zircon

Damn! $10? Ordered. Too bad it's audio, which is probably stripped down from the Giga version. The shipping fees are retarded, but that's how they make their money, I think. They sell their blowout stuff at really low prices and gouge on shipping.

1. What 3 VSTs are you using? 2. Does your CPU meter hit 99% before you get the noise, or is it much less than that? 3. Do you use your soundcard's drivers in your sequencer of choice, or do you use something like asio4all?

Considering that is how his mp3 is tagged, I would imagine yes!

Do you want expensive samples? Do you have little to no money? Do you like ethnic sounds, such as; Erhu Dung-chen Taikos Chinese Gong Thai Gong Sarangi Tablas Duduk Middle Eastern Fiddle Alpenhorn Hurdy Gurdy Gedulka Highland Pipes Uilleann Pipes Laudennas Irish Low Whistle How about a formerly-$400 Gigasample library for $20? http://www.soundsonline.com/Quantum-Leap-Rare-Instruments-GIGA-pr-QLRIGIG.html Buy it. Get demo version of CDxtract and convert the sounds to Soundfont or whatever format you can read. BUY IT!!!

Yes: http://www.tweakheadz.com/SoundFont_Secrets.html

I owned it and beat it - I also have an ISO of it. I'm not sure if it's worth $100, but it's an AMAZING game. IMO, way better than Suikoden I and Suikoden III. The music is godlike, the graphics are as good as sprite/poly gets for the PS1, battle system is smooth and sleek, story is amazing... etc

Yeah. Of course, with your self-proclaimed shitty soundcard, it will sound... shitty. Have fun with terrible recordings! Or you can buy a Stealthplug, which is the same price, and has software that will sound BETTER than whatever hardware you have now. I guarantee it.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, both seasons. Really good stuff.

The hardware is just the connector & interface, the software comes on a CD separately and you install it on your comp.

As far as I'm aware, dual cores - for all intents and purposes - are equivalent to dual processors. I could be very wrong. Overclocking is a bad suggestion unless he knows exactly what he's doing.

StealthPlug by IK Multimedia is the cheapest. Guitar cable and USB audio interface all in one.

The one BIG advantage: XP Pro supports multiple processors, XP Home does not.

I personally have never taken a request from these forums or otherwise. I do read them occasionally just to see what people want - eg. if I'm *already* working on a mix or planning on working on one that has been requested, I usually post about it.

Except the amount of problems offtopic has caused does not even begin to approach the day-to-day troubles of Unmod. Anyway, back on topic?

There was actually a topic announcing it here. I don't know what happened to it. Simple, short answer: the forum was more trouble than it was worth. Too many troublemakers were "born" there and spilled over on to other forums, causing extra headaches for mods, not to mention there was an unsettling amount of stupid threads (trolling/spamming, flaming, fad threads, etc).

Game: Uncharted Waters: New Horizons Remix name: Sunset on the Harbour

So far, she's singing on an Anxious Heart collab w/ me and is interested in singing for OWA - but nothing is set in stone on exactly what she'll be doing. We are however getting a custom choir part for the track (full choir) She will probably sing on top of that.

I would like to think that our discussion HAS been helpful to Mahon... anyway, to respond to an earlier post: Looks good - but 450w is a little low. 500 or 550w might give you more room to grow, especially if you are going to put in extra HDs in there. Now, here's the thing. The system that you configured came out to $1700. A comparable notebook system on Avadirect? 2.33ghz, 2gb RAM, 120gb hard drive? *Weaker* than the desktop system, yet it would cost $2,100. Ouch. That's one argument against laptops.

The issue is not that it's an unpopular theme, but rather... (1) The original version is already epic, and LONG. Shorter tunes are often easier to remix. (2) The Advent Children version is super-badass and that's a big standard to look up to. (3) Can you really do One Winged Angel in that many different styles? All that being said, we're trying to do a larger-scale collab on it - right now, Spekkosaurus is putting something awesome, with contributions by bLiNd. I'm looking to add on to it as well, as is pixietricks.

I've had the opposite experience. Having used both PCI and Firewire-based interfaces on the same setup, the PCI ones had better latency. I suppose this is a negligible point, though IMO it's always annoying to take up USB and Firewire ports. With regards to Powercore, their Firewire interface is nearly $1200, for the same amount of power you get for their $700 PCI card. Likewise, even a B-stock of their Compact interface is well over twice the price of an older Element card with the same power. Additionally, you can easily fit multiple PCI and PCI-E cards in a desktop PC - it's harder, clumsier, and more expensive to do that with a laptop using PCMCIA/Firewire/USB. Also, as far as I know, the PCI-E TC/UAD has put out are desktop-only - not compatible with laptops. http://www.dv247.com/invt/32956/ Somehow I don't see how you could install that in a laptop. I will concede that DSP cards are starting to fall by the wayside as native processing power is going through the roof... but nonetheless, they're still pretty popular, and there are a great many plugins that are exclusive to that platform. I know quite a few people that swear by Creamware plugins for example.

