big giant circles

Sounds like a good deal, but I've already got T-Racks 3, Power Suite 5, and the BBE D82 Maximizer and so far they all seem to fulfill my needs so far. Otherwise, I'd be looking into this more seriously.

I was actually probably going to hold off of L4D2 for a while (was definitely going to get it, but I figured a break was in order) but I might be down for the 4-person buy. I've got a buddy who will go in on it too. Somebody start an official list. Mark me down for Me + 1.

Y'all must have super ears or something, because I mean, I'm just not hearing it. I wonder if they'd be down with letting us leave a link in the thread for a couple reasons: 1) The song really is awesome, and I know people would enjoy it regardless of how "identifiable" it is. And 2) I'm genuinely curious to see if other people can pick out the references. Maybe I'm just an idiot I mean, I'm not going to deny that I've completely overlooked stuff before, I'm sure we all have. I remember I really botched up that vote on that one Mario RPG track by Skryp. (In my own defense though, again, this is a soundtrack I already know really well, so I would think I would have been able to spot the connections much more easily).

Strangely enough, I don't really care for Crash Course all that much, actually. Am I the only person who feels this way?

Gonna shoot out a quickfire vote here. Source is completely new to me, so I looped it a handful of times, then looped your mix, then randomly switched back and forth. Arrangement connection seems to be intact, so job well done. Short and sweet track, production is above the bar. I wish the drums were punchier overall, but they're 'aight. Welcome aboard! YES

Dang. Sorry boys, I'm gonna go with my gut here, and say this is a no-go for me. I certainly know this OST pretty darn well, and honestly, without throwing it under the microscope and dissection knife, the only part that stands out as "identifiable and dominant" is the underwater theme at 2:23, which strangely enough, y'all didn't cite as a remixed theme, though I'm sure you meant to. [edit]Yes you did, I forgot how to read at some point last night[/edit] Make no mistake, this song is badass, and highly listenable, and I could easily see as a song in some actual game OST nowadays. It's just, man, remixes of source tunes of games that everybody knows shouldn't be this difficult to say "Oh hey, that's that theme from that Mario game!" Although I will say, the Underwater theme part really is awesome. Fantastic stylization there, for sure. Bummer. Really guys, no hate, it's an awesome track. Just not an obvious remix.

haha, nice. Well, I realize the genre calls for the music to be a little on the dirty side, but this mix is pretty sloppy. We try not to (well I don't anyway) require absolute perfection or full-out pro-quality production, but this is well below our standard as far as that goes. If you're new to mixing, that's cool, we all start out that way, don't be afraid to ask for some help! So this is a cool track for this style, and you've definitely got better fingers than mine on the guitar, but here's the low-down. Don't mean to come across as harsh, just straight forward. -The drums are burried. -The intonation of the guitar (power chords especially) is pretty bad. -Aside from the solo, the track is super repetitive. Needs more interpretation. -Lots and lots of conflicting notes/chords between the lead and rhythm. Keep at it, work on that production! NO

So I really like the laid back, ambient, mellow kind of approach. I thought there were some really beautiful parts in this remix. I especially liked when the guitar and strings were layered together at ~1:50, and the subtle fx hits here and there. Though it's a bit short, I'm cool with the arrangement. The ultimate flaws to this mix are that the mix is very thin--there's no bottom end to speak of at all, and it's way too quiet. You've got a lot of unused headroom. Not that this needs to be like LOOOOUD, but you definitely could have boosted the master volume. Drums could stand to be a little more interesting, and mixed a little louder as well. It wasn't the dealbreaker, but some of the short synth presets seemed a bit out of place. Cool take on this theme though, wouldn't mind if you resubmitted this one. NO

that's exactly the case here, actually the one's we're talking about are USB interfaces, and it's usually a 3 step process: 1)install the drivers that come with the interface 2)tell windows to use the interface as it's default sound device (in the control panel > sound) 3)tell fruity loops to use your new sound card's ASIO drivers. that's it. based on how you said you're going to be using it, I'd say the Lexicon Alpha, the Tascam US-122, or the Audiogram 3 would be fine. The Lexicon is cheapest.

Yeah, not a bad cover, and I like how you fleshed it out and made the overall soundscape beefier and darker. Not a bad job on the production, either. Drums are pretty punchy, and there's lots of NIN/Quake-ish dirt and grit on here, very evil sounding. Man, I love the textures! I'll go so far as to say this blows the original out of the water. ...Unfortunately, the source consists of about 1 minute of melody and 4 minutes of dark pad texture. Your mix pretty well follows suite, so there's not really any real interpretation to be detected, aside from the upgraded textures and production. Bummer. I'd love to hear you cover a more melodic source tune though, I really enjoyed this! NO

From an email I got: This is a really great deal, for those of you who own EZDrummer, or Superior Drummer 2.0!

