Jump to content

The Audacity Works

Members
  • Posts

    6,038
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Converted

  • Location
    Hollywood, CA

The Audacity Works's Achievements

Newbie

Newbie (1/14)

0

Reputation

  1. I want single voices/programs to sound exactly the same in song mode as they do in single mode. And I want 16 of them at once. The Virus TI has been able to do this since it was first released in 2005. Stop selling me keyboards with 16 multi-parts that don't include 16 multi-effects units! If a keyboard has 16 multitimbral parts and, say, 80 effects blocks (16 parts x 5 FX each), people will just complain they can't add 10 effects each to 8 parts. It's a vicious cycle. The only way to solve it is to make oscillator, filter, envelope, LFO, and DSP allocation completely dynamic (like in a DAW), and when the user runs out of DSP, they're done, whether it's 50 stripped down parts or 3 gigantic massive parts. This whole concept of 16 parts/16 channels/16 tracks is so antiquated. The Fantom-G got the concept right, but they were too early
  2. I'd advise not listening to every "sound major" who comes along.I'd advise not listening to any "sound major", unless they've graduated and had many hundreds of billable hours (which in my experience, is less than 5% of "sound majors"). Many studios in LA refuse to hire students from recording schools, because they tend to be snotty know-it-alls who know way less than those passionate enough about recording to learn it on their own. And you can (and should) tell the parents that the next time you see them. For what it's worth, quite a few major-label records have been recorded on Roland portable studios. A VS-2480/2400/2000 sounds better to my ears than ProTools LE systems and the earlier 888-based TDM rigs. We need more women in the industry. Don't let anyone discourage you, moongdal!
  3. Is there a link to the shootout you mentioned where the Delta 66 sounded "positively inferior" to more expensive converters? If so, please post it because I'd love to hear the files and read how the test was performed.We didn't record anything, because the extra A/D to a CD burner or computer would skew the results. We wanted to hear the A/D/A and only the A/D/A. Everything else was analog: Percussion, bass, and vocals on a Studer 2"
  4. Right, and a lot has changed in prosumer grade converters since then.Converter chips? Probably. But the analog circuitry before and after conversion? The Delta 66 is still available (as are other boxes in the shootout, like the RME and Metric Halo). Are you saying M-Audio may have redesigned it? It wasn't horrible-sounding, but its throughput was absolutely, positively inferior to other, more expensive boxes in the shootout. Also, doing a proper blind test is not trivial. Levels must be matched to less than 1 dB, and preferably to 0.1 dB. If that is not done then all bets are off.Agreed. But you also don't want to run a splitter cable unbalanced from a Mackie 1202 into a $6000 Apogee and then convert the results to MP3. Realtime monitoring of throughput where everything but the interface/converter is properly maintained analog is the way to do it. Otherwise, too many other factors skew (or smear) the results. There was a big debate on GearSlutz a while back about mix busses. One guy posted two files, one mixed ITB with ProTools and one through... a Dangerous 2-Bus I think? The differences between the resultant files were, of course, extremely subtle, and many analog mix bus aficionados called shenanigans. What the tester failed to take into account was how the mix bus affects the actual mix process. Certain guys (including myself) can create better and faster mixes with analog mix busses, because we're hearing what we need to hear all day, not just during the final bounce. After all, mixing is much more than throwing eight stereo stems in at unity and clicking the bounce button. Of course, it's impossible to perform a double-blind test when mixing a song from scratch. Or say you have a paint brushes A and B. A robotic arm may paint the exact same line with each brush, with identical measurements, but a professional painter may get notably, consistently better results with one but not the other. One can't say "Oh, the robot's lines were identical, therefore the brushes paint the same!"
