I’m more or less back to square one. Or, rather, 1.5.

I’ll tell you, I was a lot more sternly judicious in what I installed this time. Because my sample storage was intact, I was able to save myself a lot of time re-installing libraries like BFD and SampleTank. Even still, it was fuckin’ tedious. And there were a lot of recent updates that I didn’t have burned to backup so tracking/downloading files and registrations, logging on the various websites, only adds to the chore.

Here are some thoughts/observations on DAW-oriented pre-crash recovery. This is may be real 101 stuff but they’re lessons I’ve learned.

• Know you’re sequencers’ default audio storage location. Even if you immediately change it, or have been working from the same per project directory structure for years, make sure you check it during backups periodically. I know that mine had accumulated a fair degree of crap over the years for various reasons. I corrected it when I came across it but never really addressed the WCS. So I’m not sure how deep the damage, and hopefully it will be mostly on projects long ago abandoned, but nevertheless…
• Futher this: When working with plugins, particularly softsynths, and you’re shutting a project down for the night, it’s a good idea freeze/render/bounce/whatever before closing out. If it’s a complex multi-out instrument you could just bounce to a temp track, just so you have guide. I’ve had this nip at me occasionally just as it is, you load up some synths and it has suddenly detuned itself or reset all its parameters. But when you start changing plugin addresses it’s a really recipe for things breaking.
• Maintaining a simple text file of all your registrations and address information will only get you so if you’re audio rig isn’t connected to the internet. A thumb drive is essential. Nevertheless it’s still cumbersome.
• Some companies need to take a good look at their web-based registration strategies¹. And thank you to those companies who make it easy.²
• Keep your drive image software up to date. Otherwise it’s just useless.
• Do not attempt to “slipstream” your install unless you really know what you’re doing.
• Simplifying is not over-rated.

I also misplaced my Sonar 2 CD case serial number (perhaps temporarily; I might be able to dig it out yet, there’s some boxes in the closet…). So I don’t have the Timeworks EQ and Compressor at the moment. While I certainly have a lot of things that can replace ‘em ably, I used them a lot for many of years.

So, yeah, a lot of this is due to my glacial working pace. And my stubborn refusal to hook my audio computer up to the internet teat.

So, I’m looking at my hard drive crash as my computers way of telling me it was not happy, and I needed to streamline my process. I plan to get a good disc imaging program and make a good clean go of it.

^{1Spectronics comes quickly to mind while I wait to hear back from support on just how to re-authorize StylusRMX. But there a couple others whom I won’t slag off here.}

^{2Anybody who generates their serial number from a unique user name or user account - Melodyne (particularly sophisticated), SonicCharge, AudioDamage - and while NI I believe is machine based they’ve pretty much nailed the engineering of the activation control (YMMV).}

^{Photo courtesy of Jim Hankey. (See comments.)}

Well…

A new hard drive and a copy of MS WindowsXP Professional later, the computer is back up. And it seems my SATA samples & audio drives are intact. XP Pro recognized them with out the brief struggle I went through on my old polluted XP Home installation. So good news.

But getting here was not easy. My legally obtained copy of XP Home Upgrade was useless to me since I had somewhere along the line lost/discarded my WinME installation disc. (Don’t laugh. That OS worked way better for me than 98 ever did. Okay, laugh a little.) I had an old version of Ghost and a DVD image of a previous OS re-install - and I struggled for a day trying to make it work with floppy drives and boot-disks, half-remembered DOS commands and old 8-bit programs, the works, all bringing up memories of long past IT work. But nothing worked and I don’t have the time.

I thought briefly about Vista. But then I thought better. Really, I have nothing against Vista - it’s on the very laptop on which I’m typing. It’s a fine OS for internet and 2D graphics and web coding. But it wants to be connected to the internet and I’m just not prepared to go down that road with my music rig. I’m fine with never having to worry about network drivers and firewalls and such. Not connecting my DAW to the internet does bring up some interesting issues regarding the OS and driver updates however. (And I get to speak to someone on the Microsoft payroll when I activate it over the phone. Always less painful than I think it’s going to be.)

So I have to decide whether it’s worth it to install one of the gray-market post-SP2 update packagesor not. I mean, looking through this list there’s a lot of crap I could not care less about; and then there’s a few things like this: A non-paged pool memory leak occurs when you capture specific MIDI SYSEx messages in Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Yikes.

So, while mucking about in the guts of my music computer, of course I got to thinking about just chucking my motherboard & CPU (ASUS & AMD 64 3200+ respectively) and just go dual processor already. I mean, I’m already having to rebuild my work environment from the ground up. And my motherboard is not communicating well with my processor fan so it won’t boot without telling me there’s a fan error or if I monitor the fan with some utility it reports the fan as turning on and off, which it clearly is not and the temp never goes above 46/47. (I’ve been ignoring it for the year or so that I’ve been running it.) So it’s kind of a crap motherboard. And I’m sure I would notice the speed and power.

So why not? Well, it would behoove me not to spend the money. I’d have to chuck in for some new RAM, probably go back down to 1gig for a while; it would probably all come to about $300 give or take $20. Moreover, I’ve been working fine for a couple of years with the same relative amount of power and getting along just fine. I’m really trying (I swear) to stick to “If I can’t afford it I don’t need, and even if I can I probably still don’t.” Why not hold out another year, or until something breaks, and get a real posh setup?

Anyway, let the driver & software installation begin.

^{The Gates cheesecake photo is via the Coding Horror blog and it’s a pretty interesting read. I recommend it.}

After six years, 2 different hardware configurations, and countless upgrades and installs, my primary hard drive seems to have shit the bed.

I guess the last-ditch software/plugin purge wasn’t enough to rescue a hard drive that is two years too slow for what I ask of it. I knew was going down eventually. Fortunately, I just went through an extensive backup. All my samples and projects each have their own dedicated drives and from the looks of things they’re intact. So unless things have gone far more wrong than I believe, I could just be a matter of reinstalling everything, which in some cases is huge pain in the ass.

So it could be worse. But I really wish I had the scratch to just buy a whole new system.

Loudness wars aside.

This morning I decided I’m no longer going to refer to my final stage before burning to CD or ripping to MP3 as “Mastering.” Cause really, what I’m doing probably in no way resembles mastering. It’s “Finalizing.” Yeah, that makes sense.

Someday, I look forward to actually getting a finished CD mastered by someone who knows what they’re doing, has a good acoustic space, and won’t squash the crap out of it.

Until that time I do it myself. (Right now I’m looking forward to finishing a CD.)

For a long time I’d brought my bounced 2-bus mix into SoundForge and worked from there. I’ve always mixed low so I always have a fair degree of headroom in which to work. Using the plugin chainer I would run the wave through Vintage Warmer+GlissEQ+dbMasteringLimiter - though I’d switched to iZotope Ozone mastering limiter included with version 9.

But with the new version of Sonar, I’ve set up a much more flexible finalizing template. I can having two tracks of different mixes running through 2 busses that I can mix and match, so I can play with different DSP chains. To be honest, I pretty much run it through the same sequence; though I’m using the new Boost10 included in Sonar which is a really great plugin. Plus Sonar has great dithering options. And with my new Sonar-template setup I can run all kinds of eye-candy and tools - VintageMeter, analyzers, and now this.

Ozone has an option for killing intersample overs, but as quickly as I gained that knowledge I it became unavailable to me as it’s tied to SoundForge. So this will slot in nicely to my new finalizing template. So, yea! for SSL for this nice freebie. And some day I’ll have the resource to get one of these.

Cheers to AI for the heads up.

I’ve now spent some time with the 2 Soniccouture sample sets I’ve purchased over the last few months, specifically Konkrete2 and the Hang Drum libraries. So, I feel fully qualified to rave about these products, and in general develop a bit of a gear-nerd crush on the company.

