Small Questions Which Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No More Drake > Musician's Lounge > Small Questions Which Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

«‹›3 »

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Vintage audio gear thread is in the Inspect Your Gadgets subforum, for what it's worth.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2019 18:08

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 00:31

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

They got the TritonAudio Fethead as the real solution. Fiddling with the acoustics is just a bonus.

12 panels is more than enough by the way. Covering the window with curtains will probably already get you halfway of what's achievable in that room. With that many panels, I'd think about suspending a few from the ceiling, if that's feasible. I wouldn't bother with bass traps just for recording voice.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2019 17:05

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Seems like in a digital environment you could supplement your gritty mix with stems that have nothing on the master bus to give the engineer all options. Even if the gritty mix serves as nothing but an indication of what you're shooting for and they recreate everything entirely from the stems, it's useful. If the gritty mix can be augmented by mixing back in the more dynamic stems here and there, fine. If there turns out to be no real use to providing the stems, also fine.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2020 15:42

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Budget keybords without any midi connection are still being sold. As well as stuff with four levels of velocity sensitivity or less.

Shopping for a keyboard is hard, because there are numerous minute variations upon the same theme available and there is no community who cares about specs, pretty much.

I'm just googling around myself here and I'm coming across something like the Yamaha PSR-E463, that can actually record audio to a usb stick, which seems neat. It also mentions a note capacity of 19K, spread over six tracks in up to 10 songs, so it can record some midi internally as well. Around a similar price, Roland has the retro looking GO:Keys, which doesn't do the audio recording thing, but divides 30K notes over a 99 possible songs and can pair with a phone over bluetooth to play back backing tracks through the speakers.

Can you import/export the recorded midi as files? Who knows? You need to dive into the manuals for that. Do these things have keybeds that are any good? Good luck finding out. The slightly more expensive PSR-EW410 mentions an actual sequencer. What's the difference between that, a 2-track song recorder (PSR-E363) and a phrase recorder (PSR-E263)? etc etc. It's really frustrating.

It doesn't look like Korg has a qualifying thing at that price point. Casio might, but they won't let me access their international website from Europe.

Now, presumably all sorts of people bored with the hobby are going to sell perfectly fine keyboards second hand, but you'd have to look each of them up to see if they do any recording and whatever else is on the sanity checklist.

I think the best actual tip I have is to budget for a stand, probably.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2020 18:32

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The only consideration is not to connect a trs jack that does stereo to a trs input that expects a balanced signal. What goes into your interface should be two ts jacks, one for left, one for right. Buy your adapter cables accordingly. Other than that you should be good.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2020 22:07

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

What amp

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 13:35

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Just pulling numbers out of my rear end, but paneling a third might get you three quarters of the way there and paneling half would bring you at ninety percent of the effect. But the cost keeps going up linearly, of course. Other than than that, no reason not to.

I used to have a porta-potty sized income hall that I covered entirely in automotive dampening foam and it was always a bit disorienting to walk through it because sound didn't reflect normally, and suddenly you'd be fully aware of how you use sound to navigate this world. Nothing you wouldn't adjust to though.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2020 01:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I just want to point out that dull and lifeless could just as well reflect on the performance and maybe be something you can't fix on your end. Or maybe it's so close mic'ed that it lacks room acoustics. It's a real tricky thing to translate these comments to what the actual problem is, if indeed there is one.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2020 01:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The encoder knobs on the mk1 are absolute garbage. They are very skippy and take too many rotations to go through the full range. You can set them to a non-linear accelerating mode that just drops even more data.

The soft touch rubber on the knobs will have gone to sticky goop. You can just take the caps off though.

It says it's class compliant on the box, but I couldn't get it to work on android at all. This may not matter to you.

The keys are surprisingly ok though. I have no problems with the touch strips and the pads are serviceable.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 16:20

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Dr. Chainsaws PhD posted:

agh, noooo, i wanted the knobs for dicking around in vcv rack

For the money you can give it a shot! Maybe we both find out I'm just an extremely nitpicky bastard.

