I was looking at AKG's the other day. A pair of Closed back and another pair of Semi-Open backed. Cant remember the names though so ill have to find it out.

I have a pair of AKG271's and they don't sound that great. Thankfully I got them for about 40 bux cause the guy at the store screwed up my bill

I use 990's if I want better sound

They are the ones the guy tried to sell me. He showed me the K240 MKII and the K271 MKII.

What does everyone use to program drums? I have the option of trying to get my bands old drummer to track the drums on his V-Drums into cubase ( 2 stereo xlr's or i buy a midi cable ) and use either bfd or superior drummer. Or im thinking of programming the midi in Cubase myself using bfd or superior drummer.

What do you guys do?

I use superior drummer with a number of EZXs. In fact I swear by them.
I program it all by MIDI in the MIDI window of PT but when I've got my MIDI controller keyboard I'll probably use that if it's actually easier.

Whats it like programming it all in PT? It looks really damn slow doing it in Cubase but i think it may be the only way. I dont fancy spending any more cash on a pre amp/interface which takes a midi cable.

I'm used to it now so I can do it quickly whilst not sacrificing quality of results. I always ensure that all my velocities are realistic as I go through. Plus, I prefer doing it in this 'manual' fashion as I can ensure every note/hit is perfect before moving on.

I'm currently weighing up the SDX Metal Foundry, something I'll probably get if/when the price goes down a bit.

[QUOTE=benfan;18129106]Whats it like programming it all in PT? It looks really damn slow doing it in Cubase but i think it may be the only way. I dont fancy spending any more cash on a pre amp/interface which takes a midi cable.[/QUOTE]

there are midi->usb cables

My interface doesnt have a USB in. I would need to go SP/DIFF into another interface, say and FP10, and then from that firewire into my laptop. The FP10 has a MIDI in so i could set up an input bus into cubase.

but if you're triggering a midi program, that would work wouldn't it

I plug my usb keyboard (of the musical kind) into my usb port at the back of my comp

I was under the impression i had to bus it into cubase and then use something BFD as a VSTi to trigger it.


Anyone on here use Voxengo Boogex? Iv just downloaded it and im having alot of trouble getting Cubase to recognise it. Could someone help me out?

Iv got the zipped file and have tried a couple of things but have no idea how im gonna get Cubase to open it so i can use Recabinet.

use keFIR

keFIR isnt available to download anymore, i guess the site that was hosting the download broke and no-one has fixed it.

So iv copied the file with the .dll application into the VST folder in Cubase and updated my plug ins to scan for it, and it still doesnt work.

Anyone think it may be cause im running 64bit and its only optimised for 32bit OS?

Yeah I have the same problem. They never made a 64bit version. The samples will load into another convolution reverb like the Waves IR1 though...

Just about to buy Izotope Ozone 4 and maybe Alloy on top of that. It's either Alloy, or Spectron or Trash, just trying the demos now. I love Ozone though, cracking plugin

F*ck, this is hard to choose. I might have to get all 4 :-\

How easy is Ozone 4 to use? How does it affect your CPU load/Asio meters?

if you want keFIR I can upload for you

I only downloaded it like 3 months ago hard to believe you can't find it

[QUOTE=Moseph;18121456]The only time you might have issues would be if your headphones have uncommonly high impedance (which happens but you normally know about it).[/QUOTE]

I'm in the market for some new headphones to use with my podxt. I'm worried about the opposite actually. The podxt manual recommend 150-600ohm headphones, but anything under $100 seems to range from 32 ohm to 64 ohm.

[QUOTE=viciouscycle;18135657]if you want keFIR I can upload for you

I only downloaded it like 3 months ago hard to believe you can't find it[/QUOTE]

I managed to find it from a different site. Alot of the first ones the internet threw up were links to the orignial hosting site which has closed. Cheers anyway man.

Benfan:

Ozone4 is unbelievable, I love it. I think it's easy to use, they say it takes time to master (no pun intended) so I guess I'll come across things sooner or later that I'll realise would have made my previous attempts much more successful than I thought they were (if you get me, that was a **** sentence).

I would definitely recommend it, already! Along with a copy of Bob Katz - Mastering Audio, just for a casual read, cover-to-cover, it's a great book apparently, I've just started it after having it for 2 years :-\ priorities.

