A bunch of questions I need answered. ;D

[Nicholestien]

1. If you have a good soundcard, is there anything besides headphones and good speakers that can enhance the audio? My uncle who I recently met for the first time hooked me up with this sound card called "Xi_Fi Elite Pro." I still havn't got ahold of some good headphones, though. Can you guys recommend to me some good headphones and anything else that would enhance my listening expierance so I can truly grasp teh audio processing?

2. Can you master in Cool Edit Pro? or at least get some decent balance out of your music? I don't see many topics concerning Cool Edit pro, but I have found it to be the most powerful tool of it's kind. I havn't tried many good programs. My current set up is that I use melody assistant to create and idea of the remix and mess with midi files. Then I use Reason to make the song. Then I use Cool Edit pro to balance it all out. But ever since I got my Xi_Fi sound card, the music I once thought sounded balanced, was a total mess. =| "not completely a mess, but I could hear alot of things wrong with it"

3. What are the foundations of Music Remixing? By this I mean, set ups. I keep hearing about these two programs called "pro logic" and "Cubase" and all I ever hear about them is that they are truley powerful. I don't see how this is possible, mixing music with software alone can only go so far right? Also, I went to cubase website, and it seems I can't find the right software, they got tons of software there, can someone tell me the most pivital ones?

4. What are monitors?

5. How do you make the interpretation that you hear, the one that everyone else hears? I've learned that when making music with alot of Synthesized instruments, and play it back, you can hear it in so many ways, I want my favorite "way" to stick out. I don't know how to do this though. I hope you guys understand what I'm trying to say, I have very difficult time putting it into context. =(

Thanks alot in advanced. I'm saying this because I have a tendency to not respond to topics and I that can come of as rude if I don't thank people for there help.

you probably heard this from alot of people, but I'm really in love with music, I'm addicted, I just go to certain places in real life, like a nice park, and start making music out the top of my head, It wasn't only untill recently that I started actually trying to create my music for others to listen to. I havn't even begun to create the songs I like most. I'm just creating a bunch of sucky songs lately for the sole purpose of learning how to process audio. When I make the stuff I can consider good I want to do it good. Hopefully you guys can give me a hand. Summer break is coming up, and I'm dedicating it entirely to learning music.

thx,

Jeffrey Gutierrez

[Splunkle]

1) Errrr... Generally, when we are making music, we don't want to enhance the audio at all, instead, we want it as "true" as possible. The end result, the music will sound different for different set ups, so we want a set-up which is as neutral as possible, so we can hear as many possible flaws in the music and correct them. Thats something that distinguishes consumer sound gear from pro gear - the consumer ones will try to make it sound good, but the pro ones will try to render it as accurately as possible. IIRC, the X-fi series are all consumer cards - don't worry just yet, most people start on consumer stuff (hell, I started mixing with my onboard soundcard) but upgrade to shinier stuff as they get better and better. As for Headphones and the like, I think we have a sticky all about that buisness...

2) Never used Cool Edit Pro, so can't help you there. A lot of people have used the free Audacity to great effect, though. As for the unbalenced music - well, maybe your X-fi is more like a pro card than I thought =P. You'll get better at mastering with practice - don't worry about it too much. Though, I thought reason had some awesome mastering stuff built in, so why are you using Cool Edit to do that?

3) Logic and Cubase are both DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation or somesuch). Both are very powerful, though logic is Mac only. There is also Sonar, and thats the big 3 DAWs. There are a bunch of similar products, like FL studio and whatnot. Most have demos, so see if you can grab some of them to try out, and see what you like.

4) Monitors refers both to the screens that display video output of your computer, and speakers specifically designed to render audio accurately. This does get somewhat confusing, having the one word refer to video display device and speaker, but to be fair, they both allow you to monitor the output, so it does make sense.

5) I honestly don't know what you are saying here.

As a final note, don't worry if your first pieces suck. Everyone starts off crap. Then, they eventually write something good, with gets them all excited to write something better, and so on and so on. So just keep at it, and you'll get better and better!

[Yoozer]

1. If you have a good soundcard, is there anything besides headphones and good speakers that can enhance the audio? My uncle who I recently met for the first time hooked me up with this sound card called "Xi_Fi Elite Pro."

That's the X-Fi and it's a soundcard better suited for games and watching movies than music production. Anyway, the X-Fi has a feature called the "Crystalizer" which might be the cause of things sounding better, and you'd do well to just switch it off, because it polishes up the music a bit. Most others don't have this polish, so if it sounds good on your system, it may sound like crap on someone else's.

2. Can you master in Cool Edit Pro?

Anything that allows you to use a multiband compressor and EQ (preferably plugins so you're not tied to what you get with CEP) can be used for mastering. However, your first task is to get as much of it right in the mix itself; you can't polish a turd.

3. What are the foundations of Music Remixing? By this I mean, set ups. I keep hearing about these two programs called "pro logic" and "Cubase"

That's Logic Pro and Cubase, and they have nothing to do with remixing whatsoever, as what you make it with doesn't matter, the end result does. Ableton Live, FL Studio, Project 5, Digital Performer - all have a certain philosophy and you should pick the one you can work the most comfortably with.

I don't see how this is possible, mixing music with software alone can only go so far right?

Uh what

There's a lot you can do with software, but there's things that are easier to do with real-life instruments.

Also, I went to cubase website, and it seems I can't find the right software, they got tons of software there, can someone tell me the most pivital ones?

Cubase doesn't offer a trial version; you get a "light" version with reduced functionality if you buy certain hardware. This simply means you'll have to try it out at your local music store if that's possible, but a better question would be if you'd need Cubase at all.

4. What are monitors?

Monitors are speakers that attempt to give a neutral image of the music, so that if you mix it so it sounds good on them, it'll sound good on most people's sets. If you'd mix using a walkman headphone with bass boost it might sound fine on that, but it'll sound like crap on everyone else's sets.

5. How do you make the interpretation that you hear, the one that everyone else hears? I've learned that when making music with alot of Synthesized instruments, and play it back, you can hear it in so many ways, I want my favorite "way" to stick out. I don't know how to do this though. I hope you guys understand what I'm trying to say, I have very difficult time putting it into context. =(

I think an example would be helpful here. Upload a piece of what you did (putfile.com or whatever free filehost you can find) and then try again.

Your questions a little bit disjointed. You shouldn't bother with mastering until you have a production environment of sorts and are familiar with how it works.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I don't see how this is possible, mixing music with software alone can only go so far right?

A good chunk of the mixes on this site (including a lot of really top-notch stuff) was done entirely with software. There are definitely a few things you can do with real instruments that are virtually impossible with software, but there are also a ton of things you can do with software that are flat out impossible on real instruments.

[Nicholestien]

A good chunk of the mixes on this site (including a lot of really top-notch stuff) was done entirely with software. There are definitely a few things you can do with real instruments that are virtually impossible with software, but there are also a ton of things you can do with software that are flat out impossible on real instruments.

Can you point out some of those?

[dannthr]

A digital audio workstation (DAW) is only one cog in the music making machine. A DAW will assist you in audio recording, editing, and mixing and will facilitate MIDI recording, playback, editing, etc. Ideally it will be an environment that allows many different plug-ins and will offer a lot of different features, but it's only one part of the whole.

What are your goals? What do you want to be able to do and how much money are you willing to spend to make it happen?

Understanding the kind of money you have to work with and what your specific goals are music-wise will help us help you decide what kind of gear is appropriate for your needs.