Yoozer

With actually using ASIO that shouldn't be above 10ms. And only if you use FL Studio? Don't have any virus scanners or spyware stuff running on the background? If so, get rid of that crap, or make 2 separate installs, one for music and one for your other stuff. Here's free advice: see which people you know are dumping their computer because they're too slow (usually filled to the brim with spyware or viruses). This happens more often than you think. Ask if you can have it. Make a clean install, done.

Of course, that happens if your upload sucks . Are you trying to do on-line tutorials? If so, LogMeIn has a subscription that makes sure sound on one side is also heard on the other.

You have gulped down the RIAA kool-aid, it's copyright infringement. They make excuses because taking responsibility is not the hip thing to do. We'll all cheap and lazy because we use computers to play the music for us. Getting any software cracked isn't easy by the way. No, because that means the original owner of the device can no longer use it. You walk in the music store, whip out a 3-dimensional molecular replicator, and clone the device. Then you take the clone and walk out. Stealing implies deprivation of property. Infringement implies loss of potential income. In the case of stealing you have to deal with criminal law. In the case of copyright infringement, it's civil law, unless you are part of a criminal organisation that does CD duplication with a complete plant. Understand the distinction, because it's important. It does not provide any loopholes other than the fact that the first can get your home raided and searched, and the second gets you a lawsuit. Yes, that I agree with. People dump their computers after a year because they're too slow. Ask 'm if you can have it, do a reinstall, presto: free hardware.

http://www.fxfreeze.com/ Or maybe you need ASIO? Then there's no other option.

Question 1: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10 Question 2: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10 Fail for using the wrong forum and for using the word "moar". Question 3: yes, we're all psychics and we know exactly what's wrong with your FL Studio or what you're trying to do. Read the Fine manual, use the Fantastic search, and return only after you've done so. in other words, give us some more information

The artist was helped the first time someone else bought it new. Absolute nonsense, really. Making music has never ever been cheaper. Especially if you keep in mind the value of the dollar now and the value of it back then. Freeware already can give you 4 fully polyphonic subtractive synthesizers - if you saw what a Minimoog (monophonic) cost new - those $1495 in 1970 dollars would be more than $8000 now. Samplers just weren't even -thinkable- for anyone before the E-mu Emulator and the Ensoniq Mirage, because the Fairlight and Synclavier cost tens of thousands of dollars back then. Even Mark Snow (composer X-files tune) had to take out a loan to get one. That's because it isn't; it's copyright infringement. Doesn't have such a nice ring to it, but is legally correct.

Which nicely demonstrates my point about your ban meaning no loss of value. Your attitude (which is shared by many) forces me (and others) to pay more for the same software, because the only thing companies can think of to combat the loss is to jack up the prices. You may now pat yourself on the back for this. ...and talking about this shit in public remains fucking stupid. You're not doing anything you can take pride in.

And nothing of value was lost, because casually mentioning or even bragging about copyright infringement on a public forum is nothing short of fucking stupid. It happens. No, we won't tell you how to get it, figure that out yourself. No, we won't tell you how to use it, because downloading means figuring that out yourself; that's fair enough, don't you think? If you're not stupid and you don't give up or even buy a book - which is a small cost compared to the actual program - you can figure it out and get good at it. Then, when you either get a job, earn money using it or whatever, you buy it. Everyone happy. Nobody likes the clueless idiot doing his best to stay idiot and asking for having their hand held. If you can't survive that, forget surviving in the world of music. Don't mention it; that won't make it go away but it'll also not make any self-righteous assholes appear complaining about fat cat companies (except Waves, but there's lots of better alternatives for that, so you inflict it on yourself). Said assholes would most likely cry about injustice if I took their album and spread it around instead of paying for it, but the concept's not that different.

A generator is a software synthesizer (stupid hijack of the term, they just should've used the word "softsynth"). With soundfonts, you're off better if you use them for what they do - e.g. mimicking realistic instruments or special purpose - like providing a different sound per key. Even then, that's a job DirectWave can do, too. The main difference is that a soundfont uses a sample - a digital recording of any sound you can think of - while a synthesizer uses something like a mathematical formula. This makes it easier to smoothly change the sound over time. For regular synth sounds, it makes more sense to just use an actual synthesizer, since you have way more control over the sound. Lots of 'm are free, too. It doesn't stop at those you get with FL - see http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=massive and http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=fm8 (two of my favorites in the payware category). You could try something like http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/ to start with. For soundfonts, the seller should either have a demo of sorts, demonstrating the capabilities, or a limited selection which you can download and use. If that's not available, don't bother if it's not free. Besides soundfonts, check out the discount bin sample CDs. Often they contain a lot of usable and good material; generally of better quality than homebrewn stuff (which soundfonts generally are).

It might've been the laptop's soundcard - quality of the D/A converters and the clock. A soundcard uses a clock to play back music - one that ticks at 44khz. Clock accuracy pretty much depends on how much money you pour into it, so do D/A converters, and if the speakers are tiny and crappy anyway, why bother using expensive stuff? tl;dr version: laptops sound like shit anyway, so don't bother doing anything special for those, get good monitor speakers for your desktop and master on them.

