Kiwiburger

It's not just CPU speed. Things change all the time. Firewire 400 will be replaced by Firewire 800, etc, etc, etc, My point is that you can wait, and wait and study and shop around and wait and study and shop around ... it's a moving target, and you will never get the 'best' machine for more than 5 minutes. You just have to buy the best you can right now, otherwise you won't buy anything and still be asking the same questions in 6 months time. But I think the original issue is that this guy wanted bargain basement prices, with lots of custom assembly and support thrown in. Ain't going to happen. It's one thing to accuse corporations of being greedy. It's another thing to want to screw everyone for the cheapest possible bargain, and then expect a high level of service. It's two sides of the same greedy coin.

Shangrila - please learn how to use paragraphs. What you said is bloody hard on the eyes, and you will be alienating a lot of people who might be able to help you. See - it's not hard to do. Anyway - you seem to be picking on new egg because they are cheap. Buying from the cheapest vendor is usually a BIG mistake. They are cheap for a reason - they will be buying the cheapest deals they can, and offering the least service they possibly can. You run a big risk that they are equally cheap with their warranty and after-sales support. Ain't no way they are going to employ more skilled people to build custom PC's - and NOT PUT UP THE PRICES like everyone else. Get over it. Get another job if you have to - otherwise you will be asking the same questions in 18 months time. I didn't suggest your weren't a musician. But since you bring it up, many great musicians never touched a computer in their lifes. The point is - if you really want to be a computer musician, don't wait 18 months. Jump in - buy something, anything. Whatever you buy today would be a gleam in the eyes of somebody 18 months ago, and a boat anchor in 18 months time. It's not worth putting excess energy into disposable PC's. You said you wanted to be musician - or a computer tech? I have a bunch of IT certificates, which is helpful, but if it's music you are interested in, make some music.

That's crazy. If you keep waiting for a better PC, the one coming out next month will always be a better PC. And there are plenty of people already building PC's to your specs. If the eggy boys don't wanna, they don't wanna, so don't pester them. They would have to raise their prices if they went there. In my experience, the small companies run by young people who build fast gaming machines are your cheapest and best people to deal with. Just order a large case with the biggest, quietest power supply. Order the exact parts you've decided on. In 6 months time it will be obsolete anyway - but do you want to record now or what? Jump in - upgrade later. There is far more to recording than the PC - it's the cheapest, disposable part of your whole system.

Free beer at The Russ's place!

Well it depends on the particular compressor. With software compressors, it's possible to be extremely accurate. You can precisely specify that if the signal exceeds the threshold, it will be precisely multiplied by the exact ratio specified. Older analog stuff wasn't this accurate - you can imagine glowing lightbulbs and tubes and transformers and stuff. The parameters where more of a rough statement of intention. Some of these analog compressors sounded very cool, so software models try to emulate their quirks. I am fairly sure that in between the time the Threshold is exceeded, the envelope circuitry starts pulling the level down - towards the maximum reduction allowed by the Ratio parameter. This takes some time (specified by Attack) and therefore I don' t believe an analog compressor is ever exactly multiplying all of the signal above the threshold exactly by the ratio the whole time. Compression design is obviously an art - there's more going on that you would think.

With digital audio, each bit causes a doubling in volume, which is a 6dB boost. So 64 bit internal processing = 64 x 6 = 384dB. But you don't use these big numbers for improved dynamic range, it's more about avoiding rounding errors when you process the signal. The dynamic range of most audio sources is usually too great and needs controlling. Tape and vinyl was around 60 - 70 dB range, and many people think that was the ultimate. Digital allows for extreme dynamic range, suitable for classical music, but generally we like to squash music more. The problem is you can squash it too much. The thing about a compressor is that it's gain (or reduction) is constantly floating up and down - described as the Envelope. The parameters like threshold, ratio, attack, release define the limits that this envelope complies with, but it's constantly floating in between. There are other parameters that can be used to - like Hard Knee, Soft Knee or variations in between. A compressor can't make abrupt changes, otherwise the signal would be distorted. That's why they use a Sidechain signal to create a smoother envelope that varies the gain. One version of hardware compressor that was/is very effective is the optical compressor. That's where the signal lights up a light bulb or LED, and that in turn varies a photo-resistor that acts like a volume control. They aren't very fast - but that's part of why they sound so good. The slowness of heating and cooling the lightbulb allows for a smooth envelope.

