dmitch57
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Posts posted by dmitch57
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7 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:
Then there are folks who sing and play at different levels.
Frank Zappa also fits here. He once claimed that as a singer, he couldn't pass an audition for his own band. But his playing, writing, and bandleading were so phenomenal that I'm willing to ignore his singing and silly lyrics.
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Bad tone for a player, or bad voice for a singer, are pretty much deal breakers for me. There are a few exceptions for great songwriters who write better than they sing; Tom Waits and Bob Dylan come to mind.
Then there are folks who sing and play at different levels. I never cared for Louis Armstrong's singing, but his trumpet playing is up there on Mount Olympus (for tone and for creative chops).
But instrumentalists - good tone is absolutely essential to me. How can it be good if it doesn't sound good?
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I prefer eBooks for pretty much everything.
For recreational reading, the main issue is font size - I'm no spring chicken anymore, and I need a larger font than a lot of paper books and magazines provide. So many advantages: variable font, font size, and format; portability; zero space taken up on my full bookshelves; instant dictionary lookup; text search; footnotes as links; download a new book anywhere in seconds; etc.
For technical reading I also prefer eBooks, for different reasons, though variable font size is important here too. I don't like videos for learning because I have yet to see one that dispenses with the chit chat and gets down to business and that runs as fast as my comprehension. They all try my patience. With an eBook, I go through at my own pace. Also: I'm generally using a technical eBook while I'm trying to learn something at a computer...and why not have the book right there in a window next to what I'm working on? Also: updates to technical eBooks are great; my thanks to all the authors and publishers who provide them (thanks, Craig!). Also: paper technical books have a bad habit of having standard binding, meaning you can't lay them flat or on a music stand while you're busy working on whatever the book is teaching you. Huh? Also: on general principles, paper books are so 20th century. 🙂
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16 hours ago, Anderton said:
what does everyone consider as three most beautiful sounds?
- David Gilmour's first solo in "Echoes"
- Norah Jones singing
- Roy Buchanan playing anything on a Telecaster
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1 hour ago, Joe Muscara said:
It was developed by their Traffic Optimization Team. FWIW, here is a post that's from Reddit.
OK, that is the most depressing thing I've read all week. Depressing because it's totally believable.
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I have a recent iMac with an SSD, in a single-room studio. I never hear the iMac when tracking or mixing; sometimes the fan revs when bouncing. Works for me.
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Something about the "spread too thin" reasoning sounded slimy to me. They didn't need to go as far as the Verge's suggestion, but they could have been more forthcoming.
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6 hours ago, analogika said:
do not imagine for a second that the setting affects what data they collect.
I also turn off the "Web and App Activity logging" switch. Just in case. 🙂
I'm pretty sure that by California and EU law, if you ask them to provide you with the data they collect about you, they have to give it to you.
https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa
Several times after I asked Google stop tracking my activity, I asked for a copy of the data they had on me. Each time, they said they didn't have any activity log data.
FWIW.
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5 minutes ago, dmitch57 said:
One can turn this whole "targeted ad" google feature off
In case anyone is interested, this is where you can disable it.
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16 hours ago, spokenward said:
It's not malicious, it is intended to be assistive.
Yeah, not malicious. Just creepy. And I can't remember a single time when it actually helped me in any way. It helps advertisers put ads in front of users' eyeballs, that's all.
One can turn this whole "targeted ad" google feature off, but google sure makes it hard to do so.
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50 minutes ago, Dave Bryce said:
You don’t need to turn on Apple Music. You can do it using tunes from the stereo files in your own library stored on your phone.
How? Apple says "If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can listen to select songs in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos." I don't subscribe. My phone does not have an Audio or Spatial option in its music settings.
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1 hour ago, Dave Bryce said:
Put on your Airpods, play a stereo track from your library, and switch Spatial on - both with and without Head Tracking engaged - and then back off. You'll totally hear the effect. It's not subtle.
That, I cannot do. I'm not gonna set up Apple Music here, for reasons far beyond the scope of this discussion. 🙂
This would not be the first, or last, time that Apple has been less than forthcoming about how a significant customer-facing feature is supposed to work. We mere users may never know what Spatial Audio actually does, or even what it's supposed to do, on a technical level.
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18 hours ago, Dave Bryce said:
where Spatial Audio is an Apple protocol that works with standard stereo files using the accelerometer and gyroscope in Airpods, and “is an active modulation system that will change based on your head movements and the position of the listening device.”
