Yoozer

Why do it the hard way? http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb08/articles/sonar_0208.htm That's the advantage and the curse of sidechaining. The curse is that everyone's been overusing it to death. The advantage is that people are flooded with clueless HOW DO I SIDECHAIN PLZ questions, so "xxx sidechain" gives you all the results you want (substitute xxx with your sequencing software). FL's controller structure is special; I don't think there's an equivalent in other sequencers.

EnergyXT is really really cheap and not a tracker.

Welcome to sidechain compression, where you can use the kick to push away the bass, or compression, where both signals are cut down in volume so they fit in.

Don't stretch, loop. It might help us if you're telling what software you use and what kind of project you're doing; any softsampler has the option to loop.

welcome to tiered pricing

It's done to make you buy Logic Express. Not lame, marketing.

Lie, I think you're overcomplicating things.

I do understand. There's no specific software for sound design in that sense. The closest you'd get would be software that supports full surround so you can pan the sound effects around the speakers, but if you're not dealing with those kind of things, sound design is a matter of layering, panning, automating, cutting up, etc. Audacity's capability to layer can already do this for you; it's just that using synthesizers is going to be easier in a sequencer instead of just a wave editor. http://theheartcore.com/megathread/future_jet_engine.mp3 was done with a few synthesizers in Live. http://theheartcore.com/music/kirbyfx.mp3 was done by resampling an audio track in Live and putting it back in Simpler (Live's sampler) again. That good enough? There's no reason to not use FL Studio for this unless the workflow is holding you back. It's just that merging, resampling, dealing with audio tracks that don't fit in patterns works better for me in Live. Orchestra means an orchestral sample library. Rock means you playing guitars. Electro means building patterns with drumcomputers.

Earlier in this thread...

Market share. Garageband is the gateway drug to Logic. When you run into GBs limitations, you're supposed to look into either Express or Pro. Using it does not make you a newbie; it's always the result that counts.

Haha, what? Audacity does a perfectly fine job of slowing stuff down. That's probably the worst comparison ever. Any audio software is hard to learn because it's an extensive tool that depends on a certain philosophy and a set of conventions. It depends a bit on which version of Cubase you have, but what you have to keep in mind is that people who use Cubase have been either using it since it came out on the Atari or have enough studio experience to understand the jargon used. Furthermore, droves of people claim they want to switch to Cubase because it's more professional or whatever misguided idea they have after working for a year in (the perfectly capable) FL Studio. Then their work sucks for 6 months because they've got to re-learn everything, and they either return after a short while or push on. I myself have dumped Cubase in favor of Ableton Live. This is in no way a guarantee that Ableton Live is going to work better for you, but they've got a fully function 14-day demo on the site so try it out yourself. If it's SX3 you have, I understand the pain; Ableton's a lot faster. Then hire people or convince 'm to make music for your game. You're not going to crank out absolute amazingness in a short timeframe if that's what you have in mind. There's no device that makes things magically awesome for you. There are however a number of pretty expensive software sample libraries that are pretty awesome by themselves. Spectrasonics Atmosphere and ReFX Nexus come to mind. http://refx.com/?lang=en&page=products/nexus/expansions

For pure synthetic drum sounds, there's Waldorf Attack, which is part of a (relatively cheap) bundle (you get PPG 2.V with it, and the D-Pole filter). http://www.e-phonic.com/plugins/drumatic3.php and http://www.e-phonic.com/plugins/drumatic_ve.php might do the job for you, too. The other route is to take a relatively advanced synthesizer (you need lots of modulation routings and adjustable envelope curves) and construct each drum sound separately (which is kind of a black art in itself).

No, because it's rather expensive for its complexity (though it sounds pretty good). Rob Papen's Predator would probably be a better choice (and more versatile). Sylenth1 has as main advantage that each oscillator can go into unison mode itself, and it's got a pretty good bandwidth and nicer filters than Synth1. As for panning: you take like 4 channels of Synth1 that each have the same patch (you probably want to switch off effects) - each detuned a bit (consider -5 -15 and +5 +15). You pan the -5 and +15 hard left and the +5 and - 15 hard right. Then you put an EQ on the -5 and +5 and take away a bit of low and boost a bit of mid-high. There's a zillion combinations thinkable. By spreading it like that you could get more depth in your sound than mere unison spread on a pair of oscillators would get.

There's an entire range of drum machines that can be called "retro" - do you mean synthetic of sample-based? 70's gives you synthetic (CR. 80's gives you TR909/808/606 for synthetic, TR707, E-mu Drumulator and Linn Drum for sample-based. Instead of free, get cheap - http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/sp1200.html - they're recorded at far higher quality than any free drum kits floating around on the 'net. Just use ShortCircuit to load 'm up in, which is free. MIDI does not make any sound. It is to audio what sheet music is to a CD - it tells you what to play, not how it sounds. The soundcard in your computer has the so-called General MIDI soundset (which is also sample-based).

