Nathanael_I

I am so sorry. There are no words.

I posted a Yamaha P-515 on Reverb today and it sold 30 min later. Can't beat that. Printed the label, and I'll drop it off tomorrow 5 min from my house to UPS.

Another EDM thing: The side-chained pulsing synth strings.... Make static chords pulse with the kick....

How about the Schmidt 8-voice? A Moog One? Those are probably the two best programmable analog poly's on the market right now. Maybe toss in the Modal 008. There's the Udo synth, but it has a pretty limited architecture compared to the first three.

I like Dorico a lot more than Sibellius. It is amazing how fresh it is not to be burdened with a 20-year code base. They are getting close to being able to do orchestral mockup in the notation package. That's a big deal.

Hard reject from me on all these. I am not out to celebrate the dysfunctions of human nature. Then again, I watch zero broadcast television, no "shows", and very, very few movies. So I'm probably not even aware of all the dimensions of incompatibility I'd generate.

Someone at IRCAM or Fraunhofer would be able to say with some authority, wouldn't they? I would think an engineer or product manager at Avid, Steinberg or other DAW manufacturer would know as well. Bob Katz or other A-list mastering engineers probably know. I doubt this is common internet knowledge. The only people that have to know are developers implementing the code. I never encode MP3 below 160kb, and usually at 192 or higher since that's about the point that no one can tell under blind ABX testing. Increasingly, there is enough bandwidth available that the need to heavily compress audio is just going away. Amazon and Tidal will both stream at CD rates.

The sky is orange here in Sonoma County. Apocalyptic for sure. Solar is also very low here. But at least we aren't getting 115 degree temperatures! I'm safely and comfortably ensconced in the studio....

I'm sorry, I don't use the in-built sounds at all right now. The keyboard is on the desk of my composing setup, and I don't have anything plugged into the audio jacks. I liked the action, the MIDI output, and the physical form factor works for my desk and how I have keyboards, mice, and faders arrayed on its flat top. The best thing about the Nord Piano library is immediately evident in the demos on their site - the pianos all have a strong and different character. For changing sounds/moods quickly, this is clearly useful. When you go to test it, I would try to play the XL versions of the pianos. They have the most data. The Nord Sound Manager is only for loading sounds. It does not have deep controls like you describe for the CP4.

The MIDI stream from the Nord definitely plays from teens to full MIDI velocity repeatedly and controllably. If you have a sample that has ppp to fff samples, you can play all those sounds. I have never adjusted the velocity curve. There is a Light/Medium/Heavy selector button right on the keyboard, so it is definitely adjustable. Looking at it for the first time, mine is set on "Medium". There are no ppp samples in the pianos I tried from the Nord Piano Libarary. In my opinion, there are not pp samples either. Even the "XL" samples seem to be mp and up - the una corda pedal does help soften the sound, but "pp" is still not in the sample data. I wrote about this at length above. These are small sample sets for live playing in the band/ensemble contexts that usually implies. If you want "as good as it gets", then you will need a state-of-the art piano sample like VSL Syncron pianos or others that weigh it at hundreds of GB and stream from SSD. The keyboard is lovely when so paired and run through excellent amplification. If you want a better built in sample, the Yamaha P-515's CFX sample is better than anything in the Nord Piano Library for detail and low volume play.

I wrote two articles about this a few years ago to clarify my own thinking. It is pretty much how I spend on things. 1. Evaluating Music Technology for Purchase 2. Long Term Investment I am the guy who will wait years to get the thing I want rather than suffer through a mediocre thing. Applied over 20 years, I am now surrounded by all nice things in the studio... I would also rather have one exceptional item of a kind than three average variants. For instance, I have one bass guitar - but it is a Pete Skjold 5 string, custom made for me - it was on the dream list for almost a decade. I also place little to no value on vintage things. I prefer the best of what is currently available. That's what people used in the past - the best of what was available. I'd rather lean forward than look back, despite there being excellent things there. It's a personal aesthetic choice, not a statement of universal truth for others. I do have a tendency towards boutique. I will pay for human skill, expertise and aesthetics. I do believe there is a sufficiency in all things. It could be little or lots, but once reached, all desire for more vanishes. I keep thinking I'll buy the hi-hats that complete a set of Paiste cymbals on my drum set , but the Zildjian K's that I got on a crazy clearance sale sound great... The point of sufficiency has been reached, apparently. But yeah, apparently I've thought about this a lot....

