zircon

Pretty nice first section here. However, :45 through 1:47 or so is really lacking in energy or development. I was hoping for a strong sort motif or melody there but there was none. The marcato strings tended to be overbearing also. 2:25 things START to pick up, but the texture is still really minimal and I feel again that there's too much of a reliance on the marcato strings, which aren't even very interesting to begin with. 2:44 brings a rather abrupt tempo change, in my opinion, and as Liontamer noted, things aren't very grandiose here. There's a lot of sustained notes and very few rhythmic patterns which leaves the general soundscape feeling more like a "bed" or a "pad" if anything. It's only at 3:11 where that begins to change, but the brasses are on the muddy side there so you can't really here the nice staccatos. The ending is rather sudden and feels like it just peters out. Overall I feel like this is somewhat rushed. I think it could use more polish in several areas before it can pass our bar. Most importantly I think you need to work on making a logical structure and one that has more movement and dynamics. NO

Ah, but was it free? I mean the EXPENSIVE good stuff, ala Quantum Leap and all that other jazz. www.zirconstudios.com/about.php Collectively worth at least $10,000. I spent upwards of $500 on some single pieces of software there. Here's a slightly outdated series of pics of my setup (I've obtained a good chunk of stuff since this was taken). http://zirconstudios.com/IMG_3113.JPG http://zirconstudios.com/IMG_3114.JPG http://zirconstudios.com/IMG_3115.JPG http://zirconstudios.com/IMG_3116.JPG http://zirconstudios.com/IMG_3117.JPG http://zirconstudios.com/IMG_3118.JPG In conclusion, you don't need to be a pirate to have nice stuff. A LOT of nice stuff. I worked very hard for my gear. Anyone can do it.

You'd think that, but I probably have more software than just about anyone here, and it's all legal too. Plus, I'm not rich either.

Alliance or Horde? Please say Alliance.

For CD quality mixes, does it really matter if its 16 or 24? It's really debatable. I have both 16bit and 24bit samples and hell if I can hear any substantial difference.

If you find them, tell me. TBH though most good electronic drum samples are made from acoustic/vinyl samples anyway. Check out Equipped Music: http://www.equippedmusic.com/

Steve Smith Rhythmic Journey has a serviceable set of oneshots of different velocities. That is more or less what I use when I just need good acoustic drums. It also has a lot of premade acoustic loops (primarily rock/pop) which is nice if you don't have any ideas. Clearmountain II has some very cool samples but the formatting is bad (it's audio TRACKS so you have to manually slice everything). If you're willing to do some extra work though you'll find some good material. That's all I have from that list.

DirectWave, which is an optional plugin that can be used with FL (costs money), MIGHT be able to load Akai. Not sure though. I doubt they'll implement Akai conversion functionality when there are already utilities that do it.

No, Akai is a CD format. It's not just like an encoded WAV file.

Wicka-wicka-what's up, all! It's time for.. VGDJ Episode 039, now available at WWW.VGDJ.NET! Aaand it's a new month, which means you'd best be votin' for us at podcastalley. Thanks!

Zoola; Kontakt 2 loads anything. You don't even need a converter, because it comes built in with one. No, you will need something like CDXtract to convert them to something else. FLStudio loads very few sample formats.

I saved up a lot of money working summers in high school, I make a little money from my original music, and do some freelance stuff on the side.

You'd need to get a utility like CDXtract, which converts Akai to other formats, such as Soundfont. This is what I did with my own Akai CDs.

http://www.soundsonline.com/clearance.shtml I barely even need to say anything here. I actually HAVE a few of those CDs that the price was dropped 80-90%. I plan on buying at least a bunch of things from that list.

Just apply the compression to one particular track. However if your bass guitar and kick are muddying up eachother that's something you need to address either by (1) EQing them separately, (2) changing samples used, or (3) changing the mic/mic position for the recording itself if its a live performance.

WoW avatars? I'm all over that. Dunno what the HELL Larry is talking about though, none of them looked blurry at all. Learn 2 Use Eyes. LT: Yeah, they do. Fix your eyes, then fix your ears and judge some submissions.

Indeed, we're well underway.

Alright, sounds good. Yeah I desperately want Ironweave; if I can get the four pieces I want, with the appropriate enchants, I'll be sitting at about ~1800 unbuffed armor and ~4.1k unbuffed HP. Maybe a little more if I can get a Smoking Heart of the Mountain. That's over 500 armor and 300 hp than I have now. However lately I've been doing PVE hardcore to get various healing items; lately I've acquired the Handguards of Transcendence, Rejuvinating Gem, Bindings of Transcendence, and the Shroud of Pure Thought. I even picked up a Band of Dark Dominion for when I go back to shadow. Built-up DKP ftw.

Exactly; the producer is the one who has creative control over the execution of the song.

Ok, but basically what I'm getting at here is that audio ENGINEERING is the very technical side of things. It's not really the production end - which sounds exactly like what you're describing. Audio engineering involves things like proper mic placement, wiring different devices correctly, syncing multiple devices, adding transparent EQ/compression to a track, managing tape machines, that sort of thing. All important skills in the pro audio world of course but not quite what you described. I could be wrong.

Well.. lemme ask you this first; what do you think audio engineering involves? And why do you want to do it?

I commented on this in the wip forum but let me summarize my thoughts here from a different perspective. You definitely have some good ideas here in terms of arrangement, and the basic groove elements are done. However, after listening to the original a bunch of times, I think the arrangement is probably a little too liberal. There's not much of a connection to the original outside of the general progression. I think you could tighten up some of your arrangement ideas and condense them so the original tune is more easily recognizable. I liked the section in the middle (starting from right before the piano part) - after that, though, it goes back to the same sort of thing as the first section. You need more variation in the texture and the sounds being used. Finally the ending is also a cop-out. Come on! Give it a real resolution. In terms of production I would say that the main drumline isn't bad in terms of the kick + snare, but it needs more elements to be filled out. The hat sounds are really weak imo and sound out of place. See if you can get a more cohesive groove going there. Also the synth design is generally nice but you could do to have more pad/harmony synths and less acid-y, upfront synths. Overall, the execution of this mix was definitely solid for the most part, don't get me wrong, but it could use a bit more polish. Anyway, this has some potential so I would recommend you keep working on it and resub. Good luck! NO

My guild, Shadowlords, currently is very interesting. We are the biggest guild on the server so we have a VERY wide range of players - we also have a sub-guild called Shadowtwinks where we have most of our alts and lower level players.

I don't think it's really even being contested. Taking a rip and adding your own stuff under it is just not what this site is about any moreso than the Black Lodge remix is. Basically this was one of our criteria when considering mixes; if you took out all the directly sampled material, what would you be left with? In this case, basically nothing.

My guild has room for anyone. We're cool like that. Population? It's Medium. As Horde, you will rarely see a queue longer than 1m. If it's 5m, it's a "broken queue" and 15m is considered "ridiculous". All afternoon my queues have been within 10 seconds, just as a reference. Never had login queues.. ever.