Bitstream

life is a lemon AND I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

The latter for me, John. I know what to do, but how to do it bemuses the creation of the idea. I rekon that to do it, you need other people. Doing it yourself will yield a half baked mash

you don't give yourself enough credit imho, Great to read such a wise digestion, even if it's only now and again. AND I appreciate you do travel quite a bit. Very refreshing dude

only kidding, Lazz

Idiot!

just to go along with the genre of some of the posts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x5QYLxFcU4 show me the hands!

All of it matters, Jules. But if 1 person thinks a vocal is superb, that does'nt mean everyone will. To put it another way, the vocals / music / lyrics should come as a package to tell a story or make a point etc. If the mix is good, then the listener will concentrate on the latter and not on the individual parts that comprise the track. So, a strong rustic vocal can completely ruin a soft toned ballad, for example. And that ballad would not communicate properly if it were sung inappropriately.

I find that experimentation with various effects, eq etc is the best policy making every track unique. There are no guidelines that way and the song begins to produce itself requiring some of the parts to change to blend with the new master mix. Of course, there are some elements that are pretty much a necessity for radio mixes eg compression. And vocal touchups are all too common now reducing studio time costs & also providing a neat track. However, I have yet to do this on my own tracks which is plainly obvious

If everyone else can hear the 'bad' version also, then you can eliminate the SigmaTel as the problem; unless the conversion process is done on the fly inside this chip. But that is highly unlikely. So it's pointing to a problem in the formats you have selected as discussed. Unfortunately I have never used Mixcraft... And I can't listen to the examples on this PC Try getting all the formats the same for each of your tracks prior to importing it into Mixcraft. Its possible mixcraft is not too keen on the format generated via your POD X3.

King Of Twilight - Iron Maiden

I write to inspire and hopefully influence.

I like to start with the music first and let others influence the lyrics, then elaborate on the full song in an attempt to astound. Very seldom have I written music to someone elses lyrics, but these sparse occassions have been very fruitfull.

Agreed in all posts. But for a home studio based band, the reverse effect should be used once and best left well alone after that. Believe me, you will never live it down However consistency in a particular combination of effects applied throughout an album seems to be common practice.

Just to add an extra technique; stick to FinnArild's rules and get the vocal recorded well first, then you could try adding a short reverb aswell as a gated reverb to add some depth.

i recently used switch www.nch.com.au