klm09

From a music production point of view, is there any real benefit to be gained from using 667 MHz DDR2 RAM as opposed to 533 MHz? Yes, I'm aware of the fact that higher clock speed equals greater bandwidth, but since the bandwidth of essentially any DDR2 chip is greater by several times over than that of sustained read speeds from S-ATA HD's, is there any real performance gain to be had?

I don't have any experience with it, but I'd like to hear what your setup is? I'm guessing guitar -> ME-50 -> combo / preamp & cab..? But if you're not running it into an amp at all, then that'd be why the tones suck.

For the I/O, basically just stereo in/out, midi is optional.. currently I sequence by mouse, and if I do get a keyboard for midi sequencing, I'll get something that connects through USB (I've been eyeing the CME UF range.. one day the UF5 shall be mine). Recording quality, well, all I really record is guitar going through my PodXT, so it's not that big of an issue, but it should be such that, were I to want to record something, it'd be somewhere between usable and good. I'm thinking something the equivalent of an Audiophile 2496 or thereabouts. I've basically decided that the processor is going to be an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, unless by the time that I get around to buying the rig the price of the E6600 has fallen enough to put it in the price / power sweetspot. Or unless AMD does something drastic with their pricing. So that obviously narrows my mobo choices to Socket 775 chipsets.. I have no idea about the motherboard yet. I guess it will be what I will look into next. EDIT: zircon, Kanthos, that is actually what I'm planning on doing. But I'm probably just going to get 1 harddrive with the machine and buy another later, to spread out the expense. Also, thanks for the tip about Newegg. I'll have to look into it.. but knowing Finnish import tax and customs, I bet whatever money I save ordering from them.. EDIT2: Had a quick glance at their FAQ, they don't ship internationally.

I'm going to buy a new PC sometime soonish. I'm going to use it for a bit of everything, but I want to prioritize music production as the primary focus for selecting components. I also want to play games on it, but have a budget of 1000-1100 euros, so I can't put like 500 euros on a really good graphics card. To be more specific, 1100 euros is what my parents are agreeing to pay, but I can put in perhaps 100-300 of my own money, raising the actual limit of what I can spend to approximately 1400. However, I'd prefer to try to stick to 1200 or so at most, and then upgrade later. Also, I'll be using it for school work, surfing, whatever, but that doesn't really factor into what hardware I should get. As a basic premise, I'm thinking: -Some dual core processor -2 GB RAM -A HD that has the best money / size ratio (so I guess around 300 GB) -Some decent soundcard (I only need basic I/O, but ASIO compatibility and decent specs are a must) -Plus essentials like a burning DVD drive and what-have-you I don't need to buy a monitor, I intend to use my old CRT.. I have no idea about the motherboard, but that obviously depends on the processor. Should I get Intel or AMD: Core Duo or Athlon 64 X2? Or something else? Is 2GB ram good, or should I go for more; I currently don't use any huge sample libraries, but am planning on getting Drumkit From Hell Superior in the future. Also, the system I get doesn't have to be "perfect" as it is, like I said, I can/will upgrade in the future. So for example if by getting a low end graphics card I can then get the next-up processor in the line, I might do that. Or get less RAM and buy another stick in the future. I would love it if you could give me some advice as to what would be sensible.

Ok, no. But seriously you could get some piano arrangement midis from VGMusic or wherever, and look at the notes in those.

Rock / metal, eh? I have a project that I'm planning where I might be interested in getting some vocals done for it, but I can't yet say when I'm going to start that.. I'm quite busy IRL at the moment, and I want to make some hardware and software purchases before then. In any case, if you're still here and have sorted out some manner of decent recording setup by then, I'll definately contact you. The project, btw, is going to be a progressive rock / metal album, remixing the complete OST of Gradius 3, in case you're interested.

HE WORKS FOR BLIZZARD I lol'd. Why are big letters so funny? Carry on.

Haha kick ass, I love those bands / that type of true black metal production as well! Transilvanian Hunger FTW! Some things you could try to get something similar to Transilvanian Hunger would be to roll off most low end and gently attenuate the highs as well in terms of EQ.. it's a very "middly" sound. You'll want to have a fairly sharp, heavily distorted guitar sound, with very little bass and a lot of highs. For drums, you should get some good acoustic samples (like nskit for example) and possibly distort them very slightly, and again play with the eq a lot to get them to sound sort of thin and crap. Also, apply a fairly subtle room reverb. The drums are probably the hardest part to get to sound authentic, because a big part of the sound is the microphones and room they used when recording the album. A sort of short cut for getting a sound similar to that might be if you have some VST effect or whatever with a "3 inch speaker" preset or something, and apply that on the whole mix.. but it might a bit TOO crappy.

Ok, brilliant. I'm going away until thursday tomorrow (and after this post am not going to be online until then), and with work and other things, I'm not sure when I'll have a WIP ready, but hopefully I'll get something worth presenting done before this week is over.

