Nathanael_I

For convenience, I have had my bass running into my Allen & Heath SQ-5 digital mixer. I run my bass through a Rupert Neve Portico II channel strip, so I am not using any pre-amp gain on the SQ-5 - it is effectively a line-in interface. Yesterday, I moved this input channel back onto the Focusrite Rednet2 interface that it normally lives on. I immediately noticed the difference. The Focusrite converters deliver more detail/better transients. There is an immediacy to the sound that the SQ-5 doesn't offer. While I'm sure there is no frequency response difference between them, there is a "tighter" quality to the bass on the Focusrite. I had been playing the bass almost every day for months through the SQ-5, so I noticed from the first test notes when I made sure everything was connected and routed correctly. I prefer the sound of the Focusrite, but it wouldn't make or break an album if it was recorded through the SQ-5. That said, my experience is that every time I remove circuitry, the sound quality improves. The Sonosax integrated mic pre/AD/recorder is exquisite. The Merging Horus or Avid/DAD MTRX are where I would like to end up in the studio. One box, everything running over short internal traces, with all signals at optimal levels - and Ethernet output. I do think the future of high-end preamps is to digitize them immediately - like the new Grace M108 or Rupert Neve 8ch preamps with Dante. All of the output circuitry of the preamp, and the input circuitry of the A/D converter can be eliminated. And whatever noise or degradation they contribute is eliminated. When the design engineer knows EXACTLY what the impedance and other characteristics of the signal from the mic pre to the AD are, they can be optimized instead of having to accommodate a wide range of unknown inputs on an XLR jack. This same principle is already implemented on the DA side by speakers like those from Genelec (and others) that accept a digital input, and have an internal DA that directly feeds power amps optimized for each physical driver. I believe we are at "terminal audio quality" from the standpoint of human perception. We have audio recording technology that is better than our physical hearing mechanism, whether you believe that is at 20 KHz, 40 kHz, or 100Khz or beyond. Human auditory perception is not improving. Better technology at this point just drives the cost down, which we have seen in the proliferation of lower cost interfaces that sound good - a thing that wasn't generally true 20 years ago. The implication of this is to put the focus on the quality of the notes, the performance and the human element. Great mics and great speakers (the analog elements that cannot be eliminated) still cost, and may always do so, but even there excellence has crept into lower price points. Our hearing is not improving, and manufacturing is - see the proliferation and cost curves for CNC machining. But the recording medium is something that is no longer a concern. Digital photography has been at this point for ten years. Innovation in dedicated camera equipment has slowed - the megapixel races are over. Responsibility for innovative images is 100% in the hands of the photographer - the gear is largely unimportant except at the level of personal preference. Video recording will get there over the next five years - once 8k/60p video is easy and clean, we will be at the practical limit of human perception. Blackmagic Design just announced a 12K/60p video camera for under $10,000 USD, so it won't be long before dedicated creators and artists have access to tools that exceed everything our visual and auditory senses can process. Theatrical and stage lighting designers already run light shows that utilize the limits of our visual system, so we are entering an age that won't be defined by better/faster/more quality gear. Creativity will push in other directions. In audio, the next big innovation will be how immersive audio finally takes us beyond stereo. But this will not affect most captures at the level of recording individual instruments. It is more about production and mixing innovation than capture/recording innovation.

Thanks for sharing this. I enjoyed it. The recording for four-hands piano of Beethoven's 5th Symphony feels great. I'm not qualified to say whether the academic work is correct, but the music feels great. I don't feel cheated.

Yes, gotta love that thick warm sound. If you visit an audiophile store, you can buy little wood blocks for a few hundred dollars to keep that nice thick cable off the floor where it is subject to "parasitic excitation" or something. Stop by for a picture with the UFO on your way out the door...

