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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 20, 2017 16:21:04 GMT -6
Did some more research. The Skylake-X line does have a significant overheating problem under heavy load. Unfortunately, there's barely any info out there on DAW usage aside from the tests Scan Pro and Tech Report did. And those tests aren't about overheating, they're about plugin counts. The Threadripper 1950x was dead even with the 7900x in the new 24/96 tests. Maybe there would be a significant gap between the two at higher buffers. With the VI test, Threadripper performance decreases down to 6800 levels. Guess the bottom line is don't use Skylake-X if plan on stressing the cpu and don't use Threadripper if you want better than 6800 level performance at low buffers.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 19, 2017 7:54:12 GMT -6
Having external hardware and/or DSP definitely helps. I've read that some studio sessions can run between 100-200 tracks. Maybe that's mainly with high budget stuff? CLA always talks about having his assistants pare those big sessions down to 40 some tracks. Anyway, having the DSP power necessary to run 100+ tracks full of plugins at 24/96 might help land clients. Or maybe it's so rare that it just ends up being a waste of money spent on the cpu power. Looks like I quoted the wrong stat on the 8700k, it's supposed to be a 50% multi improvement over the 7700k. Still puts the score right around 1100, so it'd be even with my Z800.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 17, 2017 10:56:32 GMT -6
It boils down to what I would want to do with a 100 track session and if the cpu could provide the necessary dsp and whatever else. Right now I like putting some kind of tape and console plug on each track. Maybe I'd condense a 100+ track session to 48 or not. One thing I don't do is add these plugins just to add them. So far I find that Hornet Tape and Tapedesk added to a track makes it more to my liking, so it's about figuring out the computing power needed to run x amount of tracks with these added, among other plugs. As I understand it, it does make a difference if your plugins are distributed across many tracks vs fewer tracks in terms of what cores they end up on. You always have to avoid overloading one core.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 17, 2017 0:06:33 GMT -6
I used the same SSD on the 2320 and 6700 desktops. It's one of those Samsung Evos and scored quite high on the cpuuserbenchmark test. The video cards not so much though. The Z800 has the two stock hardrives setup as a RAID volume. The track count here is only relevant because the larger the amount of tracks, the more plugins required. For me it's about taking the same workflow and how much cpu power I need to expand it. If one is working with tape and console stuff on each track, you need something that will support however many tracks with an instance of each tape/console on it. As far as editing, I don't really punch in. Just about all my vocal tracks are one take. Then I'll shift some things a few milliseconds here and there and edit volume with clip gain before fader riding. Pro Tools seems to pretty evenly distribute the workload across the cores.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 16, 2017 15:23:06 GMT -6
I've been trying to narrow down the sort of bare minimum one would need to run a 50-100 track session at 88/96 all ITB. I've got 3 computers available to me with the following chips: Xeon X5670(dual) I7-6700 I5-2320 The I5 can barely handle a 3 track session with no busses, nothing on the master fader, and 2 Seventh Heaven, one Reel ADT, and one Ultrareverb. The other plugins are NLS, Tapedesk, Hornet Tape, bx_console, CLA76, Autotune 8, Oxford Limiter V2, VLB902, and one zplane Elastiquepitch. The 6700 has roughly a 35% single and quad advantage and a 95% multi-core advantage. The dual 5670 is -7% single +2% Quad and +257% multi. cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2320-vs-1st-CPU--Intel-Xeon-X5670/m1735vsm13952cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-2320-vs-Intel-Core-i7-6700/m1735vs3515The 6700 seems to perform the best up until I hit about 20 tracks. After turning turbo boost and hyper threading on for the Z800 with the dual 5670s against Avid's recommendations, I was able to do a 45 track session with several fx auxes easily and hit 70% max. The 1130 multi-core score I hit when using the cpuuserbenchmark program seems to prove that the multi-core number is the most important. That said, seems like the cheapest thing that could equal the 5670 performance is an overclocked Ryzen 1600. It's within a few hundred points on the multi-core end while being 50 some percent faster on the single-core. A stock Ryzen 1700 beats the dual 5670 by a little bit and overclocked provides a couple hundred extra multi-core points. A 6850k has 50 some percent single core gains and is just 15% worse in multi. Overclocking the Ryzen stuff is supposedly easy. You just open a simple menu provided by AMD and change a setting. No need to even buy a special cooler, the stock one works. Overclocking these Intels is a little more complicated from what I read. Where you start to see diminishing returns is when you try to go above the 1100 multi score stock. The 6900k is still almost a grand a lot of places. Multi score is 1200. 