Instead of just layering, consider including panning and EQ. Try Sylenth1. It's the typical JP8000/Virus supersaw, nothing special.

Then you could try to tackle the resynthesizer/analyzer in something like Csound, which could spew out a list of the harmonics you are supposed to use and approximations to the envelope. Educational for sure .

In other words, you're making an additive synthesizer. A lot of those have a resynthesizer, too - simply analyze the envelope for each harmonic, and then try to build a best-fit envelope curve. ADSR alone might be too lacking - a multipoint envelope would probably be of more help. Cameleon 5000 and Morphine can both do this. And like zircon says, since you can play the instrument in several ways, it's different every time.

http://narrat1ve.com/images/WTPA_095_vs_The_Knife.mpg on http://www.narrat1ve.com/LejendaryAdventures.html (ctrl+f "video"). Yeah, the site design could be a bit more systematic, but hey.

http://narrat1ve.com/ Was this posted already? It's pretty unique for what it does .

No, you actually do.

As I said, a VST plugin without an interface gets one that's built by default by the host application (Mixcraft, in your case). A plugin "exposes" parameters; in this case, OscKind, Volume, etc. Generally, a software synthesizer's GUI will have specialized controls for these parameters - e.g. a rotary knob with a few positions for the oscillator waveform (or even a set of radio buttons), a rotary knob for volume, or a slider for attack/decay etc. All that a GUI does is that it tells those parameters to change to a certain value. When there is no information about the GUI to be had, the VST format can still expose all available parameters. In the case of 8bit, those are 9 parameters. Since the application doesn't know what specialized controls to use (and it's not going to make guesses), all of 'm are turned into sliders. Now, you see that 9 controls fit on the screen just fine. Imagine having 60 of 'm - you get an awfully long block of sliders that all look the same. That would not fit on your screen, but that problem is not the case here. I use Ableton Live myself, and I can type; in the screenshot of GB in my link, you see the textboxes next to the sliders.

Mixcraft, I'd guess. Garageband and Ableton Live both allow you to directly type in the actual values (albeit that my guess is that it will snap to the nearest one). I don't know if Reaper allows you to type in the values. However, the plugin lacks an actual interface, so the VST plugin technology generates one for you. A very boring GUI, but functional as long as there are less than 16 parameters or so - if your screen isn't big enough, you're out of luck. That's what happens here.

Try http://resonantvibes.com/shop/sample/19-thomas-pentons-complete-essential-series or alternatively, http://www.vengeance-sound.com/eng/DetailsVEC3.html (or any of its siblings for electro/minimal)

Yes, you need an amp, and the cable advice is correct, too. Any hi-fi component amp could do the job provided that you don't screw up the impedance - I've been using an Akai hi-fi amp when I still had my Alesis Monitor One MKIIs. As for sounding "good" - well, monitors are supposed to sound "honest", first . The condition of these (the centers of woofers aren't supposed to go inside like that, it ruins the cone) doesn't really shout audiophile studio sound to me, though. You were doing fine, and then came .

I don't think there are other samplers, really? Echo is easy - it's simply a matter of repeating the sound again at a lower volume, which is trivial with a tracker (or for that matter, with any sequencer) - older synths had a "MIDI delay" trick which simply played the note again at a lower velocity (the speed you hit the key with, generally linked to volume). Reverb is trickier, but what one can do is make 2 versions of the sample - one "dry" and one recorded through outboard reverb. Again, a reverb tail can be simulated by controlling the volume over time with an envelope, so what you need is the diffused and filtered version of the sound. Keep in mind that vintage machines didn't blow up (so probably no Moog) until the mid-nineties, and even then. It's also easy to draw/generate a basic waveform like those found in a subtractive synthesizer; you only have to calculate it once and leave the transposing to the sampling engine; then you control the volume during the time with an envelope. Not sure what you mean with this. A tracker is a combination of a sequencer and a (basic) sampler. In most trackers, you're allowed to draw your own waveforms, which is mostly useful if you want to use single-cycle waveforms. It's not that hard to write an offline software synthesizer - think something like CSound, only homebrew - to generate certain synthetic waveforms. When it's turned into a sample, it's trivial to play in real time; generating it in real time was the problem. Not necessarily, since most newer trackers have a higher fidelity. Older ones (FastTracker, ScreamTracker 3 and Impulse Tracker) load up low-fidelity (mono, 22khz, 8-bit) waveforms and use their own quick & dirty software mixing/transposition algorithm - and that's what gives the sound its character.