we're in a guitar center hanging out now (formerly the electronic music tech appreciation thread)

Honestly the thing that excites me most, even though it’s been possible for fucking ages, is triggering drum samples/chips/uh with actual kits and the challenge of projecting and mic’ing up the output
I don’t yet have the dough or space for a V-drum rig but it’ll happen eventually

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Nah, you’d get way more hands on control for getting weird live with one of those late 90s/early 2000s alesis drum machines with like 12 outs, and a mess of pedals. Samples are cool, but I don’t think you could build a performance around them in the way that tkg is talking about.

At best you could hard pan your samples to left and right, use a stereo splitter and have two effect chains going into your mixer.

oh sick that is interesting

the more i think about it the more sure i am, a good squelchy kick sound is like, one of three sounds that always brings me bliss. also i don’t think any of my current boxes actually do sines?

Just gonna put out there that both the Neutron and the Model D can do really pretty decent kicks, thanks to the CV options

My kick generator of choice these days is actually D16’s Punchbox plugin, and if anyone did a(n) (analogue) hardware version I’d probably have to purch

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so the latest is that the web store sent the exchange for my volca fm and i’d asked for a mix but they sent a sample. i wanted the mix for the power supply as well as the mixing, i know it’s not like necessarily a great option as a straight mixer but is it an especially bad one? like i have a guitar pedal supply and daisy chain but the Korg plug is different right? i don’t have any mixer or interface at the mo either

like i don’t have a computer and samples sound fun but also like maybe not what i wanna spend volca money on when i can get a kick instead, so i guess i’m tossing up what to swap this sample for or even if i should just keep it despite my feelings

If I recall correctly the mix has both an aux send for effects, and mute buttons for each channel, which are cool and seldom show up on sub $100 mixers. I have a feeling in the $150 area though you could probably find something with both of those, a more robust EQ, and more channels. You’d just need a couple 1/4 to 1/8 adapters

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That being said, a “real” mixer is going to have double the footprint minimum and that’s a legit factor to consider if you’re playing out and not just sprawled out on your desk.

i think the main thing that appeals to me about the volca mix is the size and mute buttons, but if those aren’t a huge deal and you’re ok with messing around with different cables and adapters, you can probably find a behringer mixer for less than $100 and it’ll do pretty much what the volca mix does in a slightly larger footprint

i have a xenyx 802, and there’s an added bonus if you get one of the USB models in that you can send audio directly from the mixer to a computer without an interface

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Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t complain to me when they find out their USB mixer just carries the main stereo mix, and not every separate channel. So heads up if that’s your expectations.

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see that’s weird to me because i’ve only ever thought that usb would carry just the main stereo mix

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Exactly!

so, like, i have another problem, and it’s:

i dragged my feet long enough on picking up the volca kick that i noticed the webstore’s selling a drumbrute impact for twice the price. and a good kick is super important to me, but a full drum machine incl. FM and those extra sequencer steps is super tempting too. i’m gonna check out the kick and stuff on the drumbrute when i get a minute this weekend but there’s definitely a dumb part of me that says i should get both and just make songs out of rhythm hits

also like hey thanks for all your advice with this stuff lately babes

More virtually, FabFilter’s Pro Q3 just happened, at last, and they’ve done literally everything I wanted - dynamics nodes, freq masking monitoring, resonant peak danger guidance
I cannot imagine a better subtractive EQ tool at this point

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i was pretty unimpressed with the kick on the original drumbrute, but the individual outs will let you do whatever you want with it if you have any effects you’d like to throw on! and that FM instrument is pretty interesting and could lead to a good layer for the kick if you messed around with it I bet

mmmm true. i’ve been thinking on it and it’s only like a $60 discount on the drumbrute, maybe it’s worth waiting for a while since i don’t have a bunch of effects units. the FM though… i’ll have a bit more of a think

Might end up going for real money, but who knows, worth watching. They had a slightly mislabeled Nakamichi Dragon on there, a week or two ago, that did still go for lots of money.

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I recommend the plugins from this website http://www.airwindows.com/

especially ToTape. Everything is free.

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I give to his patreon but you don’t have to

I have some of those, can’t complain even if I don’t think any have become personal go-tos

A few suggestions:

  • Like I said, ToTape is cool.
  • Capacitor is a set of really smooth hp and lp filters that I use a lot.
  • Console5 has become a standard during mixing. I have done blind tests with clients and friends and people consistently choose the mixes where I simply throw it on. It’s a system where you put the channel version of the plug on every channel and the bus version on your summing bus. There is an updated version that uses a different distortion algorithm but I haven’t tried it much yet.
  • Energy is an interesting high frequency eq that works best additively and technically only works as intended when used at 44.1kHz. It doesn’t use a linear phase algorithm so you can do a lot of boost without adding pre-ring.
  • DeRez is a bitcrusher with smooth controls that respond well to automation.
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