6950k is fetching $1400 and offers a multi around 1500. 7820x offers about 20% more single performance over the 6900s and a 1300 multi score for $549. 7900x has a multi of 1700 and same single score improvement over the 6900s for $899. Threadripper 1950x hits 2370 multi but single and quad numbers are way down from the 6900s. In Scan Pro Audio's tests, the 1950x barely ran more Rea X Comps than the 7900 or Threadripper 1920x. But maybe it would do a lot better than those in a 100 track session. I believe Scan Pro also said Threadrippers conk out at 90%. If I'm not mistaken Jim Roseberry said the same thing about the Ryzens in his tests. He also described the Ryzens as "super flakey" in regards to motherboard performance. The 7900 and TR needed some kinda specialized cooling from what I recall too. TR also didn't do so well with some kinda VI test at lower latencies I think it was. These more expensive chips also require more expensive motherboards along with the more expensive coolers. Soon enough there's the 8700k coming out. It's supposed to offer 10% more single and 70% more multi performance when compared to the 7700k, the reigning single core champ(7700 loses handily to computers with better multi scores in DAW bench tests). That would give it a single score around 150 and a multi score around 1254 for $349. This might be the sweet spot if the numbers turn out to be true. Otherwise, an overclocked Ryzen 1700 seems to make the most sense. If one absolutely has to work with a 100 track session at 88/96, it seems we have a few options that would handle it easily, but you're looking at spending maybe close to $1500 for a whole build that may have some drawbacks. DAW choice probably matters some here too. Reaper has some kinda efficiency advantage. Ableton has some efficiency issues and I forget what the big problem with Cubase is. I'm still running Pro Tools 12. If anyone is running big sessions at 88/96, I'm definitely interested in hearing about your setup. For all I know someone is running 50 track sessions just fine with a computer scoring 800 in multi.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 14, 2017 19:10:53 GMT -6
On my recent long trip, I had an Uber driver who turned out to be an indie film director/writer/actor who does work with someone who played a lead role in an installment of a big 80s film franchise. This is a guy with a decent amount of IMDB credits. Looks like the indie film world isn't doing much better. The other day I read an article about men's wages being stagnant since 1973. A lot of this is due to allowing too much corporate control as you all know. Letting all these banks and media companies consolidate everything. The 2008 crash didn't help either. As far as I can tell, it was never really fixed. You need the extremely low interest rates to keep things stable and from what I've read, it has to stay this way indefinitely. And so much of this government funding is only possible because of the dollar's world reserve status, which a lot of countries want to end in favor of some economic hitman IMF global currency. I'm referring to the Confessions of An Economic Hitman book. Supposedly 2018 is the year everyone's been targeting for the reserve switch. We'll see. These politicians are anything but honest and responsible, so, trillions of dollars coming back from countries who no longer need them is probably not something they're very concerned about.
Are the younger people even forming bands much? I think it's true that a lot of them just play with their gadgets. A lot of that is probably due to a lack of resources. I notice that a lot of people hit a bottleneck with jobs because so many people can't or won't retire. Maybe the people who have the money prefer to spend it on vacations and jewelry.
Anyone ever go to the Museum of Pop Culture? They have all these jam rooms with instruments and stuff. People were really into it. They had some exhibit where you could try and mix 8 tracks of Sweet Dreams on their little console. Very unintuitive but kinda cool. They had a real console Hendrix and Kramer used behind some glass. No idea what the echo knob did on it. Think it went up to 30 tracks after some kinda mod. There should be more places like this museum out there, I think it would really stir up interest in doing music with a human element again. There really aren't many places you can just go and jam at.