  5. I'm not saying every sound card sounds the same. I'm saying that every competent sound card that's not broken sounds the same.If that's true, then the vast majority of affordable audio interfaces aren't competent. It's been years, but back in my retail days, we ran a double-blind converter/audio interface shootout. Wish I could remember all the details. RME, Apogee, Mytek, Prism, PreSonus, Lynx, Metric Halo, Frontier, Alesis Masterlink, M-Audio, some 1RU Panasonic, and a couple others were patched into an API console and we were switching back and forth between the raw track on a Studer 2" through the desk and full throughput of each unit's A/D/A. None of us were asked to guess which channels were which, only which sounded better. At no time did any of us think any of the A/D/A signals were perfectly transparent. There was always a loss compared to the raw tape track. We switched from the Delta 66 to RME Hammerfalls for our Gigastudios, because the difference was that great. Panasonic sponsored the event, and admittedly, their box ended up winning the shootout. The setup was built by a friend at his studio, and he swears nothing was done to make the Panasonic sound better than the others. The shootout also caused us to order a bunch of Metric Halos, because they sounded excellent for the money. There was an audible (though slight) difference between the higher-end boxes, but the difference between the high-end and low-end boxes was very, very apparent. Furthermore, it was measurable when performing flipped-phase tests and could even be seen on the oscilloscope. Yes, the shootout was double-blind. Furthermore, there was no placebo effect from discussion, because we wrote our impressions down privately and only discussed them later. On separate occasions, we ran cable shootouts, mic shootouts, mic pre shootouts, recorder shootouts, compressor shootouts, and digital mixer shootouts. The digital mixer shootouts were extremely eye-opening, because even with everything bypassed, the sonic difference between Yamaha, Mackie, Panasonic, Tascam, Roland, and Sony boards on throughput were HUGE. And at that point, we were basically just using them as A/D/As. We never recorded our results, because the A/D on the recorder would be one of many smearing factors. I agree that public perception is often plain wrong
  6. Below are two short files for you to identify. One was recorded through a $25 SoundBlaster X-Fi card, and the other through a $6,000 Apogee. This is one performance captured through one microphone that was split after the preamp, then sent to both converters and recorded at the same time.
  7. BTW we are within 3-5 years of CURING diabetes- and have grown an entire pancreas from stem cells-Really? Do you have a link to some more info? My dad's diabetic.
  8. Obama, yes on 2, no on 8. Holy {censored}, when did I become a liberal?
  9. Customer service in large business really sucks anymore. There is no more "the customer is always right"."The customer is always right" is complete bull{censored}. Consumers are occasionally rude, irrational, clueless, greedy, defensive, conniving, or drowning in feelings of entitlement. Anyone who's ever worked in any type of service industry knows what I mean. That's not to say a company shouldn't do its very best to keep its customers happy, but I absolutely despise that phrase.
  10. Ah. A die-hard Defender For Life. No wonder you're so unpleasant.I'd take a room full of Defenders over one Hater.
  11. Any time I've called PreSonus, they've picked up quickly and knew their stuff. Never had any sort of 20-minute wait. They pay for the call to boot. Emails always get lost in the shuffle. I never trust them unless it's the only option.
  12. Oh, and back on topic: One can definitely hear errors, especially with an older or cheaper CD player. I've been able to burn two CDs, one on an Imation and the other on MicroBoards (Taiyo Yuden), and can blindly tell you which CD I'm listening to (and most likely you could too). Moreover, if you're sending your master CD off for pressing, the plant will send it back to you if it contains too many errors. Taiyo Yuden brands are really the only way to go, unless you're burning one-offs for friends or whatever.
  13. Some idiot came into my store a few years ago swearing up and down that firewire drives sounded better than IDE drives. After explaining that no, all other things being equal, drive type has no effect on audio whatsoever, he called me nothing but a "sales moron", claimed to be a top engineer and audio software designer, and started spouting a bunch of made up techno-babble terms. I offered him $100 if he could dig up any reliable information to back his claim up, and he came back two weeks later with a link to Digidesign support article suggesting that firewire performance was better than IDE. I asked "You DO know that performance isn't the same thing as sound quality, right?" He replied "Hey, don't get pissed that I proved you wrong. Where's my $100?" The only reason I post this is in the hopes that he or someone who knows him reads this. His name is Trance. He lives in Tucson, AZ. He's a complete douchebag.
×
×
  • Create New...