Mk1 didn't come with ableton live to begin with. It came with analog lab which is a preset box with the best sounds of their top of the line plugins with limited parameters to edit. Came as standalone and vst plugin. Not a bad thing to have. There's a license transfer procedure that the original owner can start up if they still have the codes that came with it.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2021 17:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

https://twitter.com/HanoiHantrakul/status/1258803013948342272?s=20

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 22:13

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jazz Marimba posted:

Sibelius is for sheet music, so of course it’s gonna sound like rear end.

Sibelius has vst support afaik

# ¿ Apr 22, 2021 22:14

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

If I found that thing for $20 at a garage sale, I'd probably pick it up, but I still wouldn't know how to integrate it in any music setup in a useful way. Ignoring the automatic features entirely, it's a rather poorly equipped mixer that only outputs in mono. And probably really only takes actual microphones for input. I'd gladly take a $100 more fully featured Behringer mixer in its place. Or a $200 Yamaha if I felt I needed to notch up the quality.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2021 20:30

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

petit choux posted:

I bet if it said Behringer or M-Audio and I called it a mic pre with 4 mic ins instead of Shure mic mixer, maybe you'd have a different attitude.

Nah. If it had stereo output and per channel panning, it'd be a great little general purpose thing. Even beter if it had mutes. And if the preamps could also take a line level signal, that would rule. As it is, not a great mixer.

Are the preamps in it suitable to record music through? I have all confidence that they're great for that. If that was the question you meant to ask, then yes.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2021 21:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Have you looked on the inside through the f-holes? That's where a label would be, if any.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2022 23:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

JesustheDarkLord posted:

More than words

Not getting a lot of that, but some things in the progression definitely make me expect 'but I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo' as the coming lines.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2022 12:16

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The product page says it's an actual stereo mic with two capsules, which is another reason it won't work with just a size adapter. Trs for stereo isn't compatible with trs for balanced connections. Don't know how the rode adapter deals with that.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2022 14:34

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I don't know if it is because of a technical issue, but my feeling is the vocals are just a fraction late all around. I often have to adjust (parts of) my recordings to better match the beat. Mostly forwards, despite automatic latency compensation and whatnot. I don't know if that's because of singing in reaction to the music or having to think to hard about the words or whatever. In any case, don't be afraid to slice things up, nudge things around by 10ms increments to see if it happen to mesh together better rhythmically. This is a thing that can also help the listener's suspension of disbelief that your voice belongs with the music.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2023 20:59

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I think that's quite good actually!

# ¿ Mar 1, 2023 02:43

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

xzzy posted:

Is there a current hotness for routing midi on Windows these days? I got a situation where an app (midinous) creates a midi port on startup and I want to send its midi through my external interface (an iconnectivity product) to hardware devices. I cannot convince my interface's config app to recognize the existence of midinous' port and this is sending me down the road of finding a software router.

However, everything google is suggesting looks like it was last updated in 2005 and looks sketchy as hell. Which prompts me to ask how people are doing this these days, or if they're doing it at all.

The reason all software to do it is ancient is that modern computers are powerful enough to just use a whole DAW for the purpose. Even if you're only routing to hardware instruments, the assumption is that you're going to record their output into the DAW at some point anyway.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2023 20:02

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

hexwren posted:

i need to learn a daw, but every time I try, i end up in this massive anxiety attack because i don't know what I'm doing and there's like ten-year-olds with record deals because they can run a daw and they're almost too powerful for anything i know how to do

Despite being last updated in 2011, there's no reason why Midi-Ox would have stopped working.

Download, install, open it. Go to Options > Midi Devices. The virtual Midinous port should show up as an input port. The hardware output as an output port. Select each and not any other ports. Leave the Automatically attach Inputs to Outputs during selection checkbox checked. Click OK. One is now connected to the other. You can minimize the program, you don't have to look at it any further.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 16:21

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

xzzy posted:

Thanks for that.

I hate that this is the case but I guess I can live with it. I was expecting to run this software like a typical midi controller and adding in a DAW that I have no intention of using feels like overkill to me. But I can see the value if I ever decide to record it.

I got confused about who asked and who replied, the midi-ox thing above should work for what you asked about originally if you don't want to use a daw for now.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 17:22

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

All the softwares mentioned are DAWs. Audacity is an outlier in that it can't record or play back midi. Most other DAWs will be suitable. As said, it's probably necessary to manually connect in software the incoming midi signals to a sound engine, in most cases called a plugin. Then, to hear what you're actually playing live, often enabling record monitoring is required.