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Post by viciousbliss on Sept 5, 2017 21:25:24 GMT -6
Glad you liked the info, Chase. The J37 seems the most sensitive to input levels of all. On stuff recorded with more modern, sleak styles in mind, i find that the tape plugs are easier to use. It's a lot different than say taking a 1980s real album stem from a famous album and trying to make the vocal I recorded fit that production style. NLS is real important there with the drive set around 6. With some modern session with a Bruno Marsish singer, I found that I didnt really need NLS much after using AC202 and Tapedesk. I've largely dropped busses and putting plugs on the master fader. It's also true that hornet tape doesn't seem to push cpu anymore than AC202. At least at 96k on setups using a 6700 and dual x5670. The dual 5670 actually scored 1136 in multi-core for me. Sorta like a Ryzen 1700 with 30% less single core speed. This is with turbo boost on for the first time. Pro Tools 12 works better not listening to avid about hyperthreading and turbo boost. Going back to waverider over console4, I'll try to do another trial of Phoenix so I can see how it fares with Oxford limiter and Tapedesk. At the least Dave Hill should sell a non-dsp version for around $100. I cant imagine many people are dropping $449 on it.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 27, 2017 10:56:35 GMT -6
A decade ago, the best most of these local bands could hope for was a split of the door. Maybe $20 a member most of the time. Bars would try to pay the least amount possible. I'm sure the cover bands get paid though. But those guys probably aren't going to record much. Or if they do, they might try to do a lot of it themselves. The only cover band around here I recall recording at all was 7th Heaven. But I think they had a lot of originals too. I just rarely heard their originals at the fests I saw them at. If a studio is turning out ordinary-sounding recordings using a computer, that really makes potential clients feel like they could just do it all themselves. Some local bands had cds recorded at local places, but they sounded like junk. Harsh, unbalanced. Then they'd want $5 for em. It didn't help that the songs weren't all there. Maybe nowadays it would be easier for bands to get a following if they were any good.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 27, 2017 0:32:03 GMT -6
I like nice UIs, but I like preserving cpu even more.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 27, 2017 0:28:37 GMT -6
As I'm sure you've figured out long ago, I'm always changing up my workflow. Just sidelined Airwindows Console4 and went back to Waverider and got better results. Airwindows stuff is cool but I just don't want to watch 30+ min videos on every plugin in order to figure out the best way to use them. Also, no DAW really uses post-fader inserts on tracks, which is what Console4 is supposed to work on. I tried ditching busses and not putting plugs on the master fader. Also got better results except where the buss was providing a vital thing like ReelADT over all the vocals. Saverio takes into account aliasing and other things discussed in the analysis thread, Hornet plugins oversample. Mainly I've just experimented with the 3 I listed. Deelay could probably replace Ultrareverb's 80s Synth preset and CLAEffect's Throw Delay for me if I needed it to. I'm sure everything is at least decent. When I use them, I'm not feeling like I'm using an inferior brand or anything. It's just a matter of I already bought stuff like Bx_Console and use that. I've tried supplementing that with the Acustica Pink CM free EQ and it can be of help. Uses a lot of cpu though. The downside to Hornet demos is that they cut out every 5 seconds and not at a uniform time. So I had one tape cutting out then a few seconds later the next one cuts out, etc.
As far as ranking tape emus, let's see. Can't include Tapedesk bc it is so much more than a tape plug and absolutely vital. These tape plugs often sound so different from each other too. I'd rank NLS far above any Tape emu. Magnetite can be a bit much. I need to try it again without Console4, so a reevaluation is in order. Definitely smooths things and eats hisses from vocals. I'd try Avid Reeltape but there's no free demo.
Tier 1:
Analog Channel 202 Hornet ----------------- Magnetite Satin Kramer Softube VTM Phoenix(maybe tier 1, won't own this until price is reasonable) --------- Tier 3:
J37 ToTape 5 Reelbus Roundtone Nomad Magnetic
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 26, 2017 23:35:10 GMT -6
I remember the 90s Metal ethic. Lot of hype around bands like Opeth, Emperor, In Flames, Death, Iced Earth, Cradle of Filth, Nevermore, Blaze, etc. These bands would release stuff and everyone would be blown away by the latest album. The productions were all creative too, even though a lot of bands used Morrissound or Abyss Studios. Fans took pride in being a part of the then future classics. There were barely any samples to listen to online, so reputation sold everything. Eventually bands got obsessed with crystal clear sterility and making an assembly line product with the same fake drum sounds. Effort went out the window. Morrissound lost more and more of its identity to the point where they sounded like any generic studio on CL. A punk band today would probably try to make everything sterile and perfect. You'd never hear anything like the original Misfits. As I understand it, those albums had no budget or time but they sound perfect for the material. Same deal with Venom. A band ruined by obsessing over production values. Even their 1996 re-recordings sound all wrong and too polished for the type of music.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 25, 2017 21:43:34 GMT -6
