davlan

Hey Bong. I checked Digital Village site and they are selling quality controlled B stock 1080's for £500. Not bad for a machine that is over 8 years old. The 1080 is 16bit throughout and therefore it won't have the inherent quietness of 24bit processing. But when I got mine 8 years ago I noticed that it was the quietest box in the studio. Compared to a D50 this box is quiet. You might want to check prices on the net as somebody somewhere might be doing a better deal. what are the included boards. Lastly the JV 1080 worked ou the box perfectly and I have very few complaints other than its sound design capabilities are limited (by soft synth standards)and that it largely is a sample playback machine with filters added on. But still a very complex piece of kit. Hope this helps

TC stuff works in DSPs but integrates with audio software right? Apparantly it sounds good. But the struggle might be when you try to take the work home on your laptop. Software doesn't weigh anything. is there a metaphysical issue here?

Have just read a review on SOS magazine for these cards. Work rally well in Mac but are complete pants in a PC. really glad I never went there!

Just checked out John's previous reply and he's already mentioned this. Ah well, great minds! But this is a likely solution.

Just checked your mic out on the net. Looks like a fairly good capacitor. Try a pop shield. Are you far enough away from the monitors could be feedback issue. Wait a minute, I've had an idea, sometimes if you have an internal feedback loop you can get the same sound produced twice with a slight delay on one of the sounds. this RESULTS in a nasal whiny quality or "phasing" to the sound. I've had this before on my old soundblaster card. If that is the case then you have a routing issue. But I don't know you're set up; is it possible you have the sound coming from the cubase engine as well as a direct feed from the sound card? Does the nasal sound come only there when you are monitoring the live signal? Is it still there when you playback the recording? Check your monitoring options. Try turning off the direct out in the driver selection page - the bit that lets you select ASIO/DirectX/WDM drivers!!!!!!!!

One more thing. Is it your monitors. Try listening through headphones. Or simply try adding a bit of reverb to the mix. Oh and are you getting enough signal through. the general theory is get it as loud aspossible without the sound clipping (distorting). That way you get more sound information on to your hard disk. Check the level meters in cubase or in the sound card software if it has them and on the preamp - they should all be in the amber. If they are way down near the bottom then turn up the amp gain. Does the mic take a battery; if so does it need replaced. Also check your cabling.

Oh dear I have had some fairly hairy problems of my own recently when my £5000 brand new audio computer just didn't work. I sent a rather nippy email to their tech support whose reply was both helpful and very courteous. This was incredibly helpful. I for one know how frustrating complex audio systems can be as I have been trying to get a PC audio system together for some time now. You will be pleased to hear I am almost there and you can read about it in Dave's Diary coming soon. John: I thought your reply was a wee bit OTT (but that's what you do in the wee small hours) but Pops when a string of people tried to discuss and resolve your problem you did respond somewhat ungratefully and ungraciously. These issues are resolved by dialogue not miraculous answers. Sometimes forum communication can be or feel misleading when you are feeling pissed off (you cannae see people's faces). And John's advice was excellent! How to troubleshoot the system. May I elaborate on it. I was talking to an orchestral sound engineer at the BBC a few years ago and was suprised to find out that the recordings were done with almost no processing whatsover. A bit of manual dynamics compression made simply by riding the faders up and down at key moments. The sound was largely created by good mics and good mic positioning. And boy did it sound great. The point being is that you should get a good sound immediately with your system without any processing and not the "goat with a cold" you are currently experiencing. Here are my thoughts: 1. Is it the mic. Try another one. If it works then there's a problem with yours. Does it require phantom power, is this switched on? Are there settings on the mic, if so fiddle with these. Try repositioning the mic. 2. Is it the preamp. Again fiddle with settings. 3. Is it the sound card. Try recording (or monitoring) a line level device (a hardware synth perhaps) without the pre amp. If all's well then the preamp might be at fault. If you still get nasal whine you might want to email the manufacters support team to ask for advice as it may be the sound card. Check that you have ASIO drivers installed (could even try reinstalling these) and selected in cubase. Read your soundcard manual thoroughly and see if there is a setting that has to be altered. Have a go at this stuff and give us feedback as to how you get on. i.e. tell us what is helpful and what is not. And keep smiling. Dave

Things are getting better. I'm doing a write up of my experience so far and I'll get that to you shortly.

Hey Pops! Don't get grumpy; people were trying to be helpful. It's difficult to be precise about a complex recording issue when you're not actually there. See if there's anything helpful at either of these: http://abel.hive.no/oj/musikk/trompet/tpin.../recording.html http://www.akg.com/products/product_tipps/....html?flashgo=1 I have never specifically recorded trumppet but with your quality of equipment I would have thought you should get a fairly good sound straight off; and not the frustrating nasal sound. In that case you might have a hardware issue (rather than a technique issue). John's reply was designed to show how to localise the problem. However I am a long term Cubase user. If you have any specific queries with how to work the software I'll do what I can. Best Dave Lang

Steve Absynth will run as a stand alone application. So try running from without Sonar. D

BS I receive my Carillon system tomorrow so will let you know how I get on. I agree it is cooler to have a hardware mixer in front of you rather than having to use a mouse. Handy if you are mixing on a laptop though, at least in terms of portability. However it is possible to control most music packages from a midi controller. I use my VS1680 for this purpose at the moment (as well as for outboard effects), it doesn't have motorised faders though which would be nice. You can buy dedicated midi mixing controllers. Steinberg have a Cubase dedicated one which is coming down in price at about £550. The Mackie Control is probably the best one- it's expandable- but you won't get much change out of a grand. Very cool piece of kit but don't you think this is dreadfully expensive for a piece of kit that essentially transmits midi messages. However there is a new kid on the block from Tascam which does the same thing as the control but also acts as a spanky soundcard andmassive breakout box all for about £300 extra. Dave

No disrespect KJ but the original post mentioned trying new strings so my presumption is that it was the recording of a bass guitar and not a midi instrument. I would have said that it was fairly standard procedure to use some compression on bass guitar recording. Use a plugin from VST24.

