is weird considering Square had one of the most emotional death scenes in Final Fantasy 7 with Aeris. (Is this really still a spoiler?) For me most of it probably stems from not being a fan of the main character in any game being a mute. I guess for some players it's a way to project yourself further onto the character but for me it has the opposite effect. Didn't much care for Guild Wars 2 but I found I was much more interested in the story even though each scene was pretty much just two characters just standing still and talking to each other.
On Excalibur, the Limitless Blue boss fight is trolled hard. Most often an anti-social tank with too much free time will jump halfway through the battle dooming the entire party to a slow failure. This has happened almost every time I did the fight using the duty finder and it's a real pain to put up with. Now most people quit the second they get Limitless Blue on Roullette so if you want to get past the fight you better have your free company to back you up.
If you can find some good people the game is a lot of fun.
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I like the atmosphere in this rearrangement! Somewhere between mechanical and organic. Not 100% if that was intentional but for the most part I dig it. The entire thing repeats twice which isn't going to win you any style points but you've already acknowledged that it's not much of an actual ReMix. I'm not overly familiar with the source itself so I can't say much on that but here are some ideas to help production along.
The snare part you have is the worst offender. Try turning the volume on your speakers all the way down and bring them back up so it's nearly inaudible. Probably the first thing you are going to hear before anything else is the snare right? Is the snare part featured in some way?
If you are planning on keeping a steady beat with the snare you can certainly get away with much quieter volumes and still have the listener aware of them. Once someone knows something is there it's much easier to hear it. For that reason a consistent snare part can get away with being much quieter and still carry some significant impact. I'm not overly fond of the snare in the kit you are using either but if it is all you have then it will have to work. You may want to give it a slight LPF'ing to push it back too as it is on the harsh sounding side of things. Stereo is actually used fairly well throughout though some of the panning choices are more distracting than others. If you have something you really want the listener to focus on such as that plucked synth around 2:20 I would keep it center, or introduce it with a right panned instrument playing a similar part. It sort of sounds like that's what you are trying to do at other parts in this mix but the attack on the left is very fast and percussive while whatever instrument is playing on the right has a very slow attack with almost an air-like sound. Which comes down to the listener's attention being primarily drawn to the left instead of enjoying the wide sound that comes with hard panning similar parts. Some auto-panning might just be what you need here too so you may want to look into giving that a try.
With a little more care and creative interpretation this could certainly be developed further into a ReMix if you want to take it that far. Good Luck!
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and NTP comes in 4th on the tie breaker known as an Alphabetizing Technicality!!
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I don't play a ton but I do put some time into my character on Excalibur if any other OCR'ers are there.
Computers for Composing
in General Discussion
Posted
My thought is, and maybe it's wrong or over simplified, but if you are not going to use the SSD for the sample drive then there is little point to having one. I'm planning on upgrading Omnisphere to Omnisphere 2 which is 20gb on top of the original and getting EWQLSO platinum which takes up close to 120gb. So that's over half of the SSD and I still have a few other libraries to stick on there.
Is the only benefit to an SSD the decreased load times?