I would talk to Chicken Systems. They have some kind of emulation hardware, or know who makes them that simulates the floppy drive to old tech. If anyone knows how to do it, its them.

Well, living in Sonoma County, I've had a front row seat for the last three fires in four years. Evacuated twice. Thankfully not this time, but you can't live here and not know people that have lost homes, been evacuated, etc. In the last four years, its gone from something that happened 70 years ago to something happening every year. So far, this year is the first time that it is natural causes. The others PGE was responsible for with poor line maintenance. The changing weather patterns are producing a longer and deeper exposure window for hot, dry winds. It's not one thing, but all the things are clearly interacting in a way and with a frequency that is not historic, even for the area. Most of that is not my job or expertise. I do know that the air is unhealthy today, and I'm staying indoors.

Yes? I use both. Often with orchestral samples, since they already have a natural hall reverb, using an algorithmic reverb seems to blend them better. My main template is Orchestral Tools, recorded in the Teldex hall at ~1.4sec reverb. With synths, things like SampleModelling that are "raw", putting everything into a larger space, maybe 2.3 sec or so seems to work really well. At present, I use either 2B2C products like Breeze/Precedence to handle spatialization. On acoustic instruments that I record it can vary. I do like the Eventide reverbs, and have an H9000 that I use both for monitors when tracking and then as several reverbs and delays in my Nuendo template. With the Dante interface, I can get up to 32ch of I/O out of it. Using it as a "box of DSP" reduces CPU load by about 25% compared to running SW reverbs in the template. These reverbs are very "tunable" and go from special effects and "metallic" reverbs to completely smooth, glorious tails. The eMote plugin makes it very easy to adjust the programs and to save them in the session for recall. It is a box of outboard "plugins" - I suppose not unlike the UAD hardware. I would wish a Bricasti at some point. I would like to try the IRCAM SPAT reverb and some of the other immersive ones. If I ever get fully into immersive, all those reverbs are algorithmic. I've never owned Altiverb, but Nuendo has its own convolution reverb as a standard plugin. Sounds great if the right impulse is at hand.

Glad to hear that it came together well!

What I suspect will happen is that it is going to be complex enough that it is going to take a bit to sort out the synth engine.... That seems to be the reports of Continuum owners. Super powerful. But also with some attendant complexity. So, we shall see, but I am excited for this one.

The selection is not hugely different at this point. The major services that have licensed the big publishers catalogs have 31M+ tracks. This is basically the recorded history of record labels. You'll eventually find gaps. But its "mostly there". Certainly better than any record collection I could make. I use Spotify. I use it most as a music discovery service and a study tool. Because it has "most everything" there is a very good chance that any recording someone recommends, I can check out. No service has everything.

I prefer encoders for things with patch memory at a conceptual level- but with one hugely important observation... Encoders only work when a huge amount of design thought and expertise is applied to parameter scaling. A Moog filter cutoff knob is a thing of artistic usefulness. The endless encoder on the filter parameter of my Solaris does not bring the same joy or sensitivity - it sets parameters, but I map the mod wheel if I want real time control. Visual feedback is helpful (rings like Nord, Yamaha Montage, etc). So there's the rub. Architecturally, an encoder is a better choice. But practically - they often aren't as musically useful as a pot. Dave Smith gets this really right whatever he is specifying on the OB-6. Moog gets this. Haptics - the final frontier for getting electronic instruments to be as expressive (without multiple lanes of MIDI controller data) as acoustic ones....

As prolific as he is, he is still finding his voice. He is pushing on all the limits he can find - his own, technical limits, what audiences will accept, and more. He is very musical, very well trained, and works hard. There's every reason to think that his best years are yet ahead. The body of work he leaves behind could be substantial, deep and varied as he matures.

Too hard to setup. Too expensive (2x speaker cost). And in a living room, the effect is really best in a very small area. It is something that has been much better done in movie theaters, honestly. Most home setups are never calibrated right, so it is questionable how much people have actually experienced it. It will be interesting to see if Avid's big push on Atmos for music mixing goes anywhere in the market. They are promoting the idea of "mix to Atmos once, deliver to any format". Dolby is pushing that also. Some soundtracks are remixed for stereo release, others are just down-mixed on the dub stage. The new ProTools Atmos tools let you specify what formats you want to output, and it will run out whatever stems are needed for however many formats you choose. I haven't heard it. I haven't tried it. But they are definitely selling it at their Nashville and LA pro audio events. I've caught a few of the YouTube broadcasts and am "following it from a distance". But yeah, today, music only distribution to surround sound is pretty much non-existent. No one has the playback environment. But the engineers who have done surround music mixing all seem to be big fans of the sound they get and the freedom it gives them. The last one I watched, the mixer had taken a rap/urban kind of track and done it in Atmos. His first observation: There is so much room to position things that I hardly used compression. Without trying to squeeze things into a horizontal panorama, the mix could breathe more and still have definition and punch. The film guys say they don't use a lot of compression on Atmos music, but acknowledge that typically it is pretty well compressed before the stems get to them. Still early days - I am watching with interest. I just know that we don't hear in mono or in stereo, so "more immersion is better", but will it ever be practical? My crystal ball is hazy. If they ever get it right in headphones or wearables, I think it will go mainstream. In living rooms? Hard sell unless "Atmos soundbars" can do enough with room reflections to matter....

Do you get any build up of low-mids with the hard sides of the plastic bin forming a resonant chamber? The foam will attenuate high frequencies, but not so much for the fundamental frequencies of a male voice in particular. You could also just try putting a flat board between the vocal mic and guitar - it will provide some control, even without the bin. Looks like you are having a great time! Happy music making!

Yes, changes in spatialization are quite interesting to the ear in any direction (down to mono, up to surround). But sometimes, it takes a moment to realize that what has changed is the spatialization. I had a friend over recently, we were going through some synths and sound libraries to select some things to sample into her Kronos for further manipulation. She was sitting at my composing rig, and I was off to the side just acting as scribe for the "patches that are interesting". It took a few minutes, but I noticed that some of the patches had very similar names, and that we both preferred the second one of every patch like this. All the "favorite" patches were the surround version of the patch. I have surround monitoring in the studio, and the stereo version of the patch just wasn't as engaging. None of this was crazy swooping panning stuff. But when the sound envelops you, it just feels better. I have had the same experience with the VSL Syncron Steinway. It is glorious in surround, and a significant improvement from stereo. But mono is powerful too - concert sound is often in mono (or practically so anyway as an attendee fixed in one spot not on the centerline). Tell us what you find - there have been amazing recordings made around a single microphone. Watching a top bluegrass band trade off around a mic is pretty cool.

In playing with Omnisphere, I realized that many of my favorite sounds derived from the PPG 2.3. My Solaris has those original waves in it. For wavetable, I would rather just get the new Waldorf Iridium - it is so well thought out and has a gorgeous mod matrix. These Behringer re-issues are kind of cool, but mostly I have no desire to own the originals even. I appreciate them, but aesthetically, I want to explore the best things made today, not look backwards. The Solaris has let me explore some of the sonic space, but in a modern package, with far more expressive capability. But for the prices Behringer are charging, one can explore something that was perhaps unobtainable at the time, and that is a good thing. I so wanted a Yamaha SY77 when those were a thing - the sound of it in the store was just so different and attractive. Today, I could easily afford one, but I'd never want to deal with that interface. It would drive me nuts. The Montage/MODX are amazing, far more powerful, and again have a truly excellent mod matrix, and I'd pick them instead. More about me than the instrument in question, I realize, but I'm glad they are making them for those that want them. It's not like keeping a vintage PPG running is an easy thing, and I'm sure great music will be made with these and the others.

Well, context always matters. There's lots of room for every available choice being the best one in some situation. Live with a PA and I'm mixing? Whatever is in the guitar is what is used without complaint or commentary. Who wants feedback? - my great studio mics are the WRONG answer there. But in the studio? I would use external mics if accurate recording of the acoustic sound was the priority.