Chris

It makes me feel like a real grown up though!

Arg don't say that, it's on offer! I'll have to demo it tonight and tomorrow and decide. It's not sweet crackles and dust I'm looking to get rid of, it's shit from a bad room recording for a video. The results are pretty amazing really, not as good as doing it right in the first place but it's a damn sight simpler to do a quick setup and run it through the noise reduction when audio quality isn't the number 1 concern... shit I'm persuading myself! And I misspoke too - I don't need advanced I just need standard, which is still 350 but the advanced is 1150!!! I think this started as a 'savvy research found me something as good for a third the price' post to get me in keeping with the topic btw. Oops 🤔

I'm sure one of those has the "keep it 8 more than 92 with me" track with drake on it...? Or is that the previous game album. The game one I thought was pretty hard, very 90s sound. Anderson Peak kinda grates on me after a while though so the Compton one didn't last long for me.

I've gone off the Stormzy album a bit. I've been listening to strange u and big baby dram on and off...

I am right on the edge of buying izotope rx advanced, but I know they're going to do a deal on it as soon as I've gone for it. It's SO expensive, the basic plugin pack is on offer now for about 40 but I need the one with the spectral denoiser which is 350! 350! For a bit of software that brings no joy, just utility! Plus, because it's more of a utility than a production tool they don't have it in a bundle with ozone or neuron, which I'm also kind of intrigued by. I sort of think of ozone and t-racks and the like in the same vein as they were in the 90s - 'good toys' for getting a master that'll fool you until the novelty wears off... I'm aware that they're pretty shit hot now (maybe not t-tracks?) but also that I could get the same results with the multitude of separate plugins I have, I reckon. Also, I have a crush on u-he and their presswerk plugin is really tempting if I'm going to spend more money on something I don't really need.Theyre all gits. I'm demoing something called Acon denoiser which is 99 and pretty good, but not as good as the izotope one... I don't know whether it's a waste to spend a still not inconsiderable amount on something worse or just get the best one in the first place... This post was a lot longer than I originally planned.

Just listened to the preview, dense indeed! Love the phrasing. Looking forward to listening to the rest.

awesome! can't wait. you'll smash it!

Ah thanks that's great to hear!

I think as computers get faster you'll see that final few percent close up on quality, like zero delay feedback being close-as-damnit achieved as brute force oversampling will become the norm. That's my guess, anyway, all data being calculated at super high oversampling rates and downsampled instantaneously for the final output at single digit sample buffer sizes.

The Stormzy LP. it's really good, at first I was blown away but after a bit I'd say a little over half of it is truly stand out and the rest just good. Might still change my opinion though!

My opinion... Focusrite drivers are amongst the poorest for latency on windows of any consumer grade soundcard. I guess that doesn't make any difference for you, but generally would not recommend. Most consumer grade sound cards are baaaasically the same, with minor differences and driver differences - you can usually just use asio4all in most cases but you might lose some things, direct input and so on (and on Mac coreaudio takes care of everything anyway so you're good). I like the NI Komplete Audio 6, it has as good converters etc as you'll get at this level, the right ins and outs, and a nice master level control on the top which is analogue so you get nice smooth volume changes on your monitors without digital stepping. That's probably the coolest feature for a small setup, so you can adjust your monitor volume easily. It has direct monitor for inputs 1&2 as well so you can send your decks straight through to the monitors whilst recording (the only thing is the inputs are the ones with phantom power, so you either direct thru the decks or get the phantom power inputs, not both, and they're individually gain controlled which is a minor pain if you do chop and change). Aaaand it comes with the nicest software package and voucher for the ni store. I guess with some others you get ableton live lite but I'd say the ni stuff is more valuable. Another thing, though - if you get a mixer with an audio interface in it you can use that, so you're putting all your money into one thing. A z2, for instance, takes care of everything. The new pioneer mixer is 300 with an interface built in which is crazy. There are quite a few options that way?

I get these too but nothing springs to mind right now, they tend to be an involuntary response to some kind of stimuli. For instance any time someone mentions something being in a 'two pack' I can't help but say 'holla if ya hear may' in my best west coast

Definitely do SOMETHING! It's better than nothing - if you do nothing you won't ever progress past that stage of feeling like you're not good enough. If you do something you'll have a fire under you to do something better, and you'll also be confronted with the reality of you rather than the imagined version of you, which can go both ways. You tend to think you're better than you are if you never show and prove, and worse than you are if you record and never post. You were the first person to offer me a dollar for a track when I didn't think it was necessarily all that and it blew my mind - someone else might do that to you!