You shouldn't need the word clock. I didn't when I did the same thing with RME gear. You just set the your ADAT expansion box/mixer/whatever to take timing from the ADAT interface. leave your main interface as master. Should be fine. Word clock is generally only needed for very large facilities where not everything is connected directly.

I have always upgraded converters to get more I/O or other flexibility. Once out of the "8ch Firewire/USB/Thunderbolt/whatever" interfaces, its all professional gear, professional prices, and presumably professional sound. I am not of the opinion that conversion quality is holding back my music making or capture quality. At some point you just buy enough "goes intas" and "goes outtas" and you get on with making music. On the analog side, the best recording interface I have is a Sonosax SX-R4+ recorder. This integrates very high end, very clean preamps and state-fo-the-art dual-gain range ADC conversion with something like 135dB of dynamic range. The dynamic range is not practically useful, but I can say that the resulting files are exquisite. They are slightly different from Rupert Neve pre's into Focusrite Rednet2. I can prefer them on solo piano, but I don't think about it. If using the DAW, everything goes through the Focusrite stuff. If I'm recording the piano "raw", I'll often use the Sonosax - it is really, really clean and sounds so good. On the DAC side, I did get a big bump in quality in removing analog monitor control from my studio. I went from a Grace 902 (a very high quality unit) to direct digital feed into the Genelec 8351a's. I got a significant improvement in imaging, reduced noise, etc. So, I'm listening to whatever DAC Genelec has in the monitors. It is a better sound than feeding them analog. I do not second guess this, and have no plans to purchase some uber-DAC. I can fully believe that I might have DAC preferences given a great amp feeding mastering grade audiophile speakers. But for me, the benefits of digital DSP and room correction far outweigh any minute benefit I might gain from different DAC and analog monitoring. Today, output of my DAW goes digital (Dante) to an SQ-5 mixer. The master fader there feeds the Genelec's (again across the Dante network). So I have a physical fader, but it's 100% digital math. I am now used to an essentially noiseless system - so much so that when turning on a plugin that tries to fully emulate some old piece of gear, I'll often notice the increased noise floor first and often remove the plugin.

One thing I notice is how much less useful content is in public forums of all types. In the early 2000's, highly skilled and credentialed engineers were on major forums. They would freely share lessons learned from many years of experience. By 2010, most were gone - completely run out of town by people with a web browser and an opinion, and who couldn't be wrong. I learned a lot in the early years - there were voices I learned to trust, and whose opinions I found true when I tried their advice. Now, actual practitioners give the forums a WIDE berth. The people who do the work listen deeply, experiment constantly Today, places like Gearslutz are virtually useless. The signal to noise ratio is crazy low. It is mostly hobbyists (nothing wrong with that) posturing each other about what gear they own, and there is never a mention of the music that the gear is supposed to serve (strange basis for a community). The pros are all but non-existent. So much so, that now Gearslutz pays them to do Q&A sessions. They give standard answers to basic questions and people there are amazed. I don't get it. Some of the answers you would know if you even tried to do it yourself or if you understood how the gear actually works. This happened on the composers forum "VI-Control" about three years ago. There's still some bright lights, but I find very little of interest to even open in the thread list. It is endless repeats of the same "how to I get crazy awesome pro results from buying ONE thing?" "If you could only buy ONE thing, what you buy"? How about a clue? Have you even looked at any successful person's studio or DAW? There isn't one tool, but dozens... And they actually know how to use them. Recently there was a long thread over there by someone who opened by saying he didn't get why anyone even used compressors. It turns out he'd never spent the time to play with one and listen to the results. Somehow he decided to actually listen and play with them. Many pages later, he found out what they were, what they were good for, how the controls worked and which ones he liked. It was mind-boggling. Slag something you don't even understand - then use it with curiosity for the first time and "get it". Some of the knowledge has gone to YouTube (Warren Huart, Rick Beato and others). But you mostly have to wade through a sea of people taking 20 min to rambling explain some simple DAW feature. Ableton corporate tutorial videos are 2-3 min long and get you exactly what you need, but most third party videos are 17 min rambles. Who has time for this? All the information is actually more available than it ever has been. There is also so much noise, that you first have to figure out how to have a filter to find the good stuff.

