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Post by johneppstein on Sept 9, 2019 12:13:28 GMT -6
While i don’t completely disagree-ive long complained about the nature of big bright visually stimulating screens in front of the creative’s face nearly full time....but, your advice for someone looking to make their DAW is don't use a computer? Is your advice still the same when that person is also a one man band? You just multiplied the cost of instruments by a power of 20. My feeling us that simply using a DAW introduces a lot of needless complication that you don't get with an analog setup. Yeah, you end up with more gear but each piece only has one function, has all the controls on the front in plain sight, and is right there when you reach for it.
Also, analog rigs, unless they're huge, tend to limit your "choices" which I feel is generally a good thing. "Choices" equal distractions. And DAWs tend to make you think about the computer instead of concentrating on the music, unless you restrict the computer to functioning as a simple recording device
I don't think it makes any difference if the person is a one man band, except maybe that you have fewer people to argue with.
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Post by chessparov on Sept 9, 2019 15:03:07 GMT -6
Yes, can be "maybe" if you're "Sybil minded". Chris
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Post by Guitar on Sept 15, 2019 20:28:41 GMT -6
I agree with John on this one. Computers aren't fun. But if you treat them right they can sound like the best thing you ever heard in your life. You can also buy a Sound Devices recorder if you want to "go outside" and work like tape. They sound incredible and they are versatile. There's a new MixPre revision that just came out. If you can poke a small touch screen (good vision, hand accuracy) they are very easy to use. "Menu Diving" is relatively painless.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 16, 2019 1:20:51 GMT -6
I agree with John on this one. Computers aren't fun. But if you treat them right they can sound like the best thing you ever heard in your life. You can also buy a Sound Devices recorder if you want to "go outside" and work like tape. They sound incredible and they are versatile. There's a new MixPre revision that just came out. If you can poke a small touch screen (good vision, hand accuracy) they are very easy to use. "Menu Diving" is relatively painless. I beg to differ that "computers are the best thing you heard in your life" - if that were true there yould be no market for "tape sim" plugins.
I also disagree that touch screens (except maybe huge one like the Raven, which I have not tried personally) make good control devices. They're imprecise, suffer from quantizing problems that limit resolution, and if you have even the slightest motor problems - as I do, I have slight tremors in my right hand that make using anything requiring precise mouse control a near impossibility*, at best very difficult and time consumiong - it makes precise work very slow and difficult, if not impossible.
And I DETEST nested menus.
I have none of those problems with a full console and outboard.Except making posters, of course...
I would really like a Radar if I could afford one......
* - which have all but destroyed my ability to make band posters and album art.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 16, 2019 1:35:04 GMT -6
RADAR is a "DAW" now. They use off the shelf pc's with some fancy look. I am sure they are extremely good but I haven't touched or heard one to my own knowledge. You could steal the software if you're some kind of hacking genius but you would have to send a really expensive gift to the people who design them and put them together. They probably solder off and physically destroy the networking ports if I had to guess. If the hard drive is easy enough to remove and you know what add-on cards are compatible with the program you could go for it. I'm not a real hacker though and I pay for almost all of my software now. I bet the old ones are freaking incredible though if you can find a good one in working shape. Sound Devices makes recorders with bigger touch screens but they are very, very, very expensive and usually reserved for big budget hollywood sound pros. I personally think the Mix Pre has a great sounding pre/ADC. It's a little dark and thick, and super quiet, so it's very flattering to vocals (not surprising) and harsh bright noises as well. The DAC is good on headphones but it doesn't make a very good "interface" in the sense of using incredible speakers in a treated room. You can work damn fast with those things too. There is an "easy" mode for people who can't poke the little screen. Sturdy as hell, impressive industrial design, just took mine out to the beach. The screen is very well implemented and seems sturdy, it's a responsive little beast. They fixed the "small knob" problem on the new generation though, and lowered the prices significantly, while increasing available dynamic range to 142 dB by using multiple 32 bit converters with genius level implementation that is way above my pay grade. speaking of electronics geniuses svart any clues in "layman's terms?" I know the mic pre does about 76 dB of gain, whatever that means.