Rather, get the Q9450 - it's just a little bit more. Also, get an X38 motherboard. Quad is not a problem; audio is trivial to parallelize (games not so much). Consider the Audiophile 192 instead of the 2496. The 1010LT is also an older card - I don't know if M-Audio will announce something new in a week or 2 with the Musikmesse. But that's not necessarily the job for the soundcard since USB MIDI interfaces are really cheap and come with more ports . I'm not a fan of the RCA (cinch) inputs. I'd rather consider a good mixer using 2 good stereo outputs or a 19" rack with all the inputs instead of having it dangle behind the computer, which isn't the prettiest place anyway with all the electric interference.

no guys it was ewoks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightsaber#Sound

There are several ways to handle this. A cheap way is to record yourself banging on pans and pots in the kitchen, slow that down a lot, filter the higher frequencies out with an EQ and add reverb; then fade it in. Layer a set of different "drumsessions" if you have to. This is a similar question most sound effects people are faced with; you want to let people hear something they've not heard before, so you must use something they know - but make it different. The droning "bomber sounds" are also popular for fortresses, and those are relatively easy to make, but see if you can use the above. Whatever sounds better. Sometimes you can't answer that question without trying either route. If by wigging out you mean "stuttering, popping and clicking", then it's your sound card. Actually, FL Studio is already pretty cheap; so is a half-decent soundcard (E-mu 0404 or M-Audio Audiophile 2496, especially secondhand); you eventually will run into a bottom line to spend. Even if you're not serious, a proper soundcard and controller keyboard will make it a joy to use, and they're usually easy to sell again with not much of a loss.

Is the demo mp3 I posted what you're looking for or does it miss the mark?

Low filter cutoff, high envelope > filter you mean .

Any VST that can have its LFO speed adjusted by its envelope. Sure, you can do it manually too, but automatically is nicer. Then you route the LFO to the pitch. Choose a sawtooth wave (downwards); even better is exponential down. Add reverb, filter lower frequencies, result: SHOOP DA WOOP

Bandpass equalizer, add a bit of noise and crackle. http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/

Protip 1): convert your .wav files to .mp3 files with RazorLAME Protip 2): put all of these in one single .zip file and number them, it's a lot more convenient. The first sound was not a single sound like the piano is; it's a layer cake of several sounds; a few of 'm are detuned to -5 or +7 semitones. It does, but that's not a crime; better would've been an E-D-E-D B-A-B-A progression since the sound is a fifth of itself already. And this is why theory is important, it cuts down down on the hunting and pecking. The lazy route: Spectrasonics Atmosphere. The busy route: start resampling. That's not it. It sounds weird because the Egyption mp3 demos are completely dry - without any effects - and the sounds lack balance. It's like they're all trying to be equally loud. Dynamics - it's not only just plonking a compressor on something, it's also playing instruments with different volumes. Try to keep the velocities variable instead of all cranked up to 127.

The words "mixing" and "remixing" are not completely interchangeable.

No, because software does not care what kind of music you make on it. The best synths are never included in the program. Seriously, just see most of those as things that give you a taste of what's out there and to get you started. Truly realistic guitars are those you play yourself. Ditto. Now that can be helped. That's not a problem. It just means no ProTools, no Logic and no Digital Performer. Any program that can handle them. Just not every program uses notation; most of them assume that you have a MIDI keyboard controller hooked up to them. Notation is just in most cases a nice extra to have. If you specifically want to compose using notation, there's http://www.finalemusic.com/Finale/features/default.aspx - but it will only handle specific VST plugins.

Yes. Usually you don't just duplicate the same track because then you get this artifical phasing effect because frequencies cancel eachother out. ... don't do it, because that's when you get the artificial phasing effect. Layering is first and foremost attractive when you have either different takes (play guitar 3 times, put that on top of eachother) or different instruments (the ultimate new-age combination is a piano + strings, it oozes sugar). For layering stuff quickly the Combinator was invented. also, really great example of layering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBuom7juPRg http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun05/articles/classictracks.htm 3 guys singing the same note, recorded over and over again for each note. The engineer used the faders of the mixing desk to control volume.

If you want to use 7.1 get a soundcard with 8 outputs and see if this can be run in 7.1 mode (requires 7 speakers and a sub, naturally, not necessarily 1 amplifier to handle it all). While making surround is really cool, my proposal to InGen about adding 6 ears to our heads and 1 big one on our backs hasn't gone through yet.

Money is -always- an issue . Then you must've read somewhere too that what you use doesn't matter as much as how you use it. Any software can handle VST plugins (well, except Reason of course), so the difference is mainly in the workflow. The keyboards with the nice samples either 1) don't have USB or 2) use it only for MIDI information; e.g. no sound is transfered to the computer, only the notes you play. Reason or FL catches these and sends them further to the VST instrument (or the Reason rack instrument). Depends entirely on what you're used to working with. It won't make something sound better automatically, but sometimes it's very nice to just practice without a computer screen. What's your background in terms of musical instruments? That could help us give you advice. Oh, sure you are - "remixing" is nothing more than making music, nothing more, nothing less. The only difference is that you don't have to start from scratch with a melody or musical idea .

I'm pretty damn impressed that FL handles this stuff - and even more with the Taylor/composite linear function stuff you guys thought of to solve this (the linear option is indeed better and requires less math wizardry). Bravo

If you want something cheap, you could as well take a small mixing desk. Those have preamps too - and equalizers.