A big advantage is PCI expandability. If you want to get Powercore, Creamware, or UAD stuff, you're going to want PCI or PCI-e ports, ideally. Plus, PCI soundcards are usually cheaper than their USB/Firewire counterparts and have lower latency (in my experience).

Very interesting production choices here. The closest thing we have to this style on OCR is Vurez' material, but even that isn't too similar. I really like the ethnic percussion in particular. There were only a few weak points in this area. One was the strings/choir/violin at about 3:00 - they didn't sound so good exposed. Likewise, when the acoustic guitar and bass were more or less alone at 1:52, their sampled nature shined through a little too much for comfort. I also feel like a lot of the instruments could have used more reverb/delay to make the mix more spacious. However, it's not a big deal. In terms of arrangement, the combination of material from the main Chrono Trigger theme and the little Zeal quotes here and there really added up and made this enjoyable to listen to all the way through. I loved the variation of the chord progression and the addition of original material. Nothing felt forced or pasted on haphazardly; the mix really flowed naturally. Great job. Awesome to see an actual sub from a doujin remixer. I hope we get more! YES

The intro threw me off a bit - the playing seemed a little on the sloppy side and not as tight as it could be. Some of the chords/harmonies throughout the mix didn't sit well with me, like :41 and 2:06. I do feel like the arrangement was generally too close as well, but the material from 2:33 pretty much saved it. Without that stuff I don't think the preceding level of arrangement would be passable. However, looking at the big picture, there's a solid performance, good recording, and some very creative arrangement ideas in the later part of the mix. Plus, it's in a rather unique style. I do agree that the ending is lame. A fairly lukewarm YES from me.

XP only handles 3gb properly. It doesn't give you a true advantage because you only get 2gb per application. Thus, FL, Cubase, Sonar (whatever) won't use more than 2gb. The extra will be used by other apps and Windows itself, but do you really run that many other apps? My XP install is trimmed down to about 200mb w/ nothing else open.

Desktop vs. Laptop - You will always pay more in a laptop for the same amount of power you get in a desktop. You also tend to lose customizability and expandability when you go with a laptop. You will not be able to install PCI or PCI-e cards, customized cooling systems, or additional hard drives or optical drives. You will have less USB and Firewire ports. Sound card selection will be limited. Replacing damaged parts will be harder. However, laptops are typically quieter than desktops, they are much smaller, and they are portable... which is the whole point. Short answer: If you're not going to be moving around much, and space is not at a premium, get a desktop. Computer specs - I don't know your budget, so I will give you general recommendations. You want an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. These are great in terms of power and value-for-money. The e6600 (2.4ghz) is the best buy right now. Anything higher is a waste of money, IMO, and that will run massive amounts of plugins. 2GB of RAM is ideal, but make sure you get a motherboard that supports up to 4GB (preferably for when you upgrade to a 64-bit OS. Currently, it is really not worth it to do that for audio production, and a 32-bit OS like Windows XP Home or Pro can't really get much benefit from more than 2GB of RAM. I suggest a pro sound card. The low-end models are actually not very expensive but still perform way better than consumer cards, and in many cases, fancy consumer cards can be MORE expensive. I suggest the EMU 0404 PCI card ($100 list price - you can get it for less), which is not difficult to install. For more info, see my thread in the Guides & Tutorials forum on soundcards. Video card is somewhat irrelevant. Any card that's more than $50 from a name brand will be fine. If you want to play games, then get a better card. Simple. Even a 5 year old video card would be fine for music production though, so.. don't worry about it. The only thing to *avoid* here is integrated video. 250gb of storage should be sufficient. If you are willing to spend a little more, you could get an 80gb drive that runs faster (10,000 RPM - a Western Digital Raptor drive for example) and put your applications on it, along with Windows. Then, use a 250gb drive to store audio files, videos, music, samples, and so on. But you probably don't need this setup. OS should be Windows XP Pro, for maximum customizability. Everything else doesn't really matter; of course, you'll want a DVD and CD drive (combo is best). I'd say configure a system in Dell with these approximate specs, then do the same at avadirect.com and see which is better. AVA has great service - they not only create each computer to your individual specs, but they test it for several days to make sure there are no problems. They have warranty and labor options on par with Dell and IMO are better all around. Plus, they don't install the crap on your computer that Dell does.