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Post by chessparov on Sept 16, 2019 1:55:11 GMT -6
Have to admit... The more I read this thread, the more I'm tempted to mess around with my Vestax HDR6! Chris
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Post by svart on Sept 16, 2019 9:17:31 GMT -6
Template, template, template! I tried different templates for different purposes, but alway end up using one in particular. It has all the go to plugs I use regularly. I put reverbs, delay and a compressor on a bus. I have 3 virtual instruments ready to go, Piano, Organ, and Strings. The plugs I almost always use are there, turned off, but ready when I am. Lastly, I have my Superior Drums on a Track Stack. This way I see only one track, but at a click, I see all the individual drums. I have a shaker track (EZ Drummer) ready that I use as a metronome to track with. Colorize tracks in groups, this speeds things up more than you'd think it would. My preamps are already plugged in, levels usually stay the same, plug in a mic, turn it on, and it's already sent to the right input in my DAW. So I can be ready to record almost as fast as I can plug a mic in and set the stand location. Just set tempo, and go. I add drums after I have a guitar track and sometimes a guide vocal. All too often I end up keeping tracks that I'm 'just experimenting" with, so if it becomes a real project, it's all ready to go. This saves about as much time as can be saved. I dislike being my own engineer, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I ask friends to record parts as often as I can. It's a lot more fun than me doing everything all the time. Absolutely correct. If you watch the big pros, they usually have assistants set up all their tracks in a template, with all the tracks on specific channels, with specific gear, and usually with close-to-optimal settings that are ready for some tweaking by the "ears" of the engineer. Nobody who claims that "every session is completely new" is telling the truth. Even if you zero out all your gear, you'll still tend to reach for certain pieces of gear in certain places in the mix, and your settings will be close to the same, all due to habit and finding the "sweet spots" of the gear/plugs in your chain. That's how they get their sound, by using the same gear in similar ways.
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Post by svart on Sept 16, 2019 9:24:00 GMT -6
I agree with John on this one. Computers aren't fun. But if you treat them right they can sound like the best thing you ever heard in your life. You can also buy a Sound Devices recorder if you want to "go outside" and work like tape. They sound incredible and they are versatile. There's a new MixPre revision that just came out. If you can poke a small touch screen (good vision, hand accuracy) they are very easy to use. "Menu Diving" is relatively painless. I beg to differ that "computers are the best thing you heard in your life" - if that were true there yould be no market for "taper sim" plugins.
I also disagree that touch screens (except maybe huge one like the Raven, which I have not tried personally) make good control devices. They're imprecise, suffer from quantizing problems that limit resolution, and if you have even the slightest motor problems - as I do, I have slight tremors in my right hand that make using anything requiring precise mouse control a near impossibility*, at best very difficult and time consumiong - it makes p[recise work very slow aqnd difficult, if not impossible.
And I DETEST nested menus.
I have none of those problems with a full console and outboard.Except making posters, of course...
I would really like a Radar if I could afford one......
* - which have all but destroyed my ability to make band posters and album art.
Re: Touchscreens.. I've told the story a few times before, but I worked at a place that put touch screens in vehicles for visual data entry. I had 15-17" touch screens available to me to experiment with back in the early 2000's, well before anybody else tried to make a touch screen DAW interface (like the Raven, etc) and even though these were high resolution screens (very, very expensive at the time), they absolutely sucked at audio control for ALL the reasons you mentioned. You could adjust the sensitivity and hysteresis so that the pointers and sliders and all that wouldn't jump around too much when you changed finger pressure, but it made it extremely slow to work. it was a fun experiment for maybe a month, but ultimately it was an exercise in futility as I found myself continuously misclicking things and spending a lot more time being careful with my fingers than actually moving ahead. The keyboard and mouse is old tech as far as computers are concerned but they persist because there isn't much that's as efficient.
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Post by svart on Sept 16, 2019 9:57:18 GMT -6
RADAR is a "DAW" now. They use off the shelf pc's with some fancy look. I am sure they are extremely good but I haven't touched or heard one to my own knowledge. You could steal the software if you're some kind of hacking genius but you would have to send a really expensive gift to the people who design them and put them together. They probably solder off and physically destroy the networking ports if I had to guess. If the hard drive is easy enough to remove and you know what add-on cards are compatible with the program you could go for it. I'm not a real hacker though and I pay for almost all of my software now. I bet the old ones are freaking incredible though if you can find a good one in working shape. Sound Devices makes recorders with bigger touch screens but they are very, very, very expensive and usually reserved for big budget hollywood sound pros. I personally think the Mix Pre has a great sounding pre/ADC. It's a little dark and thick, and super quiet, so it's very flattering to vocals (not surprising) and harsh bright noises as well. The DAC is good on headphones but it doesn't make a very good "interface" in the sense of using incredible speakers in a treated room. You can work damn fast with those things too. There is an "easy" mode for people who can't poke the little screen. Sturdy as hell, impressive industrial design, just took mine out to the beach. The screen is very well implemented and seems sturdy, it's a responsive little beast. They fixed the "small knob" problem on the new generation though, and lowered the prices significantly, while increasing available dynamic range