ISO-cabs exist. I have one from Jackson Audio in my studio. Celestion Gold inside. It happily takes a raging 50w tube amp down to conversation levels. Its a real guitar speaker and a real tube amp, but no one goes deaf - everyone can be happy. Two flexible mic wands inside for whatever you want to put there.

I am hopeful that somewhere we will see instruments designed with high-resolution controllers. My ownership of the VAX-77 and Non-Linear Labs C-15 confirms for me that the higher resolution is very helpful for nuanced playing.

But it is missing the most important indicator: A growing book of business that is trending towards a sustainable income. Side hustles are generally not able to replace full time income unless one has been quietly growing them for years and you can see how putting in more time makes the numbers work. I'm afraid I can't be of any help on the market - I'm not a part of it. I own no vintage synths completely intentionally. How do you become the go-to-person for this market? I bet the guy with the "reality show synth repair YouTube channel" hoovers up some part of the market due to his presence and marketing savvy. The idea is definitely cool. But I think it needs a marketing/biz development plan to become real.

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On the original question, I suppose some keyboards are too expensive for me, anyway. I've not bought a flagship at $4k (thinking rompler) ever. I have spent that much on a laptop that more than exceeds what a rompler can do. So I guess somewhere in there is my judgement that there isn't enough value. I did buy a Kronos at $2600, brand new, A stock, and then decided to stay laptop after all. (I sold the Kronos for what I paid for it). So there was a price at which I would buy a Kronos. But a whole lot less than $4k. I have bought more than one synthesizer at $4k. Small volume, boutique kinds of things. Also not commodity pieces, but unique items. John Bowen Solaris, Non-Linear Labs C15.... that kind of thing. I do wish that the best digital piano actions were more accessible. I never want the fancy home cases or built in speakers. I don't need the internal modest quality samples of the stage pianos. So I do overpay for things like the Nord Grand just because I like the action. And I guess I've justified that to myself - there isn't a choice if I want to play really nice weighed actions. My fingers like what they like. But I guess in the end, they charge what they charge because enough will pay, and they have their whole product lines tiered, and segmented to get the most out of the market. I notice how successful the MODX is. I bet they sold many more of them than the Montage. I know for me, the MODX would get the nod. I'm sure I'd hate its keys, I don't need the samples, but the synth side is pretty strong... And I have LOTS of other keyboards to play the MODX from - it would go in a rack across the room.

Reaper runs on Linux. Elk seems to just put music onto Rasberry Pi's. Clever, but not very useful. Correction, I see that it is actually a full real-time OS diving deeper into the pages. I wonder if the Reaper people would do anything with it? RT Linux has the controls to reserve cores and such, I believe. A clever DAW company (even Reaper) could build a distribution, package it as an ISO, and it would essentially create a music appliance on whatever box loaded that image. Odds are low, I know. But it would be great for music creation and production.

Thank you! YES! you are completely correct. I thought it looked funny. I will redline the post. Getting the decimal points right matters!

It would be ideal if some enterprising souls or group of companies would take the real-time Linux distribution, strip it out, and use it to make a public domain, real-time music kernel. This could be deployed on any of the modern multicore machines. By reserving even a couple cores, we would finally get a music production space that wasn't dependent on left over cycles from general purpose computing. Being able to dual boot the machine would mean anyone could also use it for gaming, or whatever else. This would do more good than anything Apple or Microsoft would do.