Unfair to compare the tracking situation against modern mastered CD's. Totally different things. Most modern CD's have been smashed with digital limiters with lookahead - and yes, those transients have been well and truely smashed off. But - you are also looking at the end result of probably thousands of processes and edits. Various analog and digital saturation effects have probably been used to tame a lot of transients. The history of tracking with compressors comes from the days of magnetic tape. Magnetic tape smashed your dynamic range and your transients, and you didn't have to care about clipping A/D converters. You cared about Average levels, hence VU meters and tracking with slow (e.g. optical) compressors was never a worry. With digital - Average doesn't cut it. Instantaneous peaks are the worry, as they will clip your converters. Very few compressors are fast enough to reduce a transient peak. Or - if you have a very expensive compressor that can be set fast enough, I wouldn't like to use it as a matter of course since it would probably kill sound quality if set too agressively. I doubt that anybody asking questions about compressors would own one of these compressors that are fast enough. Software with lookahead is a different story. Anyone can own a fast compressor/limiter because they are free. But that's the wrong side of the A/D converters to be of any use when tracking.

Magnetic tape was about the best Transformers Tubes Digital compressors and limiters can have the advantage of 'look ahead' that hardware compressors never had. That means they have see the audio stream coming, and take evasive action before the transient arrives. But - be aware that when a limiter responds to a transient, it ducks the level and then whatever follows straight afterwards gets ducked as well. That's been described as 'punching holes in your sound'. You can redraw some sharp spikes in your audio. You can automate some fader movements

Is this a misconseption? I believe so. The fact that a compressor has an Attack time means that all transients that occur within this Attack time will not be compressed. Destroying any chance of using a compressor as a way to "catch transients". It's true that some of the very expensive limiters are fast enough to catch transients - but if you have Attack times that short, they are more likely to chew into you waveform and distort it. In my opinion (probably will get shot down in flames) there is no real need to track with a compressor at all - and it only complicates the gain staging and adds noise. However - the two reasons to use a good compressor, if you know what you are doing are these: 1 - you like the sound it imparts - probably more of a distortion characteristic of the transformers/tubes etc 2 - you want to improve the Average signal level. That's Average - not Peak. A good free saturation effect is Voxengo Tube Amp (don't confuse this with a Guitar Tube Amp - treat it like a tube preamp. Compared to many other saturation effects, including the famous Magneto - I prefer this. It's fairly subtle, but sounds like tubey distortion when you crank it. Other saturation effects sound like crappy fizz when you crank them.

Its helpful to think of a compressor as something that 'compresses' audio - in other words, when working, it makes the sound lower in volume. I know compressors are usually used to make things louder - but in real terms, it isn't the compression that makes it louder. It's the 'make up gain' that follows that does that. A compressor does little more than what you can do with a volume control. It just makes it a lot faster and easier. Imagine a volume control that is normaly full on. You are going to 'compress' the sound with this volume control. The only option you have is to lower the volume (remember the compression stage isn't the same as the make up gain stage). Imagine a snare drum sound arrives. You detect that it is louder than you want (above the Threshold). You turn the volume down so it is exactly half (a reduction of 6dB - representing a compression ratio of 2:1. The speed at which you reacted to this would be fairly slow - so a large part of the stick sound of the snare got through before you could react to this. A compressor can react faster than your hand on the fader, so you could dial in the amount of 'stick sound' with a compressor Attack. Fast attack will kill the stick sound by lowering it's volume straight away. Slower attack settings will let more of the stick sound through - or if it's too slow, the whole snare sound will come through unnaffected. The Release is the opposite of attack. Once you realise the sound is as loud as you actually wanted, and doesn't require further compression (aka under the Threshold), you have to raise the volume back up to where you started (full gain). You will probably be too slow, and maybe not return the fader to the top before the next snare hit comes through. That would be self defeating. If you were fast enough, you return the fader to the top before the next hit, but in the meantime, the sound below the threshold would still be compressed. That probably isn't what you want either. You probably want the compression Release to be fast enough so that as soon as the sound is below the desired Threshold, it doesn't get compressed. That requires fast Release - but not too fast. Too fast can sound clipped. This is probably more obvious on longer sounds, like a cymbal crash. Ever heard that sucking sound when a crash gets smashed with a compressor, and then slowly you hear it getting louder again as the compressor slowly releases? Some people like to avoid that sound. Other people like to adjust the Release so it times with the flow of the groove.

What was the percussion track - midi or acoustic? If midi, and your timing is sloppy, you can tidy that up with 'Quantising'. Actually, you can make everything so robotic that it's crap. That's why most DAWs have advanced quantising features that allow your to use percentage values or groove templates and other tricks to get a more natural feel. Read the manual. If acoustic percussion, and your timing is sloppy, there are other tricks you can use. The easiest one is to simply take a 2 or 4 bar loop where you playing was best, and loop/paste that as much as you need. This trick is as old as The Beatles or 70's glam rock - they used tape loops to get drum tracks tight like a drum machine. There are also audio-quantising tricks in most DAWs - read the manual. Or just edit the audio, and move hits manually. It's always a fine line between robotic crap and sloppy human feel. I'd rather hear a human playing.