This would be an interesting twist on the debate, but I'm not 100% sure it's true. Apple seems to say, here, that Spatial Audio only works on Dolby Atmos source. To use Spatial Audio, you have to have a Dolby Atmos mix of the music. Can you point us at a link that shows how to listen to Spatial Audio with a standard, old-school stereo mix as the source?
Also in that Apple doc I linked to is a link to a page which seems to say the 3D head tracking is not an intrinsic part of Spatial Audio, but is a subset. I.e. you can have Spatial Audio without head tracking, but you can't have head tracking without Spatial Audio.
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The DAW. What electric guitar was to the second half of the 20th century, the DAW is right now. We've only scratched the surface of what can be done "in the box". Someone is gonna come along and totally blow everyone away...
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Just one...easy. D'Angelico EX-SS semi-hollow body. Most versatile guitar I've ever played. With an electric guitar, do I get to pick an amp for it? Amplitube 5.
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4 hours ago, RABid said:
You have to be careful about compression schemes whatever you choose
Good point. Some 3rd party sellers tout the Sennheiser RS-175 as having lossless/uncompressed audio, but Sennheiser's own literature is pretty vague. Here's one place that compares four Sennheiser models, and only one - the (discontinued) RS-185 - is described as having "uncompressed" audio. Whether that means the others have lossy compression is unknown.
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I'm looking into low-latency wireless headphones for tracking. As far as I can tell, no Bluetooth hardware is going to usable; even BT 5.0 has latency up to 40 ms. That's way too long.
I've found three sets of phones that use (non-Bluetooth) RF connectivity and claim super low latency:
- Sennheiser RS-175 $198
- AIAIA TMA-2 $350
- Brookstone AirPhones $55
(I'm inclined to disregard the Brookstones based on their intended target audience, but I left them in the list for comparison.) Does anyone here have any experience with these, or with any other low-latency wireless phones that are good enough for studio use? Thanks.
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What a provocative set of questions.
I have well over a thousand CDs. I never listen to them; I've ripped the stuff I want to listen to, losslessly (ALAC, FLAC, doesn't matter). Once a CD is ripped losslessly, my take is that I safely own those original bits forever. Disc formats come and go, CDs rot, hard disks die, but my music collection gets backed up and moved between machines often enough that the bits are safe. Every bit that was on the original CD, I can listen to anytime.
I listen to the ripped versions of CDs because it's so much easier than dealing with physical discs. I use JRiver for playing ripped and downloaded music all over my house.
Occasionally I find stuff in my CD collection that I haven't ripped yet but I want to listen to, and I rip it then. (I just did this the other day, with Warren Zevon's incredible cover of "Back In The High Life Again".) It's mainly for this reason that I can't imagine getting rid of my physical CD collection. There is also artwork and documentation that comes with the CDs that, sadly, is often unavailable anywhere else. I confess to sentimental attachment to my CD collection too. Totally illogical, I know. 🙂
I sometimes buy CDs, but that's kind of complicated. First off, I very rarely use streaming services - I prefer to own the music I listen to free and clear, rather than renting it. (Any bets on whether Spotify/Apple Music/etc. will still be around in 20 years? No? My digital collection has been growing since the invention of the CD format. It will probably outlive most of today's streaming services.) My first choice when buying music is high-res downloads (24 bits, 96 KHz, from e.g. HDTracks). If music I want isn't available in that format, then my next step depends on how important the sound quality is. Most music, I'm OK getting from the iTunes Store, AAC at 256 Mbps. That usually sounds pretty good. But sometimes I want the best sound quality I can find, and that's when I buy a CD (if I can't get a hi-res download). If a new Peter Gabriel album comes out and it's not available in hi-res, then I'd certainly buy the CD. I can tell the difference between AAC and CD quality if it's recorded really well. I can also tell the difference between CD quality and hi-res if it's recorded really well. With really well-recorded music, I go for the highest resolution possible.
I'll also buy a CD if I want to hear something that is unavailable in any other format. Some music hasn't made it to iTunes or Spotify, but artists sell the CDs. Some music is out of print and is unavailable anywhere except for used CDs on Ebay. If that's the only place I can find it, and I want it, I'll buy it. And rip it, losslessly.
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"Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today."
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-remaining-twitter-coders-engineers-email-2022-11?fbclid=IwAR3LBt0YoOfl0wqQzPaD-nI16zcersmiIAgNLc72-un3kbXK1471sdFLsBgI feel sorry for the former and soon-to-be-former employees of Twitter, but this man's idiocy, blindness, and hubris are nothing short of breathtaking. He didn't think that maybe, ya know, the thousands of people he fired might be useful in keeping the place running?