See, my beef with the stop-watch technique is that it's not fair to stuff like, the build up to the melody drop. That stuff is kind of a necessity for setting up the remix, and besides, it's basically just the underlying chords, which I think are fair to count as remixed source. Maybe Larry feels the way he does because he's a listener judge, I'm not sure. Unlike that other FF4 mix where I really tried and tried to recognize enough of the remix, this one manages to sound much more identifiable and recognizable to me, and I think that's enough. Cool transitions and fx, too. Nice work, fellas. YES

This is baller. I love the analog synths. Screw you guys, I'm going home. YES

Yeah, quite the pickle here, this one. It's very Cave Story-ish indeed, I can definitely hear the influences of the source tunes. In short though, it's primarily five minutes' worth of music built around a couple simple sine riffs. The drums are cool for atmosphere, as is the rain FX, but I'm not convinced this song should have been 5 minutes. Great mood music, but not entirely captivating as a stand-alone piece. I'd sure love to hear this in game, though! Keep at it, bro! NO

Not sure if stores are going to carry the upgrade or not. Physically in store, that is. I ordered mine from Zzounds. (use the affiliate link) Meteo, some of the patches have round robins, some don't. They usually specify in the patch title.

Awesome pics, Cain!

Call a Guitar Center, as for an AM, and ask them to do a chain search for it. If they find one, ask if they can do a "drop ship" to your house, because that item is no longer available on the website since it's discontinued. Zeph, are you upgrading or buing it outright? Also, yeah, the Canada thing is understandable. What can ya do, eh? GG anyway

Well, no, technically no one NEEDS one, but heck, if he's willing and able, let's not steer him away from it. Besides, ASIO4ALL is temperamental, and if he just had a designated soundcard he wouldn't have to worry about it. What's a good audio interface you ask? Well, what are you looking to spend? The cheapest ones run somewhere ~$100, but if you ever plan on recording with a microphone, I'd recommend spending at least $130-150 and getting one that has phantom power built in. Check out stuff like the Lexicon Lambda, the Tascam US-144, the Yamaha Audiogram 6, or the M-Audio MobilePre.. Zzounds is a good place to look, they usually have the lowest prices, and if not, they'll pricematch. Plus free shipping (except to NJ), and OCR gets a small commission if you buy from them using that link. Woo! Not sure how much you know about external soundcards already, but if you're new to it, then buying one of these would give you: 1)preamps 2)inputs for 1/4" and XLR (microphone) 3)outputs for headphones and studio monitors 4)designated ASIO drivers tell us about your budget, and whether or not you'd be recording anything like guitar/voice in the future and we can help steer you in the right direction.

Same for me, been busy, but I shall not forsake thee, brother!

Well, the downright easiest solution is to just actually buy an audio interface (soundcard) that uses its own ASIO drivers. Asio4all SHOULD work, but it can be a bit wonky sometimes for seemingly no reason.

As far as I know, no. The price is static. And again, to be fair, while MOTU is decent, and I'm sure the demos/samples you've heard sound good, they're often professionally arranged, and you usually find achieving the same results is more difficult than you imagined. Also, bear in mind that stuff like MOTU and Philharmonik are kind of old/dated. I don't think either incorporates round robins, or at least if they do, then not very well. Plus, MOTU symphonic does not have loop points on their samples, so all your sustained patches have an ending point, so in some cases, you can't sustain a note as long as you might need to. Also, look at the size of the library. More samples = more realism (usually). MOTU is like, I can't remember, 7 or so GB while Kontakt or QLSO or Vienna are like 30+. You seem to be overly concerned with using your computer's resources. While I appreciate where you're coming from, you're just going to have to learn to work around this issue. Your computer is fine. If you start to run out of memory, just bounce your tracks. This is nothing new. All kinds of remixers/composers deal with this constantly, so just learn to be smart with your plugins. If you expect to be able to have 3 of every single plugin you own open, with a crapload of processing, then you're going to have to drop about 10,000+ on a super computer.

haha, I do plenty of things by halves. But I am pretty passionate/excited about music gear. And I enjoy giving advice on the subject.

Yes. Your MOTU instrument should come with an iLok with the code already on it. You can just register that with your iLok account, and put any other licenses on it. But like Andy's saying, if you want to avoid iLoks, just go for Komplete 6. It's pretty well rounded and reasonably priced. At any rate, remember to use the zzounds affiliate link. Lowest price, free shipping, no tax, all that. Link - http://www.zzounds.com/a--925434