David Emm

Holy bleep, shades of Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life!" It sounds horrifically delicious, but I can tell that if I chowed down on one, I'd pop before I finished it.

My pal calls it "Soylent Brown." I prefer "Teletubby Turds." We're both amazed not to be on any No Fly lists.

Good points. I'm only reading the libraries of Logic-based instruments, so that's a plus. I may also shift my M-Tron library outside, which is 4.5 GB of skeery. I'm about to do some Autosampling of my Mininova. I'll be tucking the results into Sampler, but that's the only other writing in my future. I should add a couple of Samsung drives. Variety seems like an added safety measure under the new paradigm.

Nah, save yer money! Here are three good resources for newbies, the first of them being the most comprehensive. #2 and #3 cover the same ground more briefly. https://mastering.com/logic-pro-x-tutorial/ https://www.makeuseof.com/logic-pro-beginner-guide/ https://www.soundswow.com/logic-pro-tutorials/ If this is your first DAW, I can understand your confusion. There's a lot to cover, but as complex as it is, be reassured that there's a beginning and an end. You can eventually grasp the whole enchilada. If its not your first DAW, the basics still apply across the board, even if you are only used to Ableton Live. There are exotic approaches if you want them, but click on Show Mixer and then explore the buttons on one track. Poking around there speaks volumes about the potential routings, such as those for effects inserts and sends. I'm no expert, because to me, as an old cassette-gobbling hippie, Logic is a massive tape deck. I cut-&-paste with impunity. I enlarge track sections enough to fix that one occasional pesky bad note and its a breeze. Those reflexes simply come with time. I recommend cross-referencing these sites with the manual. After X numbers of passes, the YT videos will make more sense. Above all, click everything and see what happens. Its not as if the program will explode if you trip over procedures while you're learning. It'll simply go DERP! until you get the right strokes & macros going. You won't learn it overnight, but the drop-down menus are very accomodating. Arm a channel, pick an instrument and tweedle. Everything will grow from there.

When Australian kids cuss, they don't get their filthy $#@! little mouths washed out with soap. Mom just makes 'em eat 3 heaping tablespoons' worth of Vegemite.

Not if they happen at the same time. 😱

Holy bleep, what a Medusa hairdo of cords that generates! My first thought was about the horrific adapters I used to connect things, back before I learned what impedance was. You know how it was at times: you'd use anything you had to cram things together in a pinch. The best effect pedal I had was the noise gate, because things sounded like a windstorm without it. 😆 If it looks like a jungle from the outside, imagine the poor tech who has to trace everything when its opened up. 😬

I have a 500 GB SSD and a 128 GB flash drive holding my Logic libraries, connected via Thunderbolt port extenders. They're getting rather warm. Not hot, but still notable and moreso on the SSD. I'm all about near-OCD backups, but the steady use of outboard storage in real-time is new to me. Thermal buildup can eventually cause a kaboom. If all of this is standard operating procedure, great, but I'd like to feel more certain. Anyone having issues with such things sputtering or even failing? Is the heat issue less of a concern by going with something like an NVMe into USB 3.2 Gen 2 enclosure? I want to set the right standard for configuration.

There was once either a red pill or a blue one. Now, there's also this horrific new PURPLE one. 😬

That's a humbling biography. Anyone would be a real world-beater with even half of that to their credit. He's one of our music tech forefathers.

I had a butt ugly Dodge Dart station wagon for a while, back when I was a butt ugly bionic hippie. Heater (no A/C), AM radio, standard shift and basically a tractor motor as its heart. You could see a lot of the ground under it, because it was the opposite of tricked-out. I all but put butter in the crankcase in a couple of pinches and drove it through deep water a few times, but it soldiered on, regardless. I also kept it decorated in Early White Trash inside, so I was free of worry about anyone stealing it. Cars crammed with high-tech features have commensurate costly problem cycles. The Beluga excelled at its one real purpose: hauling me to & fro. I'd love to have it back again! Craig is right about this being a crossfade. When I let my sci-fi gland wander, its not hard to envision a take-off point where solar panels hit a meaningful peak efficiency and a form of battery based on something utterly mundane & plentiful gives them the right place to funnel the juice. I may not live to see it, but I was a lousy candidate for a rocket pack anyway.

