.. about battery powered dogs..

This week I had some nice and interesting mail conversations. Sonalksis released the TBK3 plug-in and part of my job is to maintain press contacts and provide press releases and other useful information to media.

When people change jobs they change mail addresses as well, and in some cases where I am not really sure, I send an e-mail to all contacts at a mag/webfanzine or what may be, to try to find out who the correct current contact to send press information to is.

Yesterday I got a very funny answer from Pro Sounds News Europe, I had no notes of who was the current contact to send to, so I sent the press release to all three contacts filed under their name, and asked who to send stuff to in the future. The response I got from David Robinson at PSNE was:


"It's me. xxxx is no longer with the company and yyyy has been replaced by a battery-powered dog.

Note correct version of my address..

Cheers
D"


I laughed right out and could hardly stop laughing, "replaced by a battery-powered dog", man, I have no idea what that was all about, but it sure was VERY funny.

So i responded and asked for a picture of the dog, thinking that it must be quite some dog, and I am still trying to figure out what that dog actually does at PSNE...

Anyway here it is, and I definitely think that it is a quite cute little fellah. Marie, my lady, insisted that we should get one as well, I guess I will have to ask David if they are planning on having puppies soon.



[prosoundnewseurope.com]


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.. about playing the guitar..

Well I just could not resist this, nothing more to say, just watch (and listen).





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.. about dongles..

I found a new vocoder software/plug-in that seems really interesting, and the sound is fantastic, but then it came to my knowledge that I need a dongle to be able to run it...

During the last two years, I used to share studio with some friends (not any longer since the apartment we had was sold by the owner and we had to move out). One of the guys had during a recording project 5 years ago bought a ProTools mix plus system for a large amount of euros.

The system worked extremely well, and the small but well planned set of plug-ins we had did a good job, though it sometimes was frustrating that I could not bring a project home on my iBook without the iLok we had in the studio, since there would be totally no plug-ins at all when I opened the project on my iBook and a Mbox/LE system. Paying hard cash once again for a new set of iLocked plug-ins, was not even on my mind for a second, so instead I just had to live with the facts and make sure that no one was going to use the studio if I needed to bring the iLok to a field recording or something else that demanded the plug-ins to function on my LE system.

Then Digi continued upgrading their ProTools software, but not for the mix plus system, 6.4.1 was the last ProTools version compatible with mix plus. Then about 1 1/2 year ago, the system became totally obsolete and treated as "legacy" by Digi.

Hmmm, now wait here, that system was bought about 5 years ago and has not yet paid back it's cost, and it's more or less useless already. Well, unless we kept the system as it is and ignore the fact that studios using HD systems were incompatible with us, or as the fact is, we were getting incompatible with them.

Of course there's an upgrade path, at a price that could buy us TONS of computer power on any other, native system, (Digital Performer, Logic, Cubase, you name it..) available on the market. As it really did not matter any more since we already were incompatible with the rest of the ProTools community, and since many of our fellow producers and composers were meeting the same situation, and changed to DP or Logic, the odds were quite small that Digi's upgrade path were going to become an alternative.

Since that day, when that top priced system was getting obsolete just a few years after it was purchased, I have been totally allergic to dongles.

I really have no problems paying for software (heck, I am in this business myself!!), and I totally ONLY go for non dongle products now, since the dongled ones just make me sad and reminds me about a misanthropic philosophy that is treating every potential and existing customer as a thief.

Now back to the vocoder, still it is very tempting, and I guess I’ll just have to wait until the “non dongled version” comes out on the “other” market. Then I will definitely go and buy that dongled one, use the non-dongled one, and keep the dongle in my folder with my other software licences. It will probably give me some troubles regarding upgrades and new versions, but compared to being forced to have a small stick on the side of my iBook (soon to be a Macbook) that can easily be broken or lost, I’ll take that risk.

Oh, and the Digi mix-plus system?

Well, the guy who owns it, still has it, and runs it in OSX 10.3.4 (as prescribed by Digi), since it is not really worth anything on second hand market, and since the upgrade is out of reach.

Me and the other fellow, we bought us a MacBook each (still waiting for mine, my friend got his last week), and now run Digital Performer 5 (that has no dongles, and is not bound to any specific sound/audio hardware system), and a firewire interface (non digidesign!!!) and I believe that the mix plus will be replaced very soon by a setup in that direction as well…

We also still have our Mbox/LE systems (though the Mbox itself sounds crap, but at least it has sp-dif…), actually, the only dongles we own, and as soon as all old projects are transformed to DP, at least in my case, I will probably give my Mbox away for a small fee to someone I don’t like…


Anyway, we are here for the music!

