SnappleMan

You mean you want to use Cubase in a live situation? This is completely doable, but it's limited to the number of audio output channels your interface has. All you have to do is create a new audio track in a cubase project, add all your effects and what not, and then you hit the audition button (next to the Arm For Recording button on the track properties bar). This will let you play live audio through that track with all your effects on it, and it gets automatically routed to the output channel. You can do this with as many tracks as your interface has channels, just create more tracks and route them to use the seperate I/O channels, you can then have them all output through the same out bus, or you can route them independently (if your interface supports that) and run each to its own PA, but you probably wouldn't need that anyway.

It's not any more effective than it was before, the problem for the pirates is that the leading cracking "team" (H20) has quit the scene. No new waves or steinberg products are going to be cracked until there's someone new to start hacking away at the new license protection. Though, the way I see it, if you're always trying to pirate the latest and "greatest" versions of this stuff and not even thinking of purchasing it, you're an asshole. At this point, there are so many older versions of FL, Sonar, Cubase etc. out there that I don't think new versions should be cracked. Use the old shit, that WAS state of the art 5 years ago, or pay the money to get the current wave of products.

Piracy rocks. It has benefited Steinberg, Cakewalk, whoever makes Fruity Loops, Propellerhead, Native Instruments, Waves, pretty much EVERYONE who's software has been pirated. Most people who pirate this stuff can't afford it, so they would never buy it anyway, and a good number of those who do pirate start buying the software after they grow to really like it (seriously, do you want to throw $800 away on software that you never used because the company doesn't offer a demo.... STEINBERG?). So piracy ain't all bad. Most people who pirate this shit in our community are between the ages of 14-21, they would never buy this stuff, not till they grow, mature and still have a need for it.

Good idea, really bad execution. The arrangement is cool, and the minimalist idea is a great IDEA, but I don't think you're pulling it off correctly. Minimalism sounds good when done in a way so that it doesn't sound empty and hollow, which unfortunately, this track does... I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I think you need more in the way of instrumentation, and more layering. If you keep the composition intact and focus on adding more intricate layering of sounds, this song would sound good. And add a good bassline.

As far as these things go you want to make sure you're buying something that you know will be supported in the future. The Presonus Firebox is decent, but the drivers aren't the best around so support might not be the greatest. If you MUST go firewire, I can only really recommend to you two brands, the RME Fireface and the Echo Audiofire. I've used all three, and I own two of the Echo Audiofire products. Like analoq said, you usually have to go through a few returns to find what you really want, ESPECIALLY when getting into this whole new world of Firewire interfaces. From my experience, Echo will always give you the best value for your money. They have the BEST drivers in the price range, best (USA made) hardware, and they actually read every email you send them, try to re-create whatever problem you're having exactly, and then fix it in a driver update a week later. So yeah, my recommendation is the Echo Audiofire 8. Though at $450 it might be too expensive for you, in which case check out the Audiofire 4, though I haven't used it, if it's anything like the 8 or the 2, it's golden. (I also own an audiofire 2 which I take with me when traveling, it's equally impressive.) Something to keep in mind though, there's no telling how far firewire audio interfaces will go, and any product you buy may be discontinued much faster than a PCI card would, so you're best off doing the research, and picking something that has very good support now, so that when you want to keep using it 5 or 10 years from now, the last drivers available for it will support whatever insane software applications the world comes up with. MOTU, RME, Echo and M-Audio have permanent holds at different levels of the the interface market, so your best chances are with them. I'm not bashing the FireBox, as it's also a great product, but Presonus is known for signal processing and effects, not audio interfaces (as far as I know at least) so I'm a bit wary of their commitment to that type of product if the industry rejects it.

A great track overall. Very balanced and even sounding in terms of mixing, and the arrangement is smooth and coherent. Just an all around great song to listen to.

Ughh.... fail There is no cost effective way to get a big band arrangement that sounds good. As you can clearly hear in Hemo's track, getting any two people to be in tune is next to impossible unless you have good players. And good players will not be offering to play for free in your college, they will be out making money, and you'll have to pay them.

Yeah, yes really. What, $400 and 60gb of your hard drive? You can get a good guitar for that and spare your storage. And by the time you learn to use the library properly, you can most likely play guitar at a beginner level. Total waste of money. If it cost $50 or $75, I'd recommend it.

Nah, I've already got other plans for that song. Thanks though.

Well, first you should get a job, and then you should buy a good mic, and then you should buy a good mixer with built in pre-amps, and a good soundcard to record all this into. Total of about $300 can get you all of this. There's no $20 solution.

This competition is fucking gay, I quit.

What a waste of money

Who exactly are you talking to in your post? If you're asking me, I don't have anything tabbed or written out. Everything was improvised.

No demos or WIPs, at least for now.

Alright, time to bump this up again. Bit of an update, work is coming along smoothly.

To be honest, this is not my favourite song that I've heard from Zircon. It's a good song, but it sounds like it just needs to break out into something more, and it never really does. Instrumentation is good, but the fake guitars pierce my ears and cause me to shit myself and vomit at the same time... well.. not LITERALLY, but you get the idea! Something is just lacking to me, can't quite put my finger on it, but the song as a whole comes off a little hollow. The strongest part of the song for me is the intro, after the song comes in, everything falls apart a bit. The orchestral section comes in too abruptly and just seems out of place, and then the guitars come in awkwardly and everything seems like it's missing bits of transitional magic that would elevate this song to being complete. Fadeout ending sucks If you're gonna do a fadeout, at least do it with STYLE! Anyways, I had fun with this mix, despite the problems. NO RESUB

<3 Taucer! Couldn't have said it better myself. Also, bluefox, didn't you just buy a guitar? And aren't you still just starting out as a player? Why the fuck do you need a second one? You fail at life

Eh, I don't see what all the hype is about, this sounds way too generic. The intro is so unbelievably cliche and predictable that it ruins the rest of the song for me (which is also predictable). The chord change at 2:00 is great, but the progression, rhythm, melody all stay the same, and that annoying and repetitive drum beat starts to drive me crazy by then. The mixing is nice, though a bit unbalanced at times, I'm sure that'll get worked out in later versions. Overall, what this song needs is variation, because right now it's just an annoying loop.

Gibson guitars are a waste of money. Sorry.

Free drum sounds are fantastic. The only reason anyone should get something like DFHS is if they really know what they're doing with live drums. As for guitars, stick to free soundfonts with that as well. All the VSTi's for guitars out there are garbage. They all cost a shit ton of money and either sound completely fake and stupid (all but one of them...) or they sound okay but take up 60gb of your hard drive (prominy lpc, that one...)

so cmon, new track time right!?

I'm switching my song out. Whoever picked Live and Learn from Sonic Adventure 2 needs to be shot between the eyes.

Larry: How did they let you, a black man, onto the pannel?

You fail. VSTs are NOT made to sound "proper", the ones that aren't completely unprocessed are made to sound decent as a starting point. You have to EQ everything because the dynamics of a mix change from song to song. Generalizing like this is a surefire path to continued failure. The most important thing you need to do when you get to the EQ portion of the mixing process is to stop and think about what your goal for the song is. If it's a rock, hip hop, dance, techno (or any other similar style) tune, then your first order of business is to get a good sounding bass drum. You should EQ everything around that bass drum, and make sure you leave plenty of room between the lower registers of your mix. NOTHING eats up a compressors bandwidth like low frequencies. Seperation in the low end (30-250hz) is the key to clarity, and clarity defines your low end better, and in turn makes it sound more powerful than just boosting the fuck out of all your low frequencies and crowding the spectrum and making a muddy mess.

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