General fan-boy notes: Slick, well-functioning web-site, with a good eCommerce business model. (Some other payment options might be advised but I’m fine with paypal.) But, more importantly, insanely well-produced content, that is as specific as it is flexible, and it’s reasonably priced; in terms of sample libraries (and music software in general) they’re downright cheap. You’ll need a Kontakt so there’s that; I mean, most of the titles are released for other sampler-players as well, but what they do with Kontakt is where these libraries really shine - the scripting is insanely good.

Konkrete Drums 2: It took me a little while to figure out how to make them usable. Obviously, it’s not EZDrummer - not any sense.¹ And it’s far more extensive and varried than your bog-standard x0x sample kit. But the mapping vaguely recalls your standard drum-kit mapping (kicks and subs down around #36). And most of the hits seem to be single velocity - caveat: I say that not having fully explored the library: it’s really frickin’ huge. The range of sounds is really expansive, from organic to completely inorganic, metallic to completely warm and squishy. And this is cool but really I purchased it for the glitch-script it comes packaged with. Go watch the video, you’ll see what I mean. Nice, right? And with Sonar’s new multi-lane controller view makes short work of this.

Hang Drum: I said to my producing partner last night, “The problem with these libraries is that in about a year you’ll be hearing them everywhere.”

Let me revise that. In about 6 months you’ll be hearing them everywhere. I’ve already used them on 3 tracks.

It’s amazing how they’ve approached putting together a multi-sample of an unconventional instrument. And, as everyone notes, it’s easy to just sit there with the “Jamming” script turned on and just muck about for hours. So, here I am, once again, giving away the game. For a while these are going to be like Reason and you’ll be watching TV or playing XBox and some piece of music will drift by and you’ll think to yourself, “Hey, that’s the Hang Drum library.” For a little less than $100 US - less if you’re European, you can sound like every other producer for the next, oh, 7 years. What will be interesting is the people who really start pushing the library in unconventional ways. But even if you don’t use it in a single track you should buy it just to experience its musicality.

And if you act now you can get their Abstrakt Bass for a discounted price. Honestly, when I first was poking about their site I thought, “Yeah, whatever, another bass instrument.” But, again, this thing appears hugely deep, covering all manner of, erm, basses. And, once again, they top off a really extensive but economical library with a batch of Kontakt-scripting goodness. Right now I’m so glad I could never afford Trilogy.

And for you lechers and freeloaders, they have a well-stocked freebies/demo page so you can taste their brilliance. But, really, this is a company we want to be around for a while so buck up and buy some new sounds.

¹I’ve edited this for clarity, and to make a feeble joke.

I got into a discussion over at the mighty fine rekkerd blog (log-rolling in our time) regarding the reasoning behind huge multi-instrument, multi-sample libraries, specifically the just-announced Sample Logic Elements.

As I said there, it’s an interesting idea for a multi-sample collection, and I’m sure there’s lots of cool, useful sounds, but, jeeze, $300? Who buys this stuff? What kind of market is there for these cover-all-the-bases, huge and expensive sample libraries? The perks are an interesting touch - Virtual Instruments Magazine, how was I not aware of this? - but I don’t understand the market behind these libraries.

A few key companies keep making these huge sample sets that seem marketed at people who are looking for a one-stop-fits-all (to mix a metaphor) sample library, and I just wonder how many of these buyers there really are. Most people who are going to be interested in this are users who already have all of these sounds well covered, and are probably more interested in specific instruments. Having to sort through 100s upon 100s of presets, no matter how well organized, is not a great trade-off. So what they’re doing to their customer is making us shell out for the whole friggin’ thing whether we’ll use it or not. And anyone who has been working with sample libraries for awhile will tell you, that with these huge multi-instrument libraries you use maybe 40% of them more than a few times and a good 60% once or twice if at all. And that’s it.

Why not break it up into smaller custom sets and sell them at 40 bucks a whack? Oh yeah, physical media.