Nice one, id look into it but the price is abit steep to buy it now after all the other stuff iv bought this month. Iv got someone getting superior drummer on a torrent for me at the minute so i can see if its worth the money or not.

Let me know what you think to SD, I'm sure you'll like it, it's internal plugs are designed by Sonalksis and they've never put a foot wrong plug-wise. I love their stuff.

Gah, i've gotta decide what plugs to get.
I've got a one-off discounted purchase on Izotope gear,so obviously it's best to buy whatever I think I'm definitely gonna end up with from them now (within realistic financial bounds!). 4 plugs to choose from: Ozone4 (a definite), Alloy (the mix equivalent of Ozone), Spectron and Trash.

Alloy has a cool EQ, tbh I think it's better than the native PT EQ purely for the alt+click feature that solos a band centred around the cursors frequency - really helps to find annoying frequencies, better than the standard manner of finding them anyway.
Other than that, the dynamics stuff is pretty ok, probably on par with if not better than the native PT comp/limit and expand/gate plugs. The transient shaper is interesting and something that I'm actually missing, which could be helpful, although from a percussion p.o.v, I do all my drums with Superior Drummer 2.0, which features a Sonalksis transient shaper.

The Trash plug has a lot of potential for more avant-garde guitar tones, something I really want to play around with a lot. It's got quite a few cool features tbh. It made some synth leads I was working with sound much better and dirtier. I've needed a good distorted plug for a loooong time (to give some high mid presence to different things) so this is very tempting as well.

Finally, Spectron is pretty cool and could come in handy for a lot of my electroacoustic music* stuff (as Trash will) but there's nothing that stands out as amazing and I have a app called FScape which does most of the same stuff anyway.


So I'm thinkin Ozone, Alloy and Trash, but that'll be near 300£ :-\


* See [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroacoustic_music[/url]

trash is pretty legit on drums, if you haven't already tried that, you should.

Yeah I tried it on drums, bass, synths and line-in guitars. Sounded pretty fit on everything tbh, great plug.
Think I'm gonna get em all tbh, Spectron will definitely come in handy and it'd be stupid not to get it now considering the discount I can get

agreed, i love what they do to audio :)

What's the latency like on those plugs? Ozone is amazing, but there's no way you can use it in Pro Tools LE on individual tracks cause of the wtf-lag.

Just wondering if it's the same with the rest.

Latency/Delay comp. is an area where I am most naive, at the moment :o
Appallingly, I couldn't give you an educated answer, but I haven't had any experience that was incredibly lagged.

Would definitely recommend downloading the demo though, it's a full-working demo for 10 days.

more than the native digi plugs, it's not THAT big of a deal really, as long as you're not throwing on 6 plugs on here, 1 plug on there and keep it generally the same you'll be allright

I guess you can help educate me a bit then.
So latency track-dependent? I.e. too many plugs on one track will cause that track to lag compared to others with less 'intensive' plugs on?

Also, with regards to 'intensive', it's not necessarily CPU-intensive is it? Isn't it something to do with the plug buffers?

yes, latency is definitely track dependent, and that is subject to how many/ what kind of plugins you're using. The more the plugin does to the signal, (or how efficient the pluginarchitecture is) the more it's going to lag.

funny thing is, how CPU intensive it is, is subject to what you set the buffer to, the lower the buffer, the more work the cpu does. If you've got a baller ass cpu you could set the buffer lower and get away with less latent plugs.

you won't completely avoid latency though, even with pro tools HD you have delay compensation which (obviously) compensates for mismatched delay during playback. but it's still there. the reason why everyone's all about HD is for one the tdm architecture handles higher quality resolutions and B since it's not sharing resources with the internal system ram its WAY less latent and B is HD comes with delay compensation (something digidesign could easily include with LE) i think programs like reaper have delay compensation integrated though, i could be wrong...

when you use plugins on an LE system the computer's priority is system intensive (os operation) THEN AUDIO make sense?

Yeha that's perfect, cheers man!
Surely there would be utility plugs out there that compensate for the plug delay? if you get me

i'm not aware of any, but if you find something please do post it

Mellowmuse Auto time adjuster. It's more complicated that it sounds though.

