I'm busy, I swear. No, really...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
We’re finally wrapping up the new Audio Damage store. (You know, the one where I’ve been answering questions mailed to the info@ad account with “that will be fixed with our new store, which will be up next month” for almost a year now? Yeah, that’s the one.) And by “we” I mean my lovely and talented wife.
We’re also getting close to having a beta version of Dr. Device. And by “we” I mean Adam.
So what is it I do all day, anyways? You know, I couldn’t rightly say. But I know I do a lot of it, whatever it is. This is an open thread. Get it off your chest. You’re among friends.
21 comments
I know!
You spend all your time thinking up the witty bon mots and scathing criticisms that keep us reading this blog...
Was that too sycophantic?
Has it something with cats and bidule to do?
Off my chest, eh? How about struggling with how to create a sustainable lifestyle and realizing early on that the giant pile of gear in the basement doesn't really fit too well into this dream? Discuss...
maybe it's just me, but CR seems strangely chipper as of late. if text had a tone, his would be noticeably lighter these days. quite looking forward to dr. device.
I got a raise a month ago and just got the paycheck it should take effect on...
and the raise isn't there because the paperwork hasn't been done!
*sigh*
It'll get taken care of and I'm not going to miss out on any money but damn was I ever looking forward to this check...
I'm torturing myself by forcing the learning curve of KARMA against me.
Off my chest...Never bid against CR on ebay!
cr,
do you have any further thoughts on the machindrum?
rtmx
reuniting with my favorite combo organ soon - the beastly YC-30. I'm verrry happy to find another after my last one died in Europe.
Here's one in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqWPl0AexnA
Further thoughts on the MachineDrum? Sure:
1) The internal timing is a tragedy. I can deal with this easily, and it doesn't bother my workflow, but if anything, that fellow on the MD forums understated the matter somewhat. At 130 bpm, expect any particular sound to be within 1/64th note of where it is supposed to be. Obviously that amount goes up, the faster you go. At 160, it is around a 32nd note. It does have quite a nice feel to it, but the flip side is that stuff sequenced by something that has rock-solid timing (like a soft-synth in Cubase) sounds like Kraftwerk-straight time in comparison.
2) I'll go ahead and say that the UI and the synths (machines in the parlance) are quite good, logically laid out, and no complaints there whatsoever.
3) The 2-buss effects suck.
That's about it for now. Bon mot? Maybe.
I've asked this on forums, but it's occurred to me I should have asked here all along.
I'm considering getting a new audio interface. It won't ever be used in a pro setting, so I don't need the fanciest converters/etc in the world. The main reason I'm looking to upgrade what I have is for more analog I/O (currently only have 2 stereo outs and one stereo in).
Looking for at least 2 stereo lines in and preferably more than 2 stereo lines out, with decent converters and decent latency. I'll take other I/O like mic inputs, but don't really care if they are there. I'd prefer fireware and also prefer something that doesn't need to be rackmounted. For that reason, I've mostly settled on the MOTU Traveler.
Anyone think of an alternative in roughly the same price range ($500 -$800)? Any reason I should avoid the Traveler like the plague?
As long as this is an open get-it-off-your-chest thread:
Word to the wise: never, ever schedule a major home-renovation project immediately after a vacation. Also don't believe any contractor's estimate of how long any job will take. I made both of these mistakes and as a result most of my time from late March until a couple of days ago has been completely dominated by demands other than Audio Damage. The good news is that my house now has really l33t siding, and the remaining work should be finished sometime next week. The bad news is, well, as CR put it, Dr. Device is almost ready for beta. This puts it at least a month later than I wanted, but there's not much that can be done about that since time travel isn't something I'm good at. I'm fortunate that CR has been very patient with me; it's a damn good thing that I don't have a "real" job since I would have lost it about four weeks ago if I did.
The other good news is that Dr. Device sounds great and is quite fun to use, so it will be all good in the end.
RE the Machinedrum, my opinions pretty much mirror CR's. The thing is really fun to use and I like the way it sounds. There are some things that leave me scratching my head, e.g. why can I give names to kits but not to patterns? Using CR's method of recording one track at a time into Cubase and quantizing to deal with the timing issue works fine but is something I'm not yet very fast at doing so it's something of a PITA. OTOH I've only done it with a few patterns because of the aforementioned house work. I do think it's the best drum machine I've ever owned, and I've owned quite a few. Is it worth the $1300 in this day and age of things like GURU? Tough call. It really depends on your methodologies and tastes. I love hardware with blinky lights and I like the MD's sound; I seem to be getting pleasing results faster with it than I do with GURU, which is what I've been using previously for drums. Your mileage may vary.
Shamann: you might want to check out the Presonous Firebox. It may not have enough I/O for you but aside from that it may be a good match.
--Adam
The timing on the machinedrum issue has been blown way out of proportion. I just did a test with a 4/4 pattern at 120 bpm and it stayed rock solid within 50 samples of dead on (usually slightly early.) That's with 96k recording making the total error less than 0.5 ms on most hits.
The trick is, even with the swing set to 50% it still swings. Set the swing amount to 50% then cursor over to T:01 in the swing window and turn off the per track swing settings (turn off all the lit LEDs), exit the swing window and repeat for ALL the other tracks.. now do a test recording.. you'll find the timing is much more accurate.
It's a hundred times more accurate than any drummer will ever be.. I don't get what the big deal is. People only obsess over things like this because they can do a test and see the results visually. I find it hard to believe they are actually hearing timing errors.. they must have an atomic clock for a heart.
Peter
I've considered the Firebox, and I like that it is so small, which fits well for my work space, but the extra stereo line in was the big motivator for me to get a new interface in the first place.
