comping and linked editing 
thanks to this thread I am probably getting a NTS-1 for Christmas. since a decent midi controller costs about the same I’ll just plug it into my SP-250
extremely geeked about probability triggers in clips
i feel like im an idiot with my mpc workflow… rn what im doing is basically laying down a quick drum track, bass line, then jumping up to Bank B for my samples/melody/whatever and recording a bunch of tracks until I find a couple things that work, then copying them back down to Bank A. i guess with the goal of eventually learning how to toggle mute the melody tracks on and off to sequence a song. maybe i could be doing this differently? i should read the manual.
i just recently discovered you can switch between tracks without stopping recording, so im not that clever lol
stupid question - what’s the easiest way to get a multi track recording from my mpc to my computer? I guess I need a software multi tracker and record each track individually into it. Idk if this is something I can do in Audacity, or whether it’s time to fire up my cracked Ableton lol.
so idk if software is within the realm of this thread. but anyway…
DAW thoughts? my primary use being multi tracking with midi sync -> MP3. the thought of relying on something less… Massive Company than ableton is appealing to me.
Thinking about Reaper, Reason, maybe something else - emphasis on fast and simple. anyone used em?
fruity
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yeah fruity’s good, reaper is good but less so for music (I don’t like the interface as much for music)
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I think reaper rules for music. There are so many videos on how to do stuff in it too
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yeah I wouldn’t characterize reaper as like, so much “less good” that it’s not worth using, I just like fruity more
i don’t use it, but Reaper rules.
fruity is nostalgic and cool if u wanna use a step sequencer, but not much else going for it over reaper at this point.
I use Reaper, it’s amazing.
cool cool, I installed a theme and started looking thru some of the tutorial vids for reaper. honestly just amazed at how well it runs for being a full featured DAW. like,ableton is a massively slow piece of shit by comparison, before you even do anything but boot it up. (I’m being hyperbolic ableton is fine but it crashed the last time I opened it whereas reaper boots faster than audacity almost.)
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reaper is a miracle
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Reaper reminds me that I’ve used it for thousands of hours each time I load it up.
There’s a really basic step sequencer hiding in there as a default plug-in, in addition to the obvious piano roll thing.
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I use a different program for sequencing but I do all effects and mixing in Reaper and it’s fantastic even just for that.
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there’s absolutely no reason for me to have this but ugh sequencers I love them
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yeah. i really want it. so many cv outs…
i picked up a supersaw eurorack module that has 3x 1v/octave inputs, but there’s not really any way to get from midi -> poly, but this would do it so well.
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As someone who has zero clue when it comes to music creation, I really enjoy playing around with the Korg Kaossilator and the Behringer MS-1.
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i dunno if this is a h🔥t deal$ thread but izotope has a bunch of huge sales on rn https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/deals.html
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sort of out of left field, but does anyone have thoughts on sonarworks reference? it’s basically an EQ compensator with profiles for a bunch of different popular studio headphones. the fancy version lets you EQ compensate for your entire room/monitor setup, using a measurement mic.
i’m trialing the headphone version right now. I feel like for $99 this might be a nice investment in my ability to hear good mixes off the bat without having to mentally adjust for my headphones, esp since i’ll never be able to justify room treatment and all that stuff. yall got thoughts?
longer thoughts and pics
frequency response of my cans, Superlux HD681 Evo:
applying compensation from the closest model in the sonarworks database, before and after:
listening thoughts, based on a FLAC rip of the reference track “Fistful of Steel” by Rage Against the Machine:
- SonarWorks ON: guitar intro has a lot more body than I’m used to, as do the riffs. you can really feel that midrange boost. there’s a sense of ‘similarity’ across the different ranges of the mix, causing a sense of ear fatigue almost? I guess that flatness is the point but I was surprised that it felt a little less clear. i did turn my system volume up to compensate, but then turned it back down. One really interesting thing is that there’s a low hum on the track that comes in at 2:53 that I never really noticed before - it consistently took me by surprise, I thought it was my phone vibrating. So if the idea is to ‘hear’ elements of the mix you couldn’t hear before, I guess SW is succeeding.
- switching from SW ON to OFF, the sound immediately sounds tinnier and ‘cheaper’ in a way - less full, but also clearer bass and treble. it sounds a little more like a cheap speaker system. my instinct is immediately to reduce the volume as it feels a little more grating. turning the volume down, the hi hats and trebles jump out. I ran this by my girlfriend (non-audiophile) and she could notice the clear difference, she said it sounded “tinklier”.
- switching from SW OFF to ON, it almost feels like a light band pass filter has been applied to the whole track - the midrange boost is definitely noticeable, but doesn’t overwhelm the highs and lows. overall, this does feel a lot better to listen to. turning the volume down to low, it feels like a lot of sound pressure in the mids. by the end of this test, I really preferred listening with SW ON to SW OFF, as it felt more true to the sound, but the sound pressure/ear fatigue felt more somehow.
the saying “your faders are EQs” seems to apply here, not that I’m an expert. my Superluxes have boosted bass and treble, and I usually listen to them at relatively low volume. At low volume, our ears naturally are more sensitive to midrange and less sensitive to lows and highs. So intuitively it seems like I was naturally compensating for the headphones with the volume knob. quoth the SW devs: “We’re not trying to make your headphones mic-flat, we use a compensation curve to make them ear-flat instead.”
I am given to understand that headphone response is intensely personal and has a lot to do with the resonances of your literal skull, so maybe there’s a limit to how far you can go with this sort of talk.
all of which is to say, it seems like the proof would be in the pudding with experienced mixers who can say how it feels to mix with Sonarworks and without it. if mixes created with SW are faster and need less adjustment than those created on uncalibrated headphones, that would be a good sign.
some nice features about the software:
- you can adjust the wet/dry (level of compensation) applied. I just had it set to 100 but you can set it to something in between and achieve ‘some’ compensation without completely flattening the curve (COVID joke goes here).
- you can set a target curve, for example the 1974 standard for hi-fi speakers, or a movie theater. I guess this could be useful if you’re trying to model those settings.
- you can get either zero latency or zero phase shifting, but not both. i went with zero phase shifting (“Linear Phase”) which introduced between 80-100ms latency. I don’t know what phase shifting is but maybe this matters idk. latency didn’t matter a ton for just listening, but obviously for mixing it could matter more.
- SW sets up a virtual soundcard to route all your system output, but I think they also have downloadable VST plugins you can run just for monitoring in a DAW. depending on your DAW, you can throw that VST on your master track or (e.g. in Reaper) add it as “Monitoring FX” which would save a lot of headaches since it’s literally only applied to monitoring.
last thing i will mention on this is that I compared it against a manual headphone calibration I created in my DAW from AutoEQ and SW is clearly superior and smoother. SW uses a lot more bands than the 10 bands that AutoEQ builds for you. Maybe I’m just dumb about how to use AutoEQ but in comparison I’d rather spend the money for SonarWorks.
i think i’ve juuust about talked myself into paying for it.