Everything surrounding lithium is nasty. The mining of it is messy and a replacement battery can cost more than the original car price. Repair shops for them command top dollar, because it all but takes a specialized clean room to manage. You can't just roll them into a local garage. Also, where do they get the juice for those charging stations? Why, at least partially from petroleum-fueled power stations. Some may be nuclear or solar/wind based, but that's not likely to cover the majority of the load. It defeats part of the purpose. We need something with better energy density that's more sensibly repairable and which doesn't randomly catch fire like a sumbitch. Firefighters hate those Tesla calls, because they have no ready way of extinguishing the mess. They mostly just guard the perimeter until it sputters out. The technology is still too much in its beta phase, IMO.

That's a lovely setup. It could make for some great contrast with an Eric Whitacre choir. Its far removed from a Mellotron. 🤯

Gotcha. I'm going to re-check my backups and then start fresh. I'm not sure where I first stumbled, but starting from zero is the way of all machine language, even if it has a rainbow GUI. We were on the same page there. I've been shopping for a good powered hub. I just need one or two more slots and I could be where you are, sharing the load across drives. I'll scope out what Sabrent offers. I have a 128 GB SanDisk drive holding my libraries at the moment (those have been rock solid), but I think I'll be cloning that onto an SSD or two. I like having 6 copies of everything. I lost a wad of work many years ago to a sudden brownout, so I Save Early, Save Often!

Um, yes. You can see part of my problem! 😳 It'd be a wild fantasy scenario to need 2 TB of RAM. That's a good idea and moreso while I shift things around and fix the issue.

I did mean "home rig." There's only so much crossover between that and a stage system unless you have Toto's roadies. Zebralette is scary-impressive. If the full instrument is going to be like several of these in a final form, it'll make quite a splash. Urs always has an element of crispness going, so yes, I hear some PM-like movement going on. I'm also fond of Bezier curves, which seem very natural in use, even when the sound at hand is weird. I may not be a candidate for this one, because I basically live in a ring of slab synths and Spitfire sections. I also cheat by tweezing three instances of Logic's Sampler featuring modular sounds that are clearly from the Subotnick end of the pool. Full disclosure. I only rarely sweat bullets over micro-differences in LFO speeds.

I'm sure most of us have struggled at one point or another, trying to find or afford an instrument. I've missed out on a few great keyboards by a hair. I knew a man who'd bought a Bosendorfer Imperial Grand AS AN INVESTMENT. He didn't play at all. He already had various institutions offering double what he'd paid for it, as those were in low-run numbers, like Faziolis. I was one of those dewy-eyed newbs who was amazed to have that Mirage piano, an early lo-fi winner. Its said "Everyone sees a different rainbow," which is scientifically true. Every piano player has a central idea of the perfect piano. Considering my path, from an early Shoninger console to Pianoteq & a hangar full of synths, I feel like Captain Nemo, wailing away at the pipe organ on the Nautilus. So would I enjoy having my own grand? Sure. Talk about quality exercise!

Yes. That's what I have and it has yet to choke on a piece I'm sculpting that's approaching 40 tracks. However, I'm going to aim for 2 TB in my next Mac. Even 1 TB would have kept me out of my current hole. The M series really is a paradigm shift from my Intel iMacs.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm all-in with outboard SSDs. That's just an improved form of the inevitable creep of peripherals. Its library handling relative to Logic that's got me, not an SSD issue. I'm just going to have to start fresh. I may have doubled-up on a volume or three, causing Logic to stutter. It obviously can't see things that are in two places at once. I shifted my libraries to an outside drive ("Relocate Sound Library") and then made aliases that show up in Logic proper, complete w/the little pointer arrows, right? It doesn't seem to SEE them, because the system keeps trying to load the full library every time I start Logic. Sigh. I was instructed to set Privacy/Security such that Logic could access outside memory. When I went to do it, Logic was already checked and GREYED OUT. It says to turn on 'Removable Volumes,' but that legend isn't even on the list. Under 'Files and Folders,' Logic is listed as 'Full Disk Access,' so things should be rolling. What am I missing? I went to Apple docs and did a search including my version of Logic, but all I got was this page, where a few aspects don't always seem to roll as described. https://support.apple.com/en-us/111094 I wilt over greyed-out things, argh. I'm still on Big Sur. Maybe these instructions were "upgraded" to Monterey, etc. and no longer apply. That would account for this mini-car wreck. I hope not. I don't have room to take up the heftier new version of Logic. Holy bleep, I feel Stoopid™! Real men know how to confront their file handling issues! 🤨