Y halo thar, klm here. Ok, the reason for why I still haven't submitted a WIP is because I have like 20 different attempts to do something rock / metal based.. a slow Scorpions-style ballad.. a sort of mid paced hero metal gallop riff thing.. a kind of techno metal thing.. and a dozen other permutations.. but all my attempts end up sounding like crap. I've become convinced it's impossible to make a good guitar rock style remix of that, which is what I originally set out to do.. or, at least, it's impossible for me, without really adapting it into something with very little semblance to the original. Anyway, I've now become convinced that TRANCE is the way to go here.. but, with no real knowledge of the project as a whole, I have no idea how that would fit. And I have a gut feeling it wouldn't. I can make a pretty kick ass trance mix out of it, of that I'm sure, but if that's not what you're looking for, I understand.

Fixed. Nothing wrong with loud, but overkill-compressed is another thing.

I agree with Snapple, Cerrax, Splunkle.. "dynamic" sounds better than just purely "loud". (Although, I must admit, I'm a sucker for squeezing as much volume / impact from my own music as possible.. ). But, still. It's basically always a good idea to put in a limiter to catch inaudible peaks from for example drums, and then normalise afterwards. If you're doing it right, you can get your mix to sound significantly louder, without affecting tonality, because all you're "losing" is peaks that are perhaps microseconds long that our brains basically ignore anyway (psychoacoustics again).

lol compy love One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the way psychoacoustics, ie. the way our brains interpret sounds we hear, work in relation to amplitude. For example, the way we pick up different frequencies is not linear across the spectrum in relation to amplitude.. iirc, the louder something is, the more of a perceived "smile curve" our brains apply to it (which is why that kind of EQ is useful for making something sound louder). And generally speaking, we find that to sound better. So to paraphrase, a louder mix is going to sound better than a quieter, but otherwise identical mix, because of the way our ears / brains work.

New WIP up, GOTO project forum. END. I figured this would be noticed quicker and by more people.

I posted a WIP thread for the third (and *hopefully* final) incarnation of my Bye Bye American Pie mix over at the project forum, so everybody GO GO GO, c&c would be appreciated. Although, really, I don't have that much done yet, but still. ----------------- Editing a post doesn't count as new posts, does it? That's why I'm double posting, to make people notice that there's new info here. So, I got a new WIP up, url and comments at the project forum.

Brought a tear to my eye. It's beautiful... it's beautiful. I wish it was longer, with perhaps a solo guitar portion where it ends, and a final verse thereafter. I think the recording quality is great, it gives it a sort of professional live feel; high quality, but not ultra-slicked. The vocals fit the style perfectly, and the lyrics, to me, are very touching and intelligent. While the guitar is great all round, it's, perhaps ironically, really mainly supporting the vocals. I could really see this used as the background music in a montage in some movie, depicting the travails of a wayward son or whatnot.

In terms of data / math / digital audio, what it means is taking the square root of a given amount of samples (don't know how many) counting the average (ie. mean) of those, and then multiplying the number by itself (squaring it). This way large, quick fluctuations in the audio are averaged out, sort of like a slew generator in modular analogue synths.. or like a low pass filter, where it's taking out the the high frequencies (quick fluctuations).

I don't have much experience with recording acoustic guitar, but I own a PodXT. For electric guitar, I can definately recommend that; for acoustic, it works, but is overkill, really, and not specifically designed for that. You can plug it in via USB, negating the necessity to upgrade your soundcard for better recording quality. You obviously don't need to mic anything up, so that's another link in the audio chain that's not compromising your quality. You don't need an amp or a room to record it in, so background noise and acoustics are not an issue. The tones you can get out of it are, simply put, world class, if you have the right patches. You can download thousands off the net for free, or alternately tweak your own, which is simplicity itself (if you have any experience with guitar amps and effects) with the Line6 editing software. Of course, you can edit with the knobs and buttons on the unit itself, which is well designed and intuitive as well, but editing on the computer, you can see basically all parameters at once. I could go on and on (I love it to bits ), but you can check details over at www.line6.com and listen to some samples. Mind you, some of those samples are kind of under-representative of the power of the unit.

I couldn't remember all of the songs for which I have a remix in progress (basically none of which I'll ever finish), but here's stuff I've recently worked on: Doom2 - Barrels Of Fun (for the Doom2 project) Tales Of Phantasia - Raising A Curtain (for the Tales project) Mega Man 4 & 5 & 6 - A medley of the "get weapon" themes from all 3 And here's some stuff I intend to do in the future: Gradius 3 project - the whole soundtrack in a progressive rock / metal style Chrono Trigger - World Revolution in an epic symphonic metal style Blah, I can't think of other stuff worth mentioning.. but I might add some later.