Today I share my latest discovery (thanks Dave!!), a totally amazing artist named Imogen Heap, from UK. Have a look at this video clip, and then visit her myspace page to hear some more of her stuff. You will find her first disc on ITMS as well.

Warning! this is highly addictive!


[imogen heap - myspace]

[imogen heap - itms]




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.. about standards..

Computer recording, 2007, a good friend of mine is using Logic and ProTools, I use the latest version of Digital Performer and another good friend of mine is totally hooked on Cubase SX-3, and I could continue...

We all, more or less, got the same plug-ins and virtual instruments, and so far it wouldn’t be much of a hassle to decide on a common working palette. No, the major thing here is, we use in all the 4 biggest computer recording/host programs on the market, and still, if you choose to work with only one of the hosts, you lock yourself out from working with everyone else that does not use the same one as you do, completely!

Probably now some of you guys out there say "what about OMF?” Well, have you ever used OMF? It will work, with some hosts, and if you have the right add-ons for your host in some case(s) (read ProTools here) you can make it work as well. And even if it works, it is _very_ limited in what functionality it exports and imports between the hosts.

So, in a matter, we today have the most sophisticated and competent systems ever built for audio recording, on the other hand, they are more or less incapable of communicating with each other unless you use one common system.

In the earlier days, there evidently was a lot of variations from studio to studio regarding consoles, outboards etc. but when it came to the essence, the heart of the recorded material, the tapes, they followed a standard. You just specified your need, 1/2" 16 track, 2" 24 track, no matter what brand it was on the reel tape machine the studio had, or what model they had, the reels were the same...

Though, there is a mid-way, if you only need the audio files that you have recorded to be transferred. The method is close to OMF and works on every host. You simply set a start point on your project and then you "bounce" every little snippet of audio on every track to a new track and re-record from the start point. In the end you got the entire session as x number of audio files with all equal start point and length, so it will become very easy to import the "tracks" as audio files to any other host of choice, then you can go on working, but to switch back to your friends studio, well, you are heading for that same procedure again then. So make sure you do not work under any kind of pressure here.

Market is completely overfilled with peripherals, control surfaces, plug-ins, virtual instruments and lots of other stuff that might come in handy in a computer recording session, and everything more or less complies to some kind of standard within it's area, plug-in formats, control surface protocols, automation control methods and so on, except for.. the hosts!

Yet we compose, record, produce and collaborate and find the solutions needed (as the mid-way explained) to make it work, to bring that creativity to the surface and in the end, deliver sweet music.

Cause in the end, it still is simple today, a lot simpler than some years ago when a computer the size of a comic album really did not even exist, and a computer recording system, was only a dream, or in best case, a 300 kilos machine worth 20k euro, and only 2 units existed in the world, one as a demo unit at the factory, and the other in Trevor Horns studio ...

Anyway, the conclusion of the day is, It's not about the gear, it's about what you want, and how much you want it.

Here's a link to a very good friend of mine, his album is released in France, and will during this year be released in Germany and in the Nordic countries. This album is made totally by keeping a dream alive, and by not giving up on what you believe in, there are both reel tape machines and computers involved in the production process, and I know that it has been quite time consuming to get it all together, but in the end, again, it's music, and it's good.

[Peter Von Poehl]


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.. about virtual instruments..

Somewhere around 1995-1996 I was working in a synthesizer store selling only synths and electronic instruments. We had about 150-300 different models in the store, from early 70s moog/arp/oberheim and korg/yamaha/roland synths, to the latest virtual analogue and sampler-technology machines.

At that time, the only choice you had, if you wanted to do a great and interesting "modern" production, was to buy a lot of hardware, or maybe some few but expensive multi-timbral machines (such as the Roland jv-1080 that was a total smash hit when it was released).

Amongst the classic "must haves" were the Roland TR-909 and the Roland TB-303, both was ultra popular, and when we had the luck to find any of these machines, we sold them in a second for about 1000-1200 euros each and people who really wanted those sounds never did hesitate, how could they, they did not have a choice...

That era is dead now, though it built a solid ground for the next thing that was to come. The modern sampling technology took care of the needs for pianos, strings, mellotrons and other "must have" sounds. Novation and Clavia invaded the world with the virtual analogues to replace those, in a midi context, crippled, old classics. Kenton Electronics, did a good job making the old analogue's live a few years more with their midi retrofit-kits, and I actually see Kenton fitted machines from time to time in recording studios, even if they seldom are connected to the working rig, since now, you don’t even need midi anymore.