New topics are important too. Without new ground being broken in the industry, there can be a lot less to talk about. If I come up with an interesting thought, I'll make a thread. But I try to keep it so I'm not creating a thread for every thought that pops in. That's the thing Topics used to move at GS now when I glance they just sit. The thing GS has is the wealth of knowledge in the old threads! A big problem at GS is that when new products are out, the thread will be 4 pages long and maybe one person actually said something about the product. I've asked some basic questions in the Threadripper thread and it seems I'm being completely ignored while these guys discuss things in a way that only extremely techy people would understand. Like, it'd be great if someone in plain English just came out and said what its capabilities are thus far instead of leaving everyone else to decipher the tech talk. There's also a lot of assumption there, like on a lot of forums. Assumption that everyone is working the same way. Here, I think I get quite a bit better context when someone talks about something. There and on KVR, I just look to see if anyone uncovers objectively provable problems with something and test everything for myself. There's still times I'll get good info on GS, particularly in the analysis thread, but there's a lot to sift through to find the gems on other threads.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 25, 2017 21:30:23 GMT -6
Grabbed this the other day after a quick demo. There is something special about it. Smooth, big, and clear but it can be a bit much. Most of the time I'm liking it better but there was one mix I tried it on where Analog Channel 202 in its default settings was better. HT seemed to narrow the stereo field on that mix for some reason. I should integrate more of Saverio's plugins. I've tried some. Deelay was quite good. Analog Stage does some cool things. HT has the settings of most of the other tape plugs, so it's another flavor of the familiar.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 25, 2017 21:19:37 GMT -6
What do you guys like to reamp with? I've never found it easy to work with S-Gear or Amplitube and similar programs. I've only ever used CLAGuitars. I've tried to figure the drum stuff out, but just thought other things like vocal fx were more of a priority.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 25, 2017 21:17:26 GMT -6
New topics are important too. Without new ground being broken in the industry, there can be a lot less to talk about. If I come up with an interesting thought, I'll make a thread. But I try to keep it so I'm not creating a thread for every thought that pops in.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 25, 2017 3:26:50 GMT -6
I do it all the time. I'll be tracking a band and say something like "lots of bands double track and pan the guitars during this chorus part" and they'll say "no we like it the way it is". Then, I duplicate the part and do Billy Decker's psuedo stereo trick of the guitars during the chorus when I mix and they go "wow, I didn't know how good that would sound". I shit you not. I guess you guys are getting mixes, or tracking bands who really know how to arrange songs. Out here in small town America they don't and I help them sound better. Also, I find that singer's have no idea of what their vocal effects should be. So, I usually mix it the way I think it should sound. I then show them other ways I can make the vocal sound with effects and they have the last word. Am I producing? Also, bands will tell me, "we want the raw sound of our drums". Then I sample replace/augment and they say "holy shit that sounds great". So, I don't get the big fury here. In my world it happpens all the time. Sounds like you're just enhancing what's already there instead of becoming an honorary member of the band.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 25, 2017 3:16:46 GMT -6
So there's problems with these files? Should make for an interesting session. I'll be looking at them soon as I do enjoy the challenge of fixing recordings.
Maybe we can start another thread about whether these plugin tests are accurate. I tested a lot of eq plugs and the MH was one of two that had the rumble issue. MH hasn't emailed to say there's been a new version of Channel Strip since I bought it. The MH Channel Strip also had some problems with the Non-Mio compressors. Hold times or something. Not sure if MH ever fixed it. MH did not deny any of the claims made by the user who tested for rumble. They just told him he had a chance to test it and denied his refund request. No one on the analysis thread told me I messed anything up with my testing. Someone suggested I use SPAN instead of Waves PAZ and I got the same result on the MH and Pro Tools EQ3 7 band. When I replaced EQ3 with Pro Q2 on my aux fx tracks where I had been using it to cut extreme lows and highs, there was a noticeable difference. Andy doesn't have a competing eq product and he could specifically name all the 32 bit df1 biquad plugins he says are out there. If there are a lot of plugins with serious defects being used, it's something that should be of everyone's concern. It's not like the developers are measuring for problems and then posting about it. Mixing can be difficult as is, last thing we need is to be mixing with more obstacles.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 23, 2017 16:02:09 GMT -6
The mix in the video is great. The two dropbox both have some noticeable issues. Not sure in technical terms how to address them all. I have a pretty good idea how I'd tackle it, so I may try mixing your files. Oh, and that Metric Halo Channel Strip has some pretty serious issues.