I answered a similar question for myself when they released the trash-can Mac, which was clearly not for audio people. At the time I was on a cheesegrater Mac Pro (8c/64GB). First I switched from Logic to Cubase - on OS X. Then I built a PC and moved to Cubase on Windows. I've never looked back. The main rig is now l cores (16 w/HT) @ 4.8Ghz with 64GB of RAM. The clock speed really helps audio work. I edit 4k video without stuttering. Getting a "new" PC only involves a motherboard, CPU and RAM. Everything else is reusable. The stumbling of Intel, the ascendancy of AMD are all easy to take advantage of if I want to on the main rig. Like everyone, I've run through the Apple configurator several times since the release of the new Mac Pro. I get a $9-12K Mac Pro. I can build something more powerful in a custom rack mount case for under $4k. I can't justify the pretty, shiny case, even though it is very pretty and very shiny. Those who are locked into Logic and are earning $$ from it will feel differently. In fairness, my cheesegrater tower is still used as a VEP sample server - 10 years later, so the hardware does last a long time. I'm sure the new Mac Pro is very well made. It is not out of line when compared with HP or Dell workstations. But I can't see buying one of those either (and they definitely don't look good, or engineered in any superior way). I have had a Mac laptop continuously since around 2001. I've always bought a fully loaded top of the line MacBook Pro - about every 4-6 years. They have been rock-solid and reliable. Last year I bought a MSFT Surface to use StaffPad. The hardware is so nice - the touchscreen and Pen are wonderful - way better than anything Apple offers for a laptop. It isn't a media creation tool - but for "consumer" use, I'd rather have a Surface than an iPad Pro. The Surface runs a real OS, not a phone OS. What has worked for me is that some audio utilities are PC, some are OS X, some are IOS - I haven't had to care - I've got one of everything. I would love for Apple to love creatives. And I'd pay some tax to be in the club. But they are a consumer company, and it very much shows. The Mac Pro is priced for Hollywood post-houses who are going to stuff 3-6 HDX cards in there and connect to a $100K S6 controller to mix blockbuster films. Very few music producers need the horsepower in the new Mac Pro.

Because we were talking about real-time operating systems and what they would mean for audio - I found out that this is quantifiable. Live mixing consoles typically use either fixed DSP or programmable FPGA's for the audio path. But, SolidState Logic takes a different approach with their Live series consoles and their T-Series broadcast consoles. SSL wrote their own real-time audio operating system to run on commodity PC hardware. The CPU is built into the Live mixing consoles, but in the T-Series, it is in a rack mount server case. The smaller T25 offers 250 fully processed paths; The larger T80 offers 800. Like most high-end digital consoles, the idea of a "path" is just an audio processed path - it could be a channel, a buss, and aux, a return - all processing is available everywhere. You configure whatever combination of inputs, auxes, busses, returns, and outputs that you need out of the pool of available paths. Every path can use any of 8 processing blocks in any order. The truly impressive thing is that the latency is a consistent 8 samples, and it is 100% phase coherent across all channels! The whole console runs as a TDM system. There's no variable processing delay per channel, so everything sums fully phase consistent, with no need for internal delay compensation or large mix buffers. The whole console runs at 64-bit floating point bit depth, so you can feed hundreds of channels into it at full volume and the mix bus will not distort or saturate. If you compare that to something like my A&H SQ-5, it has latency of .7 msec. This is 6,720 67 samples at 96Khz. The SQ-5 is FPGA based, and offers 48 channels and 36 stereo output busses for 84 processed audio paths. This console does not have equal facilities on all track types. From a systems design perspective, SSL has a significant advantage vs. FPGA or DSP-based competitors. SSL doesn't have to deal with silicon development cycles. FPGA and DSP cycles are multi-year design/test/build cycles. Having their own OS, SSL can qualify and release more powerful systems if they want, or replace hardware for the cost of QA cycles. Modern multi-core CPUs are many, many times more powerful than an FPGA or a DSP, and if controlled by a real-time OS - capable of truly amazing results. FPGAs offer more flexibility than DSP, but having your own real-time OS is even better. This is a long term strategic advantage. I'm very impressed with how SSL is running their business. Great products, smart decisions in every part of the markets they serve, great after sales support on the premium stuff - it is a well-run company. Now the SSL consoles are in the $50k and up range with I/O and offer the ability to mix fully immersive audio onto 7.1.4 systems, etc. They are used in top levels of touring, Broadway and West End stages, etc. My little SQ-5 is not competition, though it is quite capable in its own right, delivering latency-free monitor mixes in my studio from about 30 input channels. But if this is possible for a mixing console, you can imagine that DAW's would be radically more stable and performant if a real-time OS did exist for DAWs. I would love a S300-16 console and the T25 Tempest engine in my studio. The DAW would only play back audio onto the Dante output, and the whole mix would be in the SSL. The SSL digital workflows are beautiful and fast. Very clean and intuitive. I would take this over an API or Neve console without hesitation.