Yeah I could imagine it being complicated, definitely not impossible though.
Have you used that Mellowmuse plug?
Would have been hilarious/lucrative if I'd just stumbled onto a new plug!



Back to Izotope stuff, if you care to read all this:
It's gonna cost me £333 for Ozone, Alloy, Trash, Spectron. Whilst that is a great price (50% off), it's a lot of money to outlay before I go back to uni for an MA that I'm paying for. Whilst I really like all of them, the only one I'd sacrifice would be Alloy.

Alloy's EQ is great but only for it's visual features. It performs similarly to my native EQ and obviously it's best to just use your ears, not your eyes, when handling sound.

The dynamics module, again, is great for it's visual features (and, to be fair, the fact it's multi-band) but it's sonic results aren't all that different from the native stuff I have, let alone some other dynamics plugs I've got; I've got the IK Multimedia Opto Comp which is pretty fit, and also the Sonalksis CQ1 is quite a good multi-band compander.

The limiter isn't the best, at least it's no where near as good as my Sonalksis MaxLimit (single-band limiter but pretty mint).

I've got Superior Drummer with a built-in Sonalksis Transient shaper and I use SD to do all my drums now. However, the alloy transient shaper could work well on overly-bright/'attack-heavy' acoustic guitars or the like. In the past, I've manually automated the volume to tame the heavy attacks. I don't have a dedicated transient shaper.

Also, the exciter is quite interesting for adding a bit of 'life' here and there, and again it's multi-band. I don't have a decent exciter so this, along with the transient shaper, is one of the hooks of alloy for me. But then Trash has some subtle distortions/overdrives that could work just as well I guess (without enabling all the other pre/post-filter and cabinet sim modules).


What do you reckon? I've got by mixing without it, so should be able to after I've demo'd it's features!

considering the superior drums sound really nice without any plugs on it, i'd try to avoid adding anything more than you need to, less is more j00 know?

Yeah I don't tend to mess much with them, sometimes I just add a bit of sparkle on the OH or do my own parallel compression if need be. But I mean, if I did want to shape the transients, I can do that within SD, so don't need the Alloy transient shaper for that purpose (although I've never used any of the SD plugs because,as you say,they sound nice as they are)

[quote=Xomblies;18165493]when you use plugins on an LE system the computer's priority is system intensive (os operation) THEN AUDIO make sense?[/quote]

Actually, this is generally not true: well-designed drivers will work in the interrupt cycles. They'll get precedent over everything but the most primitive and vital functions of computer.

[QUOTE=Moseph;18166697]Actually, this is generally not true: well-designed drivers will work in the interrupt cycles. They'll get precedent over everything but the most primitive and vital functions of computer.[/QUOTE]

This generally IS true... the "most primitive and vital functions" are what i'm talking about coming before audio handling. Do you program drivers for OSX or microsoft? how do you know priority the AI for the OS vs DAW?

BTW, What are you trying to do here man? I'm trying to help people keep from making mistakes that add up to poor quality and you're trying to counter what i'm saying with some extremely subjective situation (more instances than this). No "native" system is going to compare to a pci-e soundcard with it's own ram (TDM) no matter how "well-designed" the drivers are. I know there's always an extreme situation where "it could work". Your contributions would be more enriching if you avoided those gray area situations.

I've said this before, you may know what you're talking about mosef, but your recordings say you hardly know what you're doing.

to reiterate what i said before, keep your plugins low, the amount of latency from each one eventually adds up, (RTAS, VST or AU) creating offset sine waves, given enough delay the poles of each sine wave peak could become (kind of) inverted, and when that happens you get phase cancellation a huge reason why mixes come out muddy, or why you can blast a track and no matter how loud you make it, it still sounds thin and inaudible.

if you REALLY want to get into detail with it, the positive peak or the upper peak of the sine wave pushes the speaker out, while the negative or lower peak will pull the speaker in, so when i say phase cancellation, i'm talking about the speaker being pulled and pushed in opposite directions.

try printing your superior drummer drums and then after you record make sure whenever the drums HIT that all your tracks (at least most of them) have a positive sine wave (especially with bass, you could even highlight the area where the kick has the most attack and reduce the gain on the bass track just for that small moment, almost like manual side chaining without the ooonse sound some electro music has