Around 3:00 (like 2:55-3:30) you can kinda hear some bass in there.. I guess he switched patches on his PodXT Live or plugged into a different combo amp out of the several that he has with him at that clinic. However as far as I can tell, the thing was recorded with a handicam and judging by the sound quality overall like how his voice is kinda quiet and so on, there probably is no micing going on besides the built in mic in the handicam. So no wonder there's no bass in the audio in the video, yet you can hear from the way the tones distort, etc., that there is in the patches. Also, he switches patches in quick succession around 7:55 while playing, which is a dead give away that he's using the PodXT Live for tone, plugging it into one of those combos (or maybe even direct into the PA you can see at the left edge of stage at times). So basically, there's no way we can know what combination of modeled stomp box effect, preamp, cab and post-eq he's using; therefore the exact tone could be a combination of a medium gain preamp and a distortion stomp box or a high gain amp with maybe a little pre-boost.. and the post eq might be flat, or emphasising the high mids.. and so on. That all said.. trying to hear past the terrible audio quality.. I think eq wise he's left the bass as it is or maybe cut somewhere below 100hz. Sounds like some or possibly a lot of cut going on somewhere between 200-600 and a significant boost somewhere between 2-8khz. But again I stress that the amp, cab and stomp effects are a much greater contributer to the tone than the eq. Oh, btw, I have a PodXT, so if you absolutely *need* to know a combination of settings on that (amp, cab, eq, stomp etc.) that would produce a similar tone, I could work something out. Of course, I only have a cheap Squire Stratocaster, so that's, again, another variable in terms of tone. And one more note, I just noticed it reads 1 x 12 in red text in the upper right had corner around 1:00 which obviously is a reference to that he's using a 1x12 cab model on the PodXT for that tone or is plugging in to some 1x12 combo, so that's at least a starting point. The purpose of that clinic is apparently to demonstrate the effect of cabs on tone, so as he changes cabs (or combos, I guess he might be switching what combo he's plugged into for the different cabs / speakers since it fades in and out at times, so it's unclear), the red text changes to reflect what he's then using. He seems to be pimping Laney; all the combos and the one preamp / cab are all Laney products.

WTF, zircon, did your post used to say "better" instead of "significantly different"?! Because I saw that and was going to make this long post dissecting that statement and arguing that they weren't better, in fact they were, from a technical viewpoint, mostly worse but led to a distinctive sound that you no longer hear today. But I guess I won't.

The current system works like this: any given remix on the panel needs a total of 4 (right?) yes or no votes from the judges.. that means that not all judges have to vote on every song to decide what gets posted. If 4 judges vote, and they all give it a yes or no, the vote of the other 4 is not required. Only in cases where the vote is split are more votes required. The judges do this as a hobby, they don't (afaik) have any quotas or deadlines to meet, in terms of judging. Therefore, those judges that have less time, perhaps, to spend on judging, don't slow down the process, whereas they would if split into groups. Additionally, as the judging process is ultimately subjective, splitting the panel into smaller subsections would put an emphasis on the personal tastes and biases of the individuals. For example if the current 8 judges were split into two teams of 4, a given song might get 4 yes's from team 1 and 1 yes and 3 no's from team 2; team 2 wouldn't let it pass, while when all votes are tallied, like with the current system, it *would* have passed. I had some reasons for why it's not a good idea but I forgot / I got tired of this post so I'll stop here.

Sorry for going OT here, but concerning the 3 months thing.. since I haven't submitted any mixes since my ToP one, how long does it take these days for something to get on the panel? Back on topic, www.sitesled.com is a good service to host your files. You get 100 megs of storage, a url in the form of yourusername.sitesled.com, people downloading your files don't have to register, you can direct link to files.. it's great. No BS. All you have to do is register and make a simple html page that has some crap on it so that they don't delete your account.

Right! I guess that *was* deducible from your post. Although, I must add, it does have analog stereo out on 1/4 inch jacks, so you can use it as a preamp into your 0404, but if all you need is a box to add gain to your signals, it's way overspecified for that. For something like that you might want to look at the Behringer MIC200: http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHMIC200 It got a good review in Sound On Sound when it came out. Actually, I lie! Apparently it was the MIC100 model, but I guess the 200 is an incremental improvement over it? Read the review here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar04/articles/behringermic100.htm Ok, checked to see what the differences are; I guess the 200 has 16 different selectable preamp voicings, whereas the 100 has basically just the one.

I'd recommend the Line6 Toneport series, if the guitar you mention is of the electric variety; even if not, you might want to check it out. It's comprised of the UX1 and UX2 models, where the difference between the two is that, basically, the UX2 has more inputs and analog metering on the unit. They connect to your comp via USB, so you don't need to upgrade your soundcard. They are what are referred to as "modelling preamps", meaning that they have digital emulations (that sound damn good) of some vocal-oriented preamps, some guitar amps and a few bass amps. You can watch a promo video and stuff here: http://www.line6.com/toneport/ I haven't personally tried out either unit, but I have a Line6 PodXT, which has some of the same guitar amp models, and they're niiiice. Of course, if you meant acoustic guitar, then this might be a bit overkill for you. Sorry, I'm really tired, so stuff I wrote might be a bit off.