You know, like Soniccouture. So, while we’re on that subject…

Okay!

Further my earlier post concerning this year’s Developer Challenge.

While I haven’t come to any truly informed decisions, here’s what I downloaded:

• Alien Artifact
• Blip
• Bouncer
• Flicker
• hypercyclic
• Najnaj
• Rasta Box
• Rhythmic Tangent
• Shaker Maker
• Sounds of Nature
• Speak & Pluck
• The Element of Surprise
• Tiny-Q
• ?

Like I said in my initial post this time ’round, it’s a very Book-by-its-Cover year. So apparently I passed over a lot of the synths and a lot of GUIs that just aren’t to my liking. No offense to any dev who I might have overlooked through my aesthetic prejudiced - let me know if I completely missed the boat on your offering.

A couple of off-the-cuff notes:

- I was most looking forward to hypercyclic & The Element of Surprise. Both have proved to be worthy of my anticipation.

- I especially like the conceptual approach of Sounds of Nature & Element of Surprise. (Coincidence?)

- Again with tEoS: Really, read the manual. Even if you don’t grock with the sound, it’s a good piece of writing and a helpful approach to actually getting music done.

- Sometimes concept and results part ways. A few of those that I’ve tried have proved this sadly true.

- Since I’ve purge my VST folders and cleaned up my audio drive, I’m testing everything out of eXT2 rather than Sonar or P5.

- Except hypercyclic which I’m using in Sonar because of its internal MIDI-routing.

- The “?” isn’t the name of a plugin (someone snap that up for next year!) but means I might have downloaded one or two others but either they didn’t install correctly or I they got lost in the purge. The list reflects my notes so far.

And a special call out to one of my readers with a Mac: Have you tried the mac plugins? Do they work? Are they useful?

Album:
Music Has the Right to Children

Artist:
Boards of Canada

Lable/Year:
Warp Records, 1998

How I Came by It/Why I Purchased It:
I came by this before I came by The Campfire Headphase - another in the stack of CDs I got when M. divested himself of his collection. It has its Other Music import price sticker ($21.99!) still on it.
(more…)

While not available for sale, the product page for Audio Damage’s next slice of DSP goodness, is available for you to puzzle and drool over.

It’s a diffusion chorus - which is a new one on me. I’m not even going to attempt to try to explain it; i.e. I have no frame of reference. Suffice to say, there’s probably nothing in the plugin market that is like this.

While Audio Damage gets ready to unleash the next and final plugin in its mod trilogy, I’ve had a chance to put their last creation, Fluid, to the test.

As I said previously, my experience with chorus units has either been of the cheap(er) guitar pedal variety or whatever came bundled with my software or “onboard” with my softsynths. In other words, the expected watery wooshing. In other words, something I didn’t use deliberately very much. In other words, it’s certainly been on synth patches or amp I’ve used but I’ve never thought to myself, “Gee, you know what this needs is a chorus.”

But the first thing I strapped Fluid across sounded so markedly better it was really quite astounding. I was working on a remix project, so the synth pad was already a fixed audio file, and since I was stripping the track of all its more traditional rock/pop elements, I was shifting the focus to the synth parts. I routed all the synth pads to a bus and put Fluid in the bus FX. As the attached audio clip of the solo’d bus track demonstrates, a fairly static synth part became a swirling, harmonically rich sound.

Fluid on the Synth Bus

Note about the demo clip. This is a synth bus, but after I heard how beautifully Fluid gave movement to the track, I sent the vocal “double” to the track as well. I was originally going to remove the vocal for this demo clip, but listening to it I thought it would be far more interesting to leave it in, to hear what Fluid did to both parts. While in the dry clip the vocal is slightly more “present,” keep in mind that this isn’t the “main” vocal bus, so the slightly blurring of the transients doesn’t really effect the full mix. But what is noticeable to me is that the vocal part of that bus doesn’t just get washed into the rest of the sound on that bus. So while the synths take on a more characterful sound, the vocal retains its clarity.