A problem you might bump into is latency, which is a delay between when you press the keys and the sound coming out. This depends on audio drivers and their settings. In some cases it might be necessary to buy another audio interface (ie another soundcard) that has explicit low latency driver support. Should this be something you bump into and no configuring remedies it, a basic interface should be in the $40-$120 range. No other expense should strictly be necessary.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2023 20:20

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Not even pitch, just the number of the key pressed and optionally a bend offset. This is open to interpretation by the sound engine. Note off is also a separate signal, so duration of a note isn't explicit. This used to have consequences when you sliced up midi clips halfway through notes. Cubase used to have a prominent panic button to shut up hanging notes.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2023 20:57

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Keptbroom posted:

There is a software alternative called ASIO4ALL
It's not as good as having actual hardware, but it's a start.

You're better off checking whether your DAW has native wasapi support, as asio4all is just a layer on top of that and won't actually do better.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2023 06:11

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

InternetOfTwinks posted:

Is there anywhere where like, all of the common drum patterns in modern music are collated? Developing an ear for finding drum lines I like but I'm seeing patterns that would suggest there's probably like some theory on this subject out there that would probably accelerate my knowledge in the area.

There's a famous book by Ray F Badness called Drum Programming: A Complete Guide to Program and Think Like a Drummer and some other book called 260 Drum Machine Patterns and any number of similar books by genre that you can find as pdf files on the internet if you look hard enough.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2023 18:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Bright Bart posted:

Not a musician but this has to be the place to bring this up: I can get a copy of Sound Forge Pro or Music Maker to play around with and am interested in doing so. But I have to choose one.

Does anybody know the difference between these two products put out by the same company? All I can find on Google are AI-generated comparisons that state things like what OS they run on and the size of the installation, and even less helpfully people asking only to get responses like 'I have used both but this is what trial versions are for I can't do your homework for you' or 'Just watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials and you'll notice the differences eventually.'

Sound Forge Pro is an audio editor. You can do pretty much anything with audio files in it. It's like Audacity or Adobe Audition. It does not allow you, from what I can gather, to record midi or play software instruments. Eg. if you want to create a song with a drum track, it's on you to make or source a recording of that drum track. Sonic Foundry is more of a thing you'd edit a podcast in or fix dodgy recordings with.

Music Maker does have software instruments, while maybe compromising slightly in the deeply technical things you can do with a dedicated audio editor. It is more akin to digital audio workstation software like Reaper, Cubase, Ableton Live or Sony Acid Pro. Like the latter, it is very focused on assembling something from existing loops (that they want to upsell you packs of), but it can record and edit audio and midi and generate sound in the box with software instruments. If you want a song with drums, you can pick from a recording you make, assemble something from individual drum sounds, stick together existing loops or compose it from scratch by entering notes that a software drum instrument plays back. This goes for non-drum instruments too. Music maker is more of a home studio where you make music in.

It depends on what your interest is. There is a considerable overlap, but they are made for different jobs. It's hard to recommend either at full price or as rental products. As an absolute beginner for audio work, you can go a long way dicking around with the free Audacity before you bump into the things it can't do and the skills learned will transfer to more advanced software. For Music Maker, you'd have to have a particular interest in the included loop packs and the drag and drop music assembling it features. There are a number of free or free-ish options that you can find your feet in if not, like Cakewalk or the non-expiring trial for Reaper, or even LMMS. I find this a more difficult choice, as each DAW has workflow quirks that transfer badly when switching to another software. If the choice is strictly between either Magix products somehow, then Music Maker will offer the broader palette and probably can be coaxed into sort of doing most of what Sound Forge can. The reverse is less true and probably if you needed the specialist tools Sonic Foundry offers, you'd already know.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2023 18:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Gjb16CbkY

Goes into the absolute basics of getting it to do something in reaper. Mostly you'll be able to play software instrument plugins that run inside reaper, like third party vstis, and control on screen knobs with physical knobs. It doesn't do anything standalone or have any sounds built-in.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2024 21:47

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Listening to how it's supposed to sound in the game and taking the GM hint from the file name, I'm thinking these notes aren't supposed to produce sounds. Looking at the pattern, I'd say it's a metronome track with emphasis and section markers used while composing and then transposed out of the way.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 09:50

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Reason's trial is 30 days, it's Reaper whose trial can be extended indefinitely.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2024 23:52

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I. M. Gei posted:

I assume these all work with Sibelius files?

lol no. Closest you'll get is Sibelius exporting your stuff as midi and the nice daws will assign a sound to it on import based on the general midi spec, but you shouldn't even take that as a given. You'll have tempo, note timing and length and probably not much else. The file will likely be split up back into different parts by midi channel at least, but if you used multiple tracks going to the same channel or had your stuff built up from shorter clips or phrases, that separation will be lost.