to 142 dB by using multiple 32 bit converters with genius level implementation that is way above my pay grade. speaking of electronics geniuses svart any clues in "layman's terms?" I know the mic pre does about 76 dB of gain, whatever that means. You're asking about the 142dB of DR? Mostly hypothetical and completely relative to how you measure. Noise needs to be averaged over a bandwidth to accurately measure it's power, since it's considered a random signal. More BW equals more integrated power. I could measure a 100KHz wide band at -120dB but then measure only 1KHz of the same noise and it'll be -144dB. It's the same noise, but now the results are different.. That's how converter designers play those games, even before weighting comes into play. Otherwise, resistor (Johnson noise) also plays a huge part, with all resistors and caps adding noise to some degree, even before you get to the active components like OpAmps that also add active noise in the form of Noise Figure (NF), so you're NEVER going to get 142dB of DR. Ever. You'll get maybe 100-115dB of usable DR with a perfectly terminated input at a singular frequency with any pro level converter, but even then, plugging in ANY mic or cable you'll reduce that to about 80-90 DR. But to answer the question of "multiple converters", there's a few ways they can do this. Such as I did with my converter, I ran two stereo DAC chips in "mono" mode. This means that each chip outputs the same L or R signal from each output, but with one set of outputs reversed polarity to the other set so that summing them together further nullified any noise. Output currents were converted to voltages through an opamp stage and each resistor needed to be low in value to reduce the Johnson noise, and gain needed to be in a certain range to reduce NF, but the matched resistors also average the noise levels. All in all, you get about 3-6dB less noise from this process. Using multiple chips also has the benefit of reducing crosstalk and power supply/ground bouncing issues that can manifest as noise too. It's also prudent to mention that you're not adding DR through any of these processes, you're reducing noise which frees up inherent DR in the system.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 16, 2019 12:57:00 GMT -6
The keyboard and mouse is old tech as far as computers are concerned but they persist because there isn't much that's as efficient. Except for knobs and faders, of course.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 16, 2019 14:10:22 GMT -6
RADAR is a "DAW" now. They use off the shelf pc's with some fancy look. I am sure they are extremely good but I haven't touched or heard one to my own knowledge. You could steal the software if you're some kind of hacking genius but you would have to send a really expensive gift to the people who design them and put them together. They probably solder off and physically destroy the networking ports if I had to guess. If the hard drive is easy enough to remove and you know what add-on cards are compatible with the program you could go for it. I'm not a real hacker though and I pay for almost all of my software now. I bet the old ones are freaking incredible though if you can find a good one in working shape. Sound Devices makes recorders with bigger touch screens but they are very, very, very expensive and usually reserved for big budget hollywood sound pros. I personally think the Mix Pre has a great sounding pre/ADC. It's a little dark and thick, and super quiet, so it's very flattering to vocals (not surprising) and harsh bright noises as well. The DAC is good on headphones but it doesn't make a very good "interface" in the sense of using incredible speakers in a treated room. You can work damn fast with those things too. There is an "easy" mode for people who can't poke the little screen. Sturdy as hell, impressive industrial design, just took mine out to the beach. The screen is very well implemented and seems sturdy, it's a responsive little beast. They fixed the "small knob" problem on the new generation though, and lowered the prices significantly, while increasing available dynamic range to 142 dB by using multiple 32 bit converters with genius level implementation that is way above my pay grade. speaking of electronics geniuses svart any clues in "layman's terms?" I know the mic pre does about 76 dB of gain, whatever that means. You're asking about the 142dB of DR? Mostly hypothetical and completely relative to how you measure. Noise needs to be averaged over a bandwidth to accurately measure it's power, since it's considered a random signal. More BW equals more integrated power. I could measure a 100KHz wide band at -120dB but then measure only 1KHz of the same noise and it'll be -144dB. It's the same noise, but now the results are different.. That's how converter designers play those games, even before weighting comes into play. Otherwise, resistor (Johnson noise) also plays a huge part, with all resistors and caps adding noise to some degree, even before you get to the active components like OpAmps that also add active noise in the form of Noise Figure (NF), so you're NEVER going to get 142dB of DR. Ever. You'll get maybe 100-115dB of usable DR with a perfectly terminated input at a singular frequency with any pro level converter, but even then, plugging in ANY mic or cable you'll reduce that to about 80-90 DR. But to answer the question of "multiple converters", there's a few ways they can do this. Such as I did with my converter, I ran two stereo DAC chips in "mono" mode. This means that each chip outputs the same L or R signal from each output, but with one set of outputs reversed polarity to the other set so that summing them together further nullified any noise. Output currents were converted to voltages through an opamp stage and each resistor needed to be low in value to reduce the Johnson noise, and gain needed to be in a certain range to reduce NF, but the matched resistors also average the noise levels. All in all, you get about 3-6dB less noise from this process. Using multiple chips also has the benefit of reducing crosstalk and power supply/ground bouncing issues that can manifest as noise too. It's also prudent to mention that you're not adding DR through any of these processes, you're reducing noise which frees up inherent DR in the system. That's interesting would you call your analog audio path "fully differential?" is any of your work novel or patented? I mean the svart box I guess. I love hearing you talk about this stuff.