Fair point! Synth design is as varied as the user base. One man's garbage heap is another's treasured workstation. Chromaphone makes it all more traditional with an ADSR, etc., which is what players like me need. OTOH, that's the opposite of what a restless sound designer is seeking. They call for a synth that regularly leads you down rabbit holes. Me? I'm always looking for the synth-festooned version of Sparky's Magic Piano.

Hear hear! Exactly right. That sound has Zelensky-sized balls. 🤯 Polkahero makes a solid point about the tracker he played. I've had the pleasure, too, so I know he's on the mark. The experience is one thing for the organist in that great command center and another for the audience. Then there's that third grail of the E-mu sample. Boy, does E-mu still stand as the best samplists their era of instruments had. I had a pair of Proteii and still possess their unique Planet Earth module. I also have several sample volumes from Digital Sound Factory, including Planet Phatt and Virtuoso, their full orchestra module. On one hand, they have their 'dusty' aspects, showing their age sonically and stylistically. On the other, they're still clarity on the hoof. Even now, those sounds are marvels of savvy sampling.

I didn't buy enough system memory for my Mac Mini and that now comes hard-wired. You can't expand it internally. I'd love to delete several of Logic's bundled synths, which take up room without offering anything very useful. I've been looking for a means and no luck so far. Things like their FM and Ensemble synths just gather dust as woefully underpowered. Their ES2 VA is crying out to be their next revamp. Its been outclassed for years. Sculpture is utterly uninviting as a physical modeler, so that could go as well. Its probably asking too much to un-write part of a DAW, but I'd love to recoup the wasted space they're taking up. Any ideas or is it (logically speaking) just a "suck it up, buttercup" situation?

Baby Audio's ATOMS is a new physical modeling synth based on the Mass-Spring concept. Nick Batt's review made sense, but not such that the approach sounds sufficiently musical to me. AAS's Chromaphone offers far less exotic models and they hit the mark well. ATOMS is so avant-garde-y that it strikes me as a swing-&-a-miss. There's usably esoteric and then there's just plain weird. It has both a general patch randomizer and then a Recycle feature that begins from your current patch. Those are smart features for such an odd beast. PM has all but taken over the areas where I once struggled with FM. I can hear the distinction between the two methods, but aside from those unique FM patches that can cut like a laser, the trade-off makes my musical life easier & more productive. I'll gladly take my samples of some unique FM keepers and leave the rest to PM. Anyone else make a similar procedural/compositional decision about your chosen rig members?

I'll always have a fierce love for Boss, because plugging my first Moog synth into a delay pedal brought it to life in a big, BIG way. I was bummed to realize what MONO-synth meant, but that took a ton of the butt-hurt out of things. I bought many of their pedals and three half-racks until I got to the 19" goods, learning a lot about effects along the way. As I grew into using a DAW, I sweetened my gradual synth sales with many of those same pedals. Over time, I've owned three Boss logo t-shirts until my nipples wore holes in 'em!

I mentally dismiss the debate because it IS in its infancy. Craig referring to it as a cross-fade sounds exactly right. I think some of the mini-complaint arises because its so new, we have yet to settle on what it means sonically. The Osmose is just beginning to sink in and its not unfair to say that Expressive E is the first to devise an approach that presents like an instrument rather than an oddity. It'll take a couple of generations to refine what it CAN do so people can see why they'd want to go there creatively. Poly AT is pretty amazing as it is.