Andy from Cytomic said the following about it:
"The Metric Halo CS3 EQ does look like exactly the noise of a 32-bit float DF1 biquad, if green means around -60 to -70 dB then I'm very confident this is the cause. Regardless of if I'm exactly right or not you really do have to ask yourself if you want low frequency rumble added to your mix every time you do a high pass filter to remove low frequency rumble!"
I've done the tests myself and it does add low rumble after subtracting low rumble. Pro Tools' EQ3 or whatever it's called does the same thing. It could be problematic for you. There's gotta be an inexpensive channel strip that's just as good or better. Bx_Console is kinda pricey, but maybe you could try something from Hornet, Stillwell, or Sknote. Waves sells a lot of stuff for $29 these days too. Gear/Software definitely does matter, despite the mantra some people preach about only needing stock plugins. You really only used the Metric Halo and X-Noise? I'll 2nd the Seventh Heaven recommendation. The regular one is great and not expensive. Seventh Heaven for me is the only ITB reverb I'll use. Just kills anything else when I load up another reverb for comparison. The pro version is worthwhile, especially since they added the non-linear algos. You may also want to try a tape plugin, like Hornet Tape or McDsp Analog Channel. Waves NLS can also do a lot for making a mix cohesive. I'm also starting to take a liking to Sknote Disto. You could also try resampling the files to 88 or 96 in Audacity and mixing at a higher sample rate if you're mixing at 44/48. Audacity's SRC is among the best nowadays, just set it to the highest quality and use the dither.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 22, 2017 16:21:21 GMT -6
I think I read that Puig does a lot of re-producing. CLA I think does as well. Not sure about Pensado. When I used to visit the Cambridge multitrack forum, I noticed people re-producing some of the tracks there. Not just replacing the fake drums, but other things. When Brandon Drury had Recording Review, he would often boast about being able to replace drums without a client even knowing. Giving people a finished song made from junk is probably a valuable skill. CLA gets hired because labels know he'll take ownership of the song and his formula has a proven track record. Thing is, you start to get a "been there done that" feel when you hear new things he's mixed. It's familiar and not bad if you're at a theme park or something, but I think a lot of people probably feel like they have enough music like that. It wouldn't be bad to ask what creative ground is left to break by noted re-producers. The fact that the average band can get pretty similar results to what they hear from record labels if they know their software kills off a lot of the mystique of newer acts.
Here's a song created with use of the Amper AI:
Sounds pretty decent aside from the usual hissy vocals. AI will eventually put producers out of business, it's just a question of when.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 21, 2017 23:07:48 GMT -6
Was just listening to some before and after samples a Metal guy from Nashville has up in Soundcloud portfolio. The before stuff was horrendous and the after sounded like a full production from a label like Century Media. The big difference was that it sounded like the after was full of vocals and other instrumental parts that weren't there in the original song. Given that the engineer is advertising nation-wide, I doubt these bands are flying into Nashville to record. In short, it sounds like this engineer is doing the band's work for them. Same thing with a free client I had way back. Another guy worked on his song and replaced most everything, changed the tempo here and there(which necessitated unnatural slowing down of the vocals) and the client told me it felt like he didn't even write the song anymore. But that's the version he's always displayed as I've never really settled on a final one due to the difficulty of making badly recorded stuff with pre-mixed fake drums sound good. I've gotten it sounding pretty good, but you can only polish it so much, esp with very audible fan noise on vocal tracks that are often only accompanied by bass and drums. So is this a new requirement for mix engineers? That you need to be able to take very rough ideas and turn them into something that sounds like a real song?
IMO This is a very bad trend and I don't see much point to it aside from artist vanity. It goes without saying that having an engineer do 50-75% of the work isn't going to lead to the artist or band getting any better. Creatively I don't see how it helps either. All this tech has enabled so many shortcuts to be taken that it seems to have stifled famous bands even. It's just extremely easy to be trendy and make everything homogeneous. If the label has song-writers working with their roster, it gets even worse. The label is now the star. People already don't want to form bands because even bad musicians want to be extremely picky about influences and how everyone else sounds. I see the same people posting ads for years trying to find band members. I guess why bother learning the craft if you can slop something down and find some engineer who will do the work for $100-$200. It's not like legendary bands and artists made a ton of money right off the bat or had any guarantee of success. Yet they were able to gain live followings and find ways to get into the studio with little budget. There's just a real lack of drive with most every musician I've been around. Can't explain why, some of it is probably due to the belief that the mythological power of Pro Tools can fix anything.