I'd be perfectly fine with him losing every penny of the 44 billion he spent on this mess.
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10 hours ago, Anderton said:
They gave more power to composers, as opposed to players, in the sense that an individual could create compositions with multiple textures and sounds that didn't require being able to play multiple instruments.
True, but only in conjunction with multitrack tape recorders. Without the ability to (reasonable easily) overdub, composers wouldn't have been able to take advantage of this aspect of synths. Although she wasn't a composer on the project, I'm pretty sure Wendy Carlos couldn't have done Switched On Bach without multitrack tape (and a Moog of course).
An unfortunate way that synths have changed music is in live performances: it's now common for one or two folks with synths to replace entire string and horn sections. The last time I saw a live performance of Jesus Christ Superstar, the pit orchestra was a five piece band, and two of them were synth players. Like, one synth player doing a string section, one doing a piano and horns. (It didn't sound anything like the show with a full orchestra.)
But ultimately, in the long run, the main way synths are changing music is that new sounds and textures are being added to composers' and producers' palettes. Beyond the ability to mimic a trumpet or a P-Bass, entirely new instruments are created all the time - instruments with sounds nobody has ever heard before. That's fantastic, in my book. Until synths came along, how many times did we see that happen, say in the 20th century? Leo Fender did it a couple of times, plus the electric piano (maybe - Rhodes is closer to an acoustic piano than a P-Bass is to an upright...). Now, it happens every day. How cool is that?
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21 hours ago, Theo Verelst said:
So what sound is there supposed to come from a synthesizer in a production?
Music.
A synth is just another instrument. Its usefulness as a musical instrument is almost entirely determined by the musician who plays it. Or programs it, which IMO is the same thing.
Some synths have way more sonic capabilities than an electric guitar. When electric guitars came into common use, some folks railed against them, saying that they weren't real instruments, etc. But of course, we now know that electric guitar is a real, valid, expressive instrument. Heck, I'd say it's the most expressive instrument, but I am massively biased. 🙂
As to "what sound is there supposed to come from a synthesizer in a production?"... I strive to get sounds that further and/or realize the composition I'm working on. If it makes the song better, then it's working. If it expresses a particular melody well, it's working. If it provides a good rhythmic or textural basis for a melody played by another instrument, then it's working.
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I'm just north of Seattle. The closest fire is about 40 miles away. No evacuations have happened near here, but the air outside has been downright unhealthy all week. If you go outside it smells like your next-door neighbor has a brushfire in their yard. Everyone I know is pretty much hunkered down, inside.
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18 hours ago, Anderton said:
My current 2022 project has no idea what it is.
Only one way to find out. 🙂
I've been in that boat from time to time. I like it there. Sometimes it's how really new stuff happens.
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15 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:
Do you plan on sharing your music with the public at large?
It may become a different animal at that point.
Oh yeah, it's out there, at Bandcamp and the usual streaming services. It is a sad fact of music production that all of the music I make is going to sound...different when it's played outside my studio. 🙂 I check out mixes on every pair of speakers and headphones I can get access to, and make tweaks accordingly. But every one one of those is a compromise. Still, I know that there is one place where the mix sounds just like I want it.
19 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:I don't have a good facility for recording drums or the budget to hire the drummer I'd like to have on my recordings so I'm learning the workarounds using MODO Drum, NI Studio Drummer and some other stuffs.
Same situation here. XLN Addictive Drums and MODO have to suffice for me.
20 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:I'd love it if everybody listened to my songs on the same speakers I'm using but reality rears it's ugly head. After I get a mix going, I need to make it "translate" to a variety of crap sounding systems.
Indeed. Dang that reality. 🙂
21 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:I sent a recent mix to a friend who used to play bass in a band we were in, he said he liked that he could hear my bass parts on his cellphone.
That is quite a feat!
Cheers.
Artists you like, but don't like their voice or tone
in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage
Posted
Ah, I was not fully explaining myself. What I should have added is: if an instrumental part doesn't sound good to me, there is no way I am going to like it. So, for instrumental music: if it doesn't sound good to me, I don't like it. There have to be other attributes in order for me to like it (emotional connection, sincerity, etc.); sounding good to my ears is necessary but not sufficient for me to like it.
"How good someone is" is meaningless to me. That sounds like it refers to someone's technical chops. Not gonna name names here, but there are tons of technically "good" players that I have no interest in and that I don't like. Albert King is about the least technically proficient guitar player I've ever seen...but he sounded GREAT, and he was great, and I have always loved his playing and his music.