I haven't upgraded to Mac OS yet, I'm still on El Capitan. The reason is down to the fact I have a sort of hotrodded Mac Pro, and some things will probably need fixing when I upgrade and I might need to put the stock graphics card in again to do the upgrade. That's not the case for all replacement graphics cards, mine is a special case. From what I can tell though it should be fine after a couple of hours of tinkering, but I'll probably put it off for a while yet. An i7 or Xeon will give you a big boost for plugins, because of the virtual cores and larger cache allowing you to do more stuff at once. Final cut is heavily optimised for the amd graphics cards in the new macs and even though they're relatively low powered you'll probably find it plenty fast enough for video. Premiere pro won't run as well without a faster card, which you can only put in an old style Mac Pro. When apple says flash they mean ssd, same thing yeah! My Mac Pro plus 5k monitor cost less than the mid spec iMac and is faster (significantly so in some areas), but I have no thunderbolt. I do have usb3 and 5k and the ability to run much more internal storage - and even run ssd at the same speed as the new macs, although I don't (yet) because it requires a new adapter that I haven't bought. In all I'm tremendously pleased with it - dual hex core Xeon, 64gb ecc ram, 12gb titan X graphics, ac wifi with Bluetooth le, usb3, 5k monitor, a 1tb and a 256gb ssd... it really flies. It's less power efficient than a new iMac, but has more raw horsepower and was cheaper. I can run 8 tracks with ni passive eq and satin on every channel with some diva instances in divine mode and an assortment of other plugins etc on 128 sample buffer which is about 3.2 ms on the fireface ucx.

Neither the ram nor the ssd will make a MASSIVE difference to your plugins, they're much more CPU dependent. Having such low ram is going to give the computer a generally hard time anyway though, so it'll make a big difference to jump to 16gb generally. Likewise, even older Sata 1/2 will be a big jump in performance over even a 7200rpm hdd, but ram and ssd are going to be much bigger jumps for audio files and general performance than synths and effects. You'd likely see a boost because the General tax on the system was lower, but not your money's worth where you want it imo. I'd get something new, or max something older generation out. There are drawbacks, but the 2010/12 Mac Pro is serious bang for buck if you get the 12 core and put 64gb ram in it - assuming you want to stay with Mac. Otherwise I'd generally just recommend a new 5k iMac - max out what you can except the graphics card and you'll be flying for a good while and get to stay on Mac, or go for PC and save money. Also a good soundcard goes a long way, and you could potentially look into a UA one and use some DSP to give you more... no wait, you don't have thunderbolt on yours do you. To be honest either way the UA cards aren't the be all end all I think some people make the out to be, but the interface is pretty good and you basically get the DSP free if you're in the market for UA/RME/Apogee prices. I got an RME and couldn't be happier, it performs incredibly well...

Thank you bro!

Oh shit, this is NICE! I love the change up at the minute mark. This is a banger. I wanna do a mix at some point soon and I want this on it!

Thanks mate! Funnily enough that was the one I was most concerned was 'filler' - I guess I can't trust my own taste! 0

Thanks gents! I did look into doing short tape runs for these actually, I still might do something. Not sure how though, whether to get them spoiled properly and nice cassettes etc or just get some sa90s and a half decent recorder... You should get on it doob!

Ugh, I can't believe I was already late with this. I made a full track instead of getting this 'out of the way' when I could just have easily have done them the other way around! Anyway it's here, I'll post everything in here so as not to clutter up the forum. How do I change the title of the post? Interested in what you reckon, I think it's probably better than the first one. I doubt they'll all be hip hop, but I'll probably have enough material to put together a full hour of coherent stuff by the end of the year....

UNGH! This is crazy! It took me so long to get around to this, the problem with switching to spotify for everything is i'm totally out of the habit of actually putting anything on my phone! I think i will enjoy this tomorrow, it's a bit of a late night for me is this and this is definitely going to keep my head nodding!

I have the 'too many drums' problem - I'm a fairly firm believer that unless you're using breaks for their particular sound there are only so many drum hits you can actually tell apart, and any changes you want to make past those archetypes you might as well do with effects... And yet there are a gazillion stock drums in Maschine... I usually end up either selecting the same old ones I know will generally work and tell myself I'll switch them up later and never do, or scroll through randomly and pick one from about 10 shortlisted ones that has the right general character and then play with it a bit. Part of my plan for this year is to create a drum library of my own filled with the archetypes and a go-to effects chain that gets me the rest of the way. I never like using stock drums, but 80% of the time that's what I end up doing!

Nice, you're already doing better than me! Great medium post. I've gotta sleep but I'm definitely getting my second one out tomorrow and then making sure this is the last time I'm late. Oh, and I'll listen to the mix tomorrow at work!

Like the new track doob, and definitely feel you on the music not genre thing!

I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote...