Chris Randal, of Audio Damage renown, has informed his readership that he marking his 40th birthday today. Happy birthday, Chris. Welcome to the declining years.

In said post, he anticipated the occasion by noting some of the musical milestones of a particular lifetime. Since there’s nary a bandwagon I won’t jump on, here are a few of mine, though it’s not my birthday:

• #1 Song on the day I was born: “The Sounds Of Silence” Simon & Garfunkel
• First new album I purchased with my own cash: “Duty Now for the Future” Devo¹
• First stadium concert: Grateful Dead, Providence Civic Center²

As a present for Chris why don’t you head over to his label and buy one of his records. I assume he gets to keep all the profits for those (since they’re digital downloads it’s all his, right?) it’s the next best to his requested Paypal cash grab³.

^{1That sounds way more prescient that it probably was. Before and after that anomalous purchased, mostly influenced by my best friend at the time, my tastes were a lot more in keeping for a kid growing up in NH in the 70s. However, I rediscovered the album in my punk rock years and realized how fucking brilliant it is. To this day, one of my favorite albums. And I still have that copy, much worse for wear.}

^{2This was before their mid-to-late 80s resurgence; I happened to be in town the night my cousin was going, and getting a scalped ticket was incredibly easy and cheap. My cousin ended up being a life-long deadhead. I did not. Though I’ve often wanted to cover a Dead song for the academic exercise of it, and simply to be contrary.}

^{3Yes, I know he was joking}

PS: While we’re on the subject of gift giving, I do want to call attention to the two most recent posts from sensible misanthrope Violent Acres that are about the best things I’ve read on the issue: #1, #2

Further my explorations in finishing my audio rig, I’m getting close now. So very close.

I had ditched the Alesis i|o 26 a while ago due to its really poor drivers. This pretty much convinced me that I don’t like firewire audio interfaces. I don’t see the point really when you have a desktop computer and latency is important. In my experience, PCI drivers are more solid. Perhaps on a Mac this is different, but even the heralded RME drivers used way too much CPU when I pushed them at all.

For a while I reverted to my EZbus/Audiophile setup. M-Audio may make absolute crap but they know how to write a driver, or at least a solid PCI card driver. And I didn’t have to worry about the quality of the card’s converters or clock since it was handing those duties off to the EZbus Mixer. But I quickly remembered why I ditched this setup in the first place. Sure, the output amplifiers on the EZbus are really nice, but the pre-amps have little-to-no headroom which makes them pretty useless for any sort of line-in. I’m guessing that the converters and clock are above average at best. And the loop-back latency is huge. Plus there are a few other limitations that I won’t bother to enumerate but make it a less than ideal recording rig, digital lofi or no.

So, after another round of reading specs and gearslutz.com threads, I bought a Lynx L22 card. I contacted the guys at Mercenary Audio, who are fortunately just up I95 about 20 minutes, and they had one in stock.

Let me take a minute to say a few kind words about Mercenary. Obviously, I’m lofi. And kind of thick. On top of which, I don’t have a lot of money to throw around. I’m not entirely their target customer. But they treated me with complete respect, answered all my stupid questions, and helped me understand my purchase. They also showed me around their studio and workshops, which was very inspiring. I can’t recommend them enough. I really look forward to being able to business with them again.

The Lynx was a painless install. More importantly, the difference in the sound was stunning. The same night that I installed it, the friend that I record with came over. I didn’t tell him about the upgrade and just pulled up a song we had been working on. “The bass sounds great,” he said a few bars in. “What did you do to it?”

Seriously, insert your favorite audio snob cliché: “Blanket lifted off the mix…” “…punchy…” “tight bottom end…” et cetera. I just know that a lot of the muddiness that I/we had been struggling with was either cleared up or much easier to sort out. Even running into the EZbus (via SPDIF, so clocked and covereted by the L22) the improvement was stunning.

But the problem was basically, what to use as an interface. The EZbus wasn’t going to cut for the aforementioned reasons, and I don’t have the dosh to splash out on a summing box, outboard converters or an AES mixer. Nothing was really worth my trouble in my price-range after blowing my load on the card itself. Then it occurred to me: just use the Alesis as an small mixer, and save myself a lot of expense and hassle.

So I get all the advantages of the Alesis (multiple in and outs, SPDIF, optical, phono) but I don’t have to worry about its shortcomings. It’s converters, as near as I can tell, aren’t all that bad, but since I’m summing to the Lynx, as well as sending my analog signal to the L22, it is basically souped up patch-bay. And for that it works pretty well.

All I need now is a decent pre-amp.

So my advice to you bedroom producers and project studio jockeys: scrimp and save and get yourself a decent soundcard. It’s worth it.

• I’ve said before, I’m not inclined to fault companies for what they didn’t put in their product - I generally know what I’m getting into when I fork over for a license and trust that it will meet my expectations. I’ll even be pretty forgiving for “bugs” and what I see as over-sights/blunders in the execution - to a point of course. And, as I’ve also said, most of the companies we’re talking about in the independent audio software world are benign to very cool. But indulge me in climbing on my rackety and feeble pulpit and address my benefactors over at Native Instruments.

Greetings Native Instruments Co.,

Congratulations on all the great products you’ve been releasing lately. I hope you’ve been having a lot of success with them. However, I want to specifically address your upgrade policy on your Kontakt line of products.

I’ve been using Kontakt since literally the day it arrived at a local Mega Lo Guitar Mart and upgraded to version 2 because of all the fine work you put into improving and expanding the product. It’s been great. I even purchased the tutorial DVD to more fully utilize it’s deeper features; to what extent this is actually the case is sorta besides the point. Suffice to say, I’ve acquired (legally it should be said) a lot of soundware that does fully utilize Kontakt’s deeper features.

The latest version Kontakt 3 looks pretty swell also. Looks like you improved a lot of the features. Perhaps not a whole version upgrade. But, you know, it’s your product you can give it what number you want really; who am I to judge the work that went into it? I look forward to trying it out.

My problem is this: Why do I have to buy the whole library that comes with it? Honestly, I don’t really use the 2 NI Kontakt libraries I have as it is. And while I’m sure you’ve done some stunning work on improving the included library, and the reports seem pretty favorable, I don’t see this being a whole lot different. I’ve got a lot of these sounds well covered, and the last thing my sample drive needs is more redundancy.

I’m guessing it’s because you want to keep it a boxed product, no? That even with your very well implemented registration management, and your high profile, a boxed product is more like a “physical thing” - shelf space and all that - and thus somehow less prone to being ripped off or dismissed as not worth the investment. Okay, I may well be grasping, but, seriously, couldn’t you offer an “engine”-only download update for users? Well, I know you *could*, but for some reason you don’t. No offense to the many sound designers and editors who put together your library. But I just don’t need it. And it seems a waste for me to buy a whole lot of packaging and content for what probably comes to about 20MB of program and plugin files.

And, yes, I know it’s only around $130.00 street. It’s not really the price so much as it is the waste of it all. Offering it for under 90 bucks from you website seems a reasonable amount to pay considering what you’re charging for the boxed upgrade.

I’ll just give in and get it I suppose. I’ll get sick of manually exporting MIDI files, or trying to built multis will finally drive me batty and I’ll get the packaging then go ahead then download the latest build. Either that or you’ll release Kontakt 4 and just upgrade to that. Or, considering how I’ve wound up with a lot of your products, just before the next version is released you’ll blow out the remaining stock of 3 and I’ll just pay what it would theoretically cost me for a download now. And then start the cycle again…

Do you see the folly?

Cheers,

Your Customer,
Digital Lo-Fi

Hey, check this out:

That’s about 6 hours of mucking about, using a not-complete selection of the included instruments. “Mixed” directly in Kontakt, a little Ambiance on a send, a taste of Vintage Warmer on the two bus.¹ Perhaps finalized a little too loud.

And I have no idea what I’m doing!

Well, that’s not entire true. You see…

As you may have heard, the Soniccouture Gamelan is indeed the business. A meticulously assembled and presented Kontakt library, it begs superlatives. It’s as challenging as it is effortless, as simple to assemble and play as it is mind-blowingly complex.

So imagine it in the hands of someone who has a greater musical mind than myself.²

Soniccouture has said that the primary audience seems to be those who will use this for soundtracks and scoring, beds of music for video games and such - and indeed, I imagine this will become a prominent part of our semi-collective soundscape. For someone who’s bread and butter it is turning out interesting and varied music this is a brilliant tool.

But here’s the thing. It’s a fascinating theoretical study of music and composition; a more esoteric aspect of musical theory now more easily available³ to the curious and studious. So I imagine that this would have huge appeal to the educational market as well. As a teaching tool this appears an essential companion to the written and visual record of this fascinating aspect of our collective musical culture.

Using the really clear and well-considered manual, reading and listening to each piece in context, it would be hard not take something away greater than just a cool sound you might use in one of your tracks. I sincerely believe I learned valuable musical information just putting together that demo.

Listen, I’m a long-in-the-tooth punk, underground, and sometimes pop guy who’s a johnny-come-lately to the world of electronic music composition. And what I’ve retained about theory could fit on a notecard. For me so much of this all is the exploration. Trying things and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Learning that which I didn’t know. (Sometimes it’s a joy being a neophyte because there’s a whole world open to you.) So, that I’m able to assemble something that may be technically imperfect but of which I’m not ashamed is a real testament to what Soniccouture has pulled off here. And there’s features I haven’t even begun to explore.

Finallly, I don’t know how much of the limited edition packaging they have - word is it was going quickly - but if you’re at all on the fence you’ll kick yourself if you miss this edition. It really conveys the value that this truly is. It reminded me of seeing PiL’s Metal Box for the first time and being completely impressed by what an amazing object it was.⁴ Even my girlfriend, who usually and understandably glazes over when I start talking about cool music software, remarked on how classy the packaging was.

—

Update: Just this morning Soniccouture released a Gamelan Set tuned to western equal temperament. In their words, “Some of you will appreciate the chance to play the Gamelan instruments in western tuning, and some of you will just ignore this version and tell us we’ve sold out.” I’m definitely in the former group.

—

^{1 I know I sound silly trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about.
2 I take it you’ve listened to the demos. If not, do so now. They’re really beautiful.
3Some people have groused about the price, which is considerably more than Soniccouture’s other products. It is what it is, and in my opinion it is more than worth it. My point being, it is not out of reach of universities and music tech schools.
4The first release of Project5 also elicited this reaction; that was a truly unique and cool piece of packaging.}

Somewhat long, poorly shot but cool video after the jump. Bare with it, it goes some interesting places:
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I’ll go ahead and do that thing that a blogger is never supposed to do and apologize for my absence.

I’d like to say the lack of posting on my behalf is because I’ve been too busy with web development work - which is partially true. Or that it’s because I’m trying to get some goddamn music finished up so I can release a few albums I’ve been working on for a few years - also true, more or less. But really, the long and short, mostly I’ve been pretty uninspired to do any writing on the site.

Even with my erratic posting schedule, keeping up a blog takes a tremendous amount of time, especially when you’re as long-winded as I am. Add on top of that, that I’m at heart a terrible slacker. It’s a wonder I’ve kept this up as long as I have.

Yeah, there have been some cool software/soundware releases in my absence, but I haven’t incorporated or upgraded anything in my studio: I’m waiting for some clients to, you know, actually pay - “The check’s in the mail” may be a hoary cliché, but for a freelancer it’s actually something you hear on regular basis. So I can’t really talk about new toys. Nevertheless, I’m working on my studio and DAW and I’ve made a few changes to my setup, and I’ll get to all of that eventually. There have also been some tempest/teapot controversies, minor shake-ups, and technology developments. I’m not sure where I’ll pick up on all of that, but it’s not like there’s been a shortage of things to write about.

In any case, for those few of you who still have me in your RSS reader, or to those who’ve stumbled across me and keep checking back, I will get back to it. I’m not promising Bigger, Harder, Faster, Stronger, but it would be nice if got back to 2 or 3 posts a week.

Well, not really. This is one of those years when I abstain as much as possible from Christmas. I don’t do this every year, but more than occasionally. As I’ve said, no kids, a family that is understanding or feels similarly. My girlfriend is with her family, and we did our small Xmas before she went away (believe me, I know how good I have it with her) so I can have a day as uneventful as I’d like. I won’t go into a tirade or anything, but suffice to say, while I understand the need for family and communal celebration, the religion/consumerism aspect bring forth the curmudgeon in me.

Also, my good friend just called to tell me that his beloved pet had suddenly and unexpected shuffled off this mortal coil. Sad news.
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Further my recent updates, I’m experimenting with opening up the comment section. So I’m trying out a couple of WordPress plugins that may help battle spam. I’m still not convinced that having open comments is something I want to commit to in the long term, and I like being able to respond to every post, which I’ll probably not do when and if I manged to get Dugg (Digged?) or something. If I do stick to with it, I do not suffer fools gladly, or at least have a hard time pretending that I do, so there’s that.

Who knows, I may just do it captiously. Open Comment Week, and such.