Steve Absynth should have a SETUP drop down menu at the top. Go to MIDI and SOUND setting an make sure you have your sound card and midi set properly. If you don't have ASIO then select direct sound. Experiment with the delay/latency settings D

Another point about mixing the old fashioned way. If you were to have a multiple breakout box with signal routing all ending within the PC you would be moving towards a virtual studio. The advantage here is that everything is savable. The entire studio can be saved and reloaded instantly and precisley for any given job. This is going to speed things up somewhat.

BS Yeah you should be able to run Absynth as a standalone but I'm not sure if you would be able to run any other softs beside it. Vstack would provide you with a VST environment so you could use as many instruments and FX plugins as you can, and then be able to mix them. However can I offer an opinion on your new PC. As someone who spend a couple of years fiddling with a PC I am very wary of non specofic PCs for music. That's why I've spent a considerable amount of dosh on a Carillon machine - still sitting at their workshops waiting on some of the more esoteric components I requested. So Ican't quite talk from experience but certainly the strong message I have received is that microsoft PC's struggle to do audio stuff unless set up properly. A dedicated machine will have had all it's components checked for stability and compatibility - it should work reliably and much more efficiently as well. Windows will have been tweaked to maximise it's ability to do sound. It will also have been rigged for silent running. Imagine a PC that makes no (or very little) sound. It will work out the box. For about 20% extra. Dell still a good bet - you will get a reliable machine for a good price and given that in two years time processor speeds will have doubled etc the machine will depreciate in value so why spend extra on a dedicated rig, but then you could upgrade. You can get articles off the web to tweak windows, I might have some of these on my hard drive. But I would say your best best is to go dedicated. Check out sites for Carillon, Millenium Music, Digital Village, Philip Rees and Red Submarine. Ask John, he uses a Carillon. Dave

Sorry back again. Or it might be the soundcard. Is it any good. Try the mic on another quality machine or even just run it through a mixing desk.

But then again your description sounds as though the sound you are getting really sucks and if you are using a decent mic this shouldn't be the case. Are their settings on your mic or pre amp that need sorting out, try adjusting the gain. Compare and contrast with another mic.

I suppoese I was wondering if your mic was any good; I've never heard of the equipment in question but it sounds like it's decent. Possibly a dedicated brass mic? It's difficult to diagnose without first hand knowledge of the problem, however some pointers might be 1. Add compression to get a louder punchier sound, 2. Add a tube amp effect to warmi it up, 3. Boost mid range while easing off the top end. Maybe someone out there could be a little more specific than that but try experimenting with the stuff I mentioned and let us know how you got on.

What type of mic are you using? And where?

Diary of an obsessive . . .

Try a room made of mattresses.

Also just been researching some other soft synths. Check out Linplug Albino, linplug Chronox, Big Tick Rhino, and RGC Audio Z3ta+. All in similar sound design territory as Absynth Dave

Another note about compatibility. Don't use a PC from a mainstream outlet. Get it made by someone in the know, it'll cost a wee bit more but it'll save a lot of tears. Or if you must make sure it's running an INTEL chipset and CPU. I've had problems with VIA stuff as well. I think that soundcard designers are little on the conservative side when testing their products on different platforms.

Yeah you do get what you pay for but the prices are dropping. BS, you mentioned Cubase SL so I presume this is your sequencer. What soundcard are you using presently? A soundcard equipped with ASIO has special drivers that streamline communication with the soundcard. i.e. You get low latencies i.e. the time between hitting your keyboard and the actual sound playing reduces. On a Soundblaster and Windows XP/2000 this is about 20ms. Not fast enough for any serious playing. You can get away with about 13ms but 3-7ms is ideal. The card that everyone was raving about last year was the Terratec DM6Xfire (£170). However I'm sure I remember seeing ASIO soundcards for about £50 somewhere. I'll have a look. Problem you might have is synching up the two computers. First up you would have to run 1 copy of Cubase on each machine. Plugins need a program (VST) environment in which to run especially if you want to run more than one synth at a time. Steinberg have a program called Vstack (£40) which will run on the other machine. You should be able to sync them through midi(check it out though). However IF both soundcards have digital SPDIF connections AND ASIO drivers then you should be able to connect them digitally through Steinbergs system link protocol. This will achieve sample perfect sync i.e. tighter than a nun's pants. Tell me a bit more about your system especially your computers. Comatibility can be an issue!

Hi Bong The 1.5Ghz machine should be fine but you'll nedd an ASIO equipped soundcard to make it playable D