I would also observe that DJs are making meaning. What are people seeking? Escape and transcendental experience. They want to be out of their own heads. Some chemically mediated, but most not. Its a hard world out there for everyone not in the 1%. Most don't want their brain stimulated, they want to not have the frontal cortex engaged for a happy few hours when life can be natural and free. Many can enter a flow state when pulsing with highly rhythmic music. Entrainment is real. They don't need lyrics, or at least not complicated ones. The good DJ's are experts at reading a crowd, and absolutely think about key changes, tempo changes, when to bring it up/down/chill/whatever. They can keep a room of thousands of people in a trance state for hours. How many bands can do that? Snarky Puppy can. There's bands in every genre. But that's what it takes today - can people transcend? Can they get out of their head? Will they emerge with that buzz that humans get when exposed to great art? If you look back in history, the music that makes money is what fills the dance floor. Jazz used to. Rock used to. Rap still does. EDM still does (and is a HUGE tent). All these genres have a tendency toward an eventual complexity and polish that kills the groove. Musicians love this music because they understand the complexity. We call this prog rock, and now, pretty much all jazz. Jazz is classical music now. There is a high priesthood, and anointed prophets. You can get a PhD in it. My observation is that you tell how good the music is by: do people move to it? Do people lose themselves in it? Are all ages and genders equally transported? What do children do when exposed to it? TransSiberian Orchestra fully meets this bar - all ages love these shows. It isn't a genre. Its an ability to connect and provide a transcendental experience. Broadway does this. BBC Proms does this in its own way. Movies and shows do this for most.

Nope. I'm closer to 50 than 40, and none of the bands that played at Woodstock played a significant role in my journey thus far. I can appreciate the craft and the musicianship, great songwriting, etc. but it isn't a sound I've ever wanted to make. Probably heresy here, but I'm sure its true for others. High school was late 80s for me, and I basically stopped listening to radio pop when I discovered the classical station. Later I found jazz, prog metal and symphonic metal and wonderful musical projects by top notch musicians that just fall into the category of "good music". I would have really liked the prog era though. (And I totally lusted after a huge keyboard rig like was always on the cover of Keyboard magazine. It was all unobtanium. When I entered the Air Force, I saved all my paychecks until I could order an O1/Wfd -I'd lusted after that for years).

I should also add, that a big part of the "connection" is what happens at the key bottom. Keybeds like in the Kronos have padding there - as does anything with aftertouch. The Nord Grand does not have aftertouch and bottoms just like an acoustic piano. Because the VSL sample includes that sound of the action, there is the acoustic "thud" at the bottom that an acoustic piano has. I kept the Nord Grand vs. the P515 largely on account of this. The P515 is damped at the bottom. it is admittedly quieter, but in the studio, that is not a concern for me. I had better connection with the Nord, which also felt closer in weight to my Kawai RX-7. But I think a great sampled piano experience is nuanced - a confluence of small details. (Just like any acoustic instrument, actually).

Absolutely yes. Any desktop or laptop system has about 100x the power of a typical keyboard. Large samplers have been standard tech since Gigasampler 20 years ago. This is completely solved tech. The Kronos streams from disk, and many here use it. It is a low powered Linux computer in there - but more than adequate for streaming multi-gigabyte samples. This is not hard in 2020. The key to unlock the best samples is a great keybed. Ironically, this involves buying a top digital piano like the Nord Grand, Kawai, Yamaha, etc and then just using the MIDI output. Basically you have to buy a keyboard for the action and then replace its sounds with much better samples in the computer. My experience is that a triple sensor keyboard is important. It is important to have a keybed that gives control at the lower velocities and that lets you get at all the velocities. The Nord Grand does this for me (Kawai action). The Yamaha P515 is very capable. So are the Kawai boards. (Note they are all made by acoustic piano companies). Monitoring is important (in the studio, I play the VSL Steiway in surround - it is glorious).

I have written about it elsewhere here, but I believe the VSL Syncron pianos to represent the pinnacle of sampled pianos at this time. The Steinway is shockingly, amazingly good. I also have the Ravenscroft. It is not loaded in my template anymore. I have Keyscape, but the VSL piano is the standard. My favorite Rhodes is the Canterbury Suitcase Rhodes.

The same thing happened to me when I plugged into a Rupert Neve DI/Preamp with my bass for the first time vs. a Radial DI with the Jensen transformer (no slouch). It was a huge revelation. The good stuff is worth it. I don't have a use for this little mixer, but it seems to be getting rave reviews everywhere. I find their new Origin console VERY appealing, and I think it is also delivering huge value for the admittedly large amount of money.

Craig, the answer is in one word. Meaning. Humans seek it through human connection. Every generation feels the same human pulls, urges, and emotions, but the words are different, the context is different. The kids who grew up on rap were not listening to Yes, and it likely wouldn't have spoken to them. As a teenager from the suburbs about the time that rap got popular, I completely didn't get it. At least not until I worked for an inner-city Chicago charity for 3 months before entering the Air Force. All of a sudden I understood exactly why the music sounded that way. This will always happen. Most people can't deeply process the unspoken parts of their lives. Music does that for us, yes. But it does it for everyone else too. People don't turn to the Beatles now for answers and won't in 50 years. But they did some years ago. My teenage children listen to piles of music new and old. They need things that speak to them from pop princesses to funk and in the case of my oldest daughter Buxtehude and Bach organ works. We do live in a time when music is going to be yet further devalued. Business people are working on automatic composition tools that will soon turn out works that are good enough for most media and commercial uses. This will eat into one of the few remaining areas where musicians have fled to earn a living. But if you can avoid paying sync royalties and run an algorithm? The high end won't. Everyone else will. But one thing won't change. People need meaning. They need human connection. The EDM DJ all-stars are starting to tour with full bands - to play songs that were made on a laptop. Why? You can only jump around to a light show and have it be modestly interesting. Put half a dozen musicians up there, and it changes the whole thing. It isn't yet, but as automation, AI and other technologies erode more and more things that humans used to derive meaning from, they will look elsewhere. They will value live music, clearly played by live humans much more than algorithm music - simply because humans like other humans. We want connection. We want meaning. The fact that music has folded in on itself until commercial success seems to be the only thing that matters has ensured the present state. The goodness has been extracted. And it may remain so for yet a while. But humans will make art as long as we exist. And it will touch enough people to matter and be appreciated. It has never been easy. It may get harder. But the pendulum will swing back. You can't get a hug from an AI companion, and sooner or later, the only thing that will be truly special will be a live human, communicating from the heart in the way that only humans can.

Isopropyl Alchohol is what I've used.

I use omni's all the time! Especially my Josephson C617SET's. They are the most revealing transducer I've used. I also use Schoeps omni's and wide cardiod mics. They excel as drum overheads, on the piano, acoustic guitars. But once you have more than one or two mics, you just pick what's right for the job...