On another note, I read about the first AI produced and recorded album. IAMAI or something like that. Will be listening to it later.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 14, 2017 20:49:06 GMT -6
Great thread about a depressing reality. I'm so fortunate I can still sing and play today, people still come to see me, and I make a good chunk of income off stuff created decades ago. Still, I'd be hard pressed to pay a studio today what I'd need to make a decent record 100% there. I would track basics (drums) somewhere, and get some genius to mix after overdubbing at home. Not like the old days. BOC did the 'Mirrors' record with Tom Werman. It may not be the most "BOC-like" record we did, but Tom was a pro and knew what he was doing. Kudo's to engineer Gary Ladinsky for the sound of the record. I'm thinking about trying Billy Decker to mix something. Wow! A BOC member here? Huge fan here, especially of Fire, Revolution, and Club Ninja. I should go back and listen to Mirrors. These days I spend so much time mixing that I often forget to listen to stuff for fun. Billy Decker's stuff seemed to be about as good as it gets for modern production with the styles he does. I could type a novel about how much I like BOC. If there's a way to make recordings that sound as good as your classics using a computer, I hope I find it. The best thing I can say is thanks for the music, it's been and still is a real inspiration. Cheap Trick I think was another band that ended up complaining about Werman. I've heard the re-recordings they did with Albini and to me, they just don't work with that engineering style. It's true that a lot of bands like to go DIY and then look for clients. There's too much of that too. Not a lot of those guys ended up with strong brands. When I shopped around studio websites, I never really saw any evidence that the experience would work. The websites are mostly just pictures of hardware and lists of hardware with a few plugins thrown in. There's a lot of software lists that feature Waves Mercury as pretty much the only thing, so I suspect they just pirated that and considered their software collection to be complete. Usually that was with studios that only had a few cheap pieces of hardware. There's never any information as to how long they took to get a mix done. If there was, it was extremely brief and limited to just one or two studios. On my prior site, I tried to communicate exactly what I knew how to pull off and how long it would take to do. I offered free mixes in the event that I decided to test a new plugin or technique on their song. They wouldn't necessarily be involved in the process, but I offered the result free. Do potential clients care about this stuff? Most probably don't bother to read anything in an ad or on a site. The guy who opened up a few miles from me using mostly Samson and Behringer gear and offering all this free time in exchange for Facebook likes decided to close up shop and setup a GoFundMe to raise funds for studio opening costs. Maybe the neighborhood made him shut down. After several months, not one donation has come in. Giving away time may only be a benefit if the song you mix ends up becoming popular and no one else remixes what becomes the official version. Aren't a lot of these areas like LA and Nashville saturated? To cut through there I imagine you'd really need an edge. Advertising mainly. Branding is always going to be the most important thing. Maybe figure out who to give surveys to and try to find out what the market wants? Pricing often is part of the brand. I may have mentioned some time ago about the Gibson guitars that were priced at $300 and didn't sell. And then they were rebranded with a $3000 price tag and sold majorly. It's probably better to have a strong brand and a decent rate that doesn't fetch lowball clients instead of an undefined brand that charges low and makes a few hundred bucks a year. The strong brand may eventually land something worthwhile.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 13, 2017 22:52:54 GMT -6
There are definitely bone-headed mixers out there too. The guy we hired didn't really accept any feedback from us. I asked if the snare could have a bit more pop and his reply was "I think it sounds killer". The mic used on it was a 57, I believe. He didn't explain to us about the mics or anything. Charged the full rate even after his assistant quit and other mishaps. Didn't even have the home studio setup before we got there. I'm sure if I had coughed up the dough for Steve Albini instead, his stuff would all be setup. And he is very affordable. The other engineers at his studio weren't charging much more than this college student from CL who was nickel and diming us. The studios around here who charge rates of $60 or less keep staying in business. Who knows how well they're doing. I notice they give everyone the same bare bones production. I'd be surprised if these local guys had in-depth knowledge of much. The clients probably come in, go into the chain the engineer knows will get a competent result in minimal time, pay a couple hundred bucks and that's that. No one can really expect intricate production with a minimal budget, especially if they're not good players. Pro Tools and Autotune with their mythical status have created the expectation that horrible musicians can be made to have perfect pitch and timing with the click of a magic button. That comes from a lot of ignorant and famous musicians who really believe that. I don't know, I've never found Autotune 8's or Wavestune's graphical modes to be very intuitive. AT8's Flextune can be beneficial. But I find it easier to make someone sound more in tune using compressors, delays, saturators, eqs, and limiters.