So what happened?

Well, computer technology has always been developing fast, and for the last 10 years, faster than ever. Moore's law* never seems to fail, and the computers are getting faster, better, faster and yet better, for every year that passes, and price is still about the same.

Today you connect your USB-keyboard to the laptop, open your host of choice, create a new track, open your preferred virtual drum plug-in, and create a groove in less than 10 minutes, containing your favourite sounds picked from the hard drive direct. Then you add a bass, either a real one plugged right in to your sound card (or a sampled that sounds like a real one) and run it through a virtual amp so you can change the sound during the working process if needed, or you choose one of thousand virtual synths and tweak it until you get the synth-bass sound you love. And the same with pads, pianos, strings, you name it..

And all of this for almost no money at all, compared to what you had to spend 10-15 years ago to get a result even close to what you can achieve with today’s technology. Not to even mention how easy it is, once you save your project, everything stays the same, and next session you just open the project and continue. No patch bays, no track charts, and no hours of "preparing the studio for today’s sessions"... Oh, and I never even mentioned the rest of the process, effect plug-ins and mixing.. well, that's another post another day.

This is just a reflection, and there really is no funny or ironic conclusion to state here, but I'll end this post with a recommendation on a great modern "big" production were I know that the computer has played a huge role in the process.

Seal - Seal IV, Produced by: Trevor Horn, Sarm Studios London
[seal IV, itms]

And here's a quick video tutorial for you who started with computers and missed the entire "machine" race.
[sonic state - synths top20]


* Moore's Law
[moore's law]


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.. about reel tape..

I read today about Quantegy, the classic reel tape manufacturer formerly known as Ampex.

As some of you might remember, about 2-3 years ago, they went bankrupt and disappeared from the market, due to the fact that computer-based recording systems are very much dominating this industry now, yet the world was holding their breath and on more or less every pro-audio forum on the Internet you could read posts like: "Have we seen the last reel tape now??"


One year after that, Quantegy anounced that some of the guys working there decided to give it a chance, they restructured the company, opened the tape factory, and they were back in business again. Reel tapes was back on the market, and a lot of studio owners with tons of money invested in refurbished vintage reel tape recorders, could now relax.

But for how long..

So, today I read some sad news about Quantegy again, due to lack of orders they have to discontinue a huge part of their product line, including some of their reel tapes as well, and the question is, for how long time will they be able to survive this time?

As a contrast, or possibly as a logical extension of a now soon to be dead reel tape culture, a few weeks ago, I read a posting on Gearslutz about some engineer that states that he can hear a difference in quality of computer-recorded material depending on if it is recorded using internal SATA drives, or if it is recorded using an external firewire drive!

I really don't know what to say, in my world (growing up with computers) a zero is a zero, and the figure 1 is always a figure 1 and inbetween that there is as far as I know no computer in the world that knows the difference.

Probably, there is no right or wrong here, no matter if you are a vintage reel tape enthusiast, or if you are a total ProTools geek, or if you still cuddle around with your oldschool Akai MPC-60, no matter what - if you make great music, the rest of the process is religion, what YOU believe - is what you hear. And who could ever tell you that it is "wrong"?

Anyway, if you believe in reel tapes, go visit Quantegy now to get some of those tapes before the factory closes again. And for the rest of you, go buy a reel tape anyway and save it as a cool souvenir from the era when the history of "modern music" was created, with discs that contains tunes that we all love and remember, discs that was recorded on low track number reel tape...

[quantegy website]


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.. about mawzer..

Today I had an interesting meeting with a very nice person, who also happens to be a great inventor.

He did not invent the wheel, nor the light bulb, spanner or the anti-biotic; he made one of my old dreams come true, a user configurable midi controller!!

I first saw this excellent piece of machinery two years ago at the Frankfurt Messe in Germany, where we were having some good laughs togheter during the show as our booths were just a couple of meters from each other. Or actually, I did not see the machine by then, since they had only brought a mock-up in paper and cardboard to present the product and the concept. The curiosity and the frustration was total, someone actually invented the machine of my dreams, Mawzer, a French company runned by some enthusiasts, made it!

And now finally, today, we met on the SIEL tradeshow in Paris, and he showed me a real production prototype and sometime before the summer, Mawzer estimates the arrival of the first production line units!


Here's a 3D model of the Mawzer concept (Model 3220):



And here's the real deal (Model 1610):




If you have not checked this out yet, do not waste any more time, go ahead!

[Mawzer Website]


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