Also, if your end game is a human readable score, the tools for that in most daws are pretty crappy.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2024 01:09

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I. M. Gei posted:

So what I'm hearing is I'm never gonna get a good-sounding, accurate playback short of an actual band playing the music I'm writing.

well gently caress

Nah, I'm saying that thanks to vendor lock-in, switching over (between any of these programs) will be a hassle and will possibly take some rework. You can't expect to be going back and forth between programs. So maybe it's right to also look at what Sibelius' vst support can do to pretty up your sounds. Or maybe you should think of it as different stages of a project, where you finish up the score first and then migrate to other software for possibly better sound. Or maybe you start out with some low stakes toying around in some daw to see if you can make sense of it, before committing to anything.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2024 02:21

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

MettleRamiel posted:

I also posted i the VST thread, but this might be the better thread.

I'm looking to automate my guitar player's effects for our live shows but I'm a little lost on how to do this, exactly.

I believe I have all the necessary equipment. I have Behringer V amp 2, a usb2midi and Reaper. I'm just confused about how to go about selecting the specified patch on the v amp with midi. Here is the manual https://www.manua.ls/behringer/v-amp-2/manual and under "midi implementation" there seems to be no patch selection, but it says in the manual that you can do this with a midi foot pedal, so I'm assuming I should be able to do this with Reaper?

I already use midi with Reaper to control our dmx lights, so I know how to use reaper to transmit midi, but I feel that's a bit simpler as I just have Reaper output to a virtual midi cable which is picked up by QLC+ and then send through a usb2dmx cable to my lights.

I'm just lost with how to do this with this pedal and I've never used a midi foot controller before either. Any help would be appreciated!

The midi implementation table says the V Amp 2 can receive program change messages, which is is how you'd select a patch with a signal coming from or routed through your computer. You just need a midi track routed to the hardware midi output (the usb2midi thing) that connects to the V Amp midi in port. On that midi track you create a midi item. When you edit it, there should be a bottom lane where note velocity normally is, but it has a dropdown that you can change to program. There you can create an event with value 0-124 that when sent to the V Amp should select one of the (first 125?) presets.

Sometimes program changes are more complicated, requiring a bank select message first, but these (CC0) don't show up in the midi implementation table, so I suspect the above should be good.

I could not find a video or other tutorial that was no nonsense and to the point.

When the manual mentions a pedal, I believe it means a pedal directly connected to the V Amp. But it doesn't explain anything on how to actually set this up.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 15:26

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 14, 2024 00:31

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

abraham linksys posted:

so what bothers me here is that ableton doesn't give you wavetable or FM synths here - those are in the suite version only (Wavetable and Operator).

this is where my VST question comes into play. should i stop worrying so much about these built-in instruments in a world where i could just get free or cheap VSTs? particularly, Vital and Surge seem like they could fill in any gaps around a lack of wavetable/fm synth stuff in ableton's standard edition. and if so... what other factors should i be thinking about when it comes to which DAW i should drop money on? could i even get away with just buying the Intro version of Ableton and going in fully on free VSTs?

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about FM and wavetable synths being "missing" at all. Surge is great. Dexed is eh, but with preset packs manageable. Synth wise there is plenty on offer for free or cheap. A good free sampler and compatible multisamples is maybe another story.

From time to time I look at those intro versions of DAWs and there's always something annoying. Like, limit of 2 send channels, really. Link two or more tracks to edit their content simultaneously is also something in standard and up? That's kind of a dick move.

In general, go with where you feel the interface isn't working against you though.

# ¿ May 4, 2024 22:39

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No More Drake > Musician's Lounge > Small Questions Which Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

«‹›3 »