A good selling point could be the ability to use 88/96. I've discussed it enough with Andy from Cytomic to know it's a legit thing that should be brought up to clients. But the cpu costs, I don't think most cpus are up to the task unless you're using all MCDSP or Waves Ren stuff as opposed to Satin, Kramer Tape, Acustica, NLS, CLA Sig Series, and other more cpu demanding plugins. Maybe these Ryzen 7s could run 70ish stereo Kramers in most DAWs, especially if overclocked and at a 1024 buffer. I know there's a guy who got something like 124 Kramers going in Reaper. Some of the studios around here are running Windows XP with old versions of Pro Tools. I would guess they're using a lot of plugins, but maybe I'm wrong and it's 100% hardware and Pro Tools is just the tape machine substitute. Either way, if someone has the capability to run big ITB sessions at 88/96, I don't see how that couldn't help make them more competitive.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 13, 2017 2:52:38 GMT -6
This is a trend happening more and more with famous artists. There's been a few who have shredded Tom Werman, complaining how he didn't do a good job on their classic records. Think it was Nikki Sixx, Dee Snider, and maybe a guy from Quiet Riot. To me, Werman is a legend and those bands would never have succeeded if not for his production. I think the DAW is one of the worst things to happen to music. Sure, it makes a lot of things easier, but it's so sterile. I've tried every analog plugin under the sun not on a UAD platform and every old reverb and modulation effect and I just don't think it's all that possible to get a sound that guys like Werman crafted back then. Quite a few legendary producers that are still out there have ended up producing things that sound like the $40 an hour studio I rehearsed at made it. Bob Rock being the big one. Ron Nevison is another. I wouldn't hire those guys if someone gave me an unlimited budget if what I ended up with sounded like their current credits. Actually, I can't think of anyone I would hire based on albums that came out in the last 9 years. Out of what I've heard anyway. Maybe the team behind Foxes' All I Need is the only one I'd be inclined to work with as an artist. Looks like Spike Stent mixed it. Body Talk is about the only modern pop song I really think holds up well with stuff released in the 80s. But somehow I don't think using the model of Spike's console in NLS will get me very close to that sound lol
I have little knowledge of the Nashville scene or modern Country music. I know a lot of artists have jumped on that bandwagon. Plenty of non-country artists record in Nashville. Michael Wagener is there too, I think. Can't recall the last time he cranked out anything worthwhile. Ozzy's No More Tears? I'm also doubting Mutt Lange has been cranking out stuff on par with Hysteria or Back in Black production values using modern tools. Terry Date's modern work sucks compared to what he did decades ago. I'm sure a lot of this is the fault of the insecure artists who think they need the most clean and sterile recordings possible. A lot of em are preoccupied with making sure the listener hears every stupid note they play in pristine detail instead of whether the song has the right feel. Bands that have re-recorded or remixed 80s stuff have done a horrible job with it. Like the Megadeth remixes or Twister Sister's Still Hungry. More of these bigtime producers should have stood up to the clients instead of ruining their brands. Or I guess just gotten out like Tom Werman did.
It's very hard to stand out using modern stuff. Very hard not to sound sterile. When I hear something like Bruno Mars 24k, the vocals sound too home studio to me. It doesn't have the timelessness of something like Thriller and I think a large part of that is the production. Most of the big concert acts are bands that are pushing 60 or 70 years old and I think that's because there was a big quality over quantity approach which is like the inverse of today. I'd be surprised if even Taylor Swift retains her status 2 or 3 decades from now. Aren't more artists trying to do everything themselves too? I've heard samples of stuff like the new Quiet Riot and it sounds like someone in the band bought some plugins, read a few online posts, and mixed the album. But this has been a trend for a long time and I think a lot of that has to do with Pro Tools knocking down the barrier to entry. Record sales aren't there for a variety of reasons. #1 This isn't the 80s or 90s where the new music coming out was constantly breaking ground. Creativity has been stagnant. And again, a lot of that is due to a lack of artist development. #2 Way too many people recording and releasing things and #3 Customers with less money to spend. Stagnant incomes since the early days of Napster for a lot of people.