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Post by svart on Sept 16, 2019 14:34:27 GMT -6
You're asking about the 142dB of DR? Mostly hypothetical and completely relative to how you measure. Noise needs to be averaged over a bandwidth to accurately measure it's power, since it's considered a random signal. More BW equals more integrated power. I could measure a 100KHz wide band at -120dB but then measure only 1KHz of the same noise and it'll be -144dB. It's the same noise, but now the results are different.. That's how converter designers play those games, even before weighting comes into play. Otherwise, resistor (Johnson noise) also plays a huge part, with all resistors and caps adding noise to some degree, even before you get to the active components like OpAmps that also add active noise in the form of Noise Figure (NF), so you're NEVER going to get 142dB of DR. Ever. You'll get maybe 100-115dB of usable DR with a perfectly terminated input at a singular frequency with any pro level converter, but even then, plugging in ANY mic or cable you'll reduce that to about 80-90 DR. But to answer the question of "multiple converters", there's a few ways they can do this. Such as I did with my converter, I ran two stereo DAC chips in "mono" mode. This means that each chip outputs the same L or R signal from each output, but with one set of outputs reversed polarity to the other set so that summing them together further nullified any noise. Output currents were converted to voltages through an opamp stage and each resistor needed to be low in value to reduce the Johnson noise, and gain needed to be in a certain range to reduce NF, but the matched resistors also average the noise levels. All in all, you get about 3-6dB less noise from this process. Using multiple chips also has the benefit of reducing crosstalk and power supply/ground bouncing issues that can manifest as noise too. It's also prudent to mention that you're not adding DR through any of these processes, you're reducing noise which frees up inherent DR in the system. That's interesting would you call your analog audio path "fully differential?" is any of your work novel or patented? I mean the svart box I guess. I love hearing you talk about this stuff. Nah no novelty or anything. Most of this type of stuff is very well known I'd say, but it can add a lot of cost to designs for very little perceived payback. So unless you have a high margin product that demands extreme specs for the price, it's hard for the bean-counters to spend a lot of money on a "few dB" that most folks would never miss which is the biggest reason you'll never see this on ordinary converters. For my converters, most folks in the initial thread wanted the extra few dB of DR that comes with paralleling the DACs but it cost about 50$ to reduce the noise floor 6dB by doubling everything up. For small volume production that's not great, but for high volume, low margin, stuff that would be deadly to the sales cost and yet almost nobody would notice because it's all down at the noise floor which gets all fouled up anytime you plug something into it anyway. It's worth reiterating that when one of these designers mentions higher DR, what they're really saying is that it's lower noise, and that noise they've reduced is all waaaaay down in unusable territory. Might be good for extremely low noise mics recording people whispering, but doesn't change a thing for folks recording regular bands in a studio and in fact, much like we discussed in the other thread about dither and quantization noise, recording really low levels gets you into trouble with QE more readily than recording loud does.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 16, 2019 15:36:51 GMT -6
Very interesting!
My Sound Devices MixPre 6 gen 1 is indeed really good at picking up very quiet sounds, I'm about to mix my first recordings with it sometime this week.
I wonder if I can hear QE or if I should get into a really quiet or moderate volume dither shootout with the Airwindows stuff.
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Post by RicFoxx on Sept 16, 2019 16:27:20 GMT -6
Hello fellow ADD’r
It took me having a child exactly like me to understand me. A dreamer and big picture guy that needs to be brought back and organized. I had a million great ideas but never a finished thought. With that being said...here is my advice and what worked for me:
I found a great Engineer/Producer to help put my scattered ideas together. I can focus on being a artist which is my gift. I do love sound engineering and because I created a great working relationship with him, I can be involved in decisions involving tone and other things involving sound. The more I work with him the more we get to know each other I trust his decision making.
I do short demos to give him idea and feel that I’m looking for.
Most people use a quarter note click...as an artist I need the feel of the song. I usually use a triplet click with different accentuations or premade loops with the feel I like... Feel is everything at foundational level.
I have vanilla template that has “intro, verse, prechorus, chorus, etc... and work on Song parts. I can drag those around, lengthen/shorten, rename, delete them to taste.
Because you have ADD and unlimited options I bet you go for hours and never get anywhere. At least that is how I am if I don’t minimize my options.
You are probably ultra creative...don’t be shy, people have different gifts...find someone to work with that can help your weaknesses and accentuate your strengths.
Good luck...Ric
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