Client Expectations...I'd just tell them like it is. Too many people watching Graham Cochrane videos thinking they can make masterpieces with one cheap mic and Reaper with stock plugins. It's really not that simple and I think it can be detrimental to both plugin companies and people trying to learn to tell them just to use stock plugins. His video headlines definitely inflate people's expectations. When people new to recording think recording, they're going to associate the whole concept with his brand because he gets all the top search results. Especially since Brandon Drury and Recording Review are gone. Unless someone has actually tried to do this stuff themselves, they really have little idea how it works and what does what. When I first hired a guy, I had no idea what to expect. I just figured if he had Pro Tools that was a big deal and I'd probably get something that was kinda modern and semi-competent. That's not exactly what I wanted, but, considering it was a low rate guy, I didn't expect a lot. Not in the 3 hours or so we had. It was definitely a big improvement over what I did with newbies who bought stuff from Guitar Center. I've no idea what the guy used. Most of our production was done using our live gear, like my Digitech Vocalist Live 4. Still have not found a plugin that creates ultra-realistic vibrato on the fly like that thing does. The disc turned out too lethargic because those guys played the songs too slow. I sped it up in Audacity. Wish I could find the original disc or files and I could try something else. I had no expectation that I could go request revisions and all this stuff. My thinking was we got what we got during the time we paid for. The engineer we had wasn't famous and didn't have a console, so I didn't think we were gonna get album quality. Consoles are pictured in so many cd booklets, I figured they used them for a reason. Today people probably have no idea what a console is and you have tons of people posting ads on CL begging for work, even free clients, willing to do all sorts of revisions.
The only approach that I'm interested in is being the engineer I would want to hire and telling clients that that is what they are getting. It's like when people hire Steve Albini. He's got a sound and it is what it is. That's what he does. You don't hear about him changing around his approach for every client. CLA is like that too and I've read how he fights bands on changes. Supposedly artists were told not to even suggest anything to him at some point. Maybe if CLA or Albini was starting out today they'd get nowhere. The demand just might not be there. Of course, the client shouldn't think their garbage files are going to sound like a project a competent engineer recorded and mixed from scratch. A lot of people have talked up Pro Tools so much over the years that one would think it can fix anything. I've been sporadically working on a newbie guide for a while, but I doubt many perspective clients will actually end up reading it. Most just see an affordable rate and book it expecting super-human feats.
My prediction is that eventually we'll see computers that are affordable and are 10-20x more powerful than Threadripper with companies creating super-intelligent programs with AI that can do almost anything an artist wants. Like convolution production. Sample tones from an album and apply that to your guitars. Intelligent song-writing and mixing suggestions. When this happens a lot more jobs than audio engineer will be phased out by tech, so, I guess maybe we should look for types of work that will require the most complex AI? For now, I'd say try to record and mix your favorite well-known covers and see how well you can emulate the spirit of the original production. Someone will always want to hire someone who knows how to duplicate a beloved song's sound. I've always found it a bit of a puzzling experience to try and make someone's recorded tracks sound like something else.
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Post by viciousbliss on Aug 3, 2017 20:53:54 GMT -6
The healthcare debate is interesting. I don't look at it through partisan glasses and I had some hope for the 2009 Dem supermajority to pass something better than we got. Too many DLC Dems blocking a public option or anything useful. At the time, Democratic base websites were calling it the "Insurance company profit protection act". Puzzles me why they talk about it like it's a national treasure nowadays. The Dem base and the Alt-right both want single payer. The Alt-lite is more into a free market solution championed by people like Peter Schiff and Rand Paul. I think some of Rand's ideas were about people forming associations to negotiate. Supposedly some of that is happening now via executive order. Trump himself said something about bringing back drug importation if I'm not mistaken. I'd be surprised if anyone in Congress save a handful of members would support a bill that results in insurance and healthcare companies making less money. The Trump base almost unanimously hated the most recent proposals. Starting next year, the insurance policy we have will be pretty bad. An HSA with a $5000 deductible for anything beyond preventative care. We're probably a few years away from removing enough establishment politicians to enable the passage of something that puts people first. Hopefully a lot of this real revolutionary stuff in Nanotech and Biotech starts becoming more widely available.
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Post by viciousbliss on Jul 14, 2017 16:18:58 GMT -6
I use pro tools clip gain on everything and never thought it made stuff sound worse.
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