I've been doing a lot more with hardware lately running stuff out and then back in but have frequently run into situations where I want to run stuff back out and back in again. I'm sure I'm violating some audiophile tenet by doing so, what with all the ADA conversion back and forth on the same signal and line noise and added latency, etc, but for my needs, it would really be handy (especially as a noise guy, I make use of a lot of feedback loops).
re: the machinedrum timing, Peter, like Chris said, the timing only becomes a problem when matching it up to something sequenced in software that has better timing.
Bah. I run stuff out and in all the time, and I use external effects as plugins (definitely Cubase's most awesomest feature) and the Conversion Police never come to my house. Don't worry about it.
As for interfaces, I have a FireBox and couldn't, in good conscience, recommend one. I couldn't diss it either. It is what it is. $800 pretty much leaves you in that neck of the woods, with the PreSonus interfaces and the MOTU Traveller or 828. For another $400, you could get a used Rosetta 200, but then you have _no_ mic pres, and you still need an interface to get AES or SPDIF in and out of your computer.
I think the Traveller is probably your best bet.
Viz. the MachineDrum fanatics jumping all over anyone that complains, it's a tool, not a lifestyle choice. As Adam said, this is the best drum machine ever made, hands down. The problems are easy to deal with if you're a little crafty.
Viz. what Peter said, I'm seeing much larger errors; I wish it was 100 samples because I wouldn't complain. Any given 16th note is within about 400 samples. Sometimes they're spot on. So drift from desired is 400 samples, with an actual window of opportunity of 800 samples. (In actuality, it's more like 600, 200 in front of a given hit, and 400 behind.) I'm not going to even complain about this to Elektron. I know about it, it's not hard to deal with, and I can't say I care very much.
And RexRhino, you printed my Trick! How Dare You! Seriously, that's how the drum tracks on the CR album sound so real. They're not quantized, except for a couple tracks. How I Do It: I play the general drum part in and quantize it, just a 2 or 4 bar loop. Then I write the song and get all the other parts fleshed out. Then I mute the original drum loop and play a new one for the entire track, and DO NOT quantize it. This results in something that sounds played instead of programmed. It is time consuming; lots of overdubs and do-overs, but the net result is well worth the time invested. I've never tried it with electronic music, but it works well for my organic stuff.
-CR
Sorry, shamann, I mis-read your post and erroneously thought you wanted one set of stereo inputs. I've been doing more of exactly what you describe: running stuff out of the computer and back in again. I recently scratch-built a module for my modular synth that does nothing other than convert between balanced and unbalanced signals so that I can run balanced cables between my interface and the synth. Suddenly I can use my synth modules as inserts in Cubase. It's a blast.
The latency isn't much of an issue because Cubase automatically compensates for it. Obviously the multiple conversions may or may not be a problem depending on context and the quality of your converters. I'm using an Apogee 800 so I don't worry much about it. ;-)
RE MD timing: personally I haven't yet formed an opinion. It sounds fine by itself, but I make no claims about my sense of timing. I started down the path of recording/cutting-up/quantizing its output mostly because it makes more sense to me to get the stuff into Cubase where I can arrange/mix/EQ/process it in the manner to which I'm accustomed to working.
--Adam
i've been doing a lot of the stuff rex and cr mention, namely playing the drum tracks and not quantizing the shit out of them afterwards. sometimes i quantize / groove quantize everything in logic if that's what sounds good in the situ, but usually i just correct the worst mistakes by hand (and i'm both a crappy keyboardist AND a crappy drummer).
the same idea works damn well in really tightly quantized electronic music too... take a tune with a 4 on 4 bass drum beat on it, play some looser grooves on top of it and loop the best parts. or whatever. unless you really want the whole tune to sound tight and mechanical, which can seriously rock too.
shamann,
if you're on osx, traveler has probably the best and most solid firewire drivers you can get (together with 828mk2 and apparently ultralite). and AFAIR the windows drivers aren't bad either. the sound quality is not exactly high end, but not crappy either. the transient response is something i would complain about if i had to, compared to RME fireface400 and tc konnekt, traveler seemed to lack punch and the stereo image didn't sound as clear.
i'm actually selling my traveler and getting a metric halo instead for the converters, but that doesn't stop recommending the former to people. it's not a jawdropping unit, but a really solid workhorse. and if you don't need quite as much I/O, there's always the ultralite which probably has the same converters and drivers, just smaller and cheaper.
i could also recommend the tc konnekt series too for the good converters for the price, but the current state of drivers is sucky. people have also been speaking highly of the new echo audiofires but no first hand experience on them whatsoever.
Thanks for the tip on the Echo and TC interfaces. I vaguely remember looking at TC a while ago, but completely forgot about them.
I'm going to have to do versus between the Traveler, the Audiofire8 and the TC Konnekt 24d to see which one comes out on top for cost versus quality, etc.
"I'm seeing much larger errors; I wish it was 100 samples because I wouldn't complain. Any given 16th note is within about 400 samples. Sometimes they're spot on. So drift from desired is 400 samples, with an actual window of opportunity of 800 samples. (In actuality, it's more like 600, 200 in front of a given hit, and 400 behind.)"
That's really weird.. even if I'm totally on crack and not recording/lining up my test sample accurately with the grid, there's no way it's that far off.. I tried it a couple times and it was definitely in the 50 samples behind/30 samples ahead range.. 80 sample window.
I wonder if the timing accuracy varies across different units? Anyway, it's lotsa fun.. the more I play with it, the more cool tricks I find.
Peter.
shamann,
Just be warned that the TC drivers may be sucky at the moment on some setups. While I was evaluating some FW interfaces, a friend borrowed me a Konnekt 8... it sounded better than Traveler, but every time I opened a new app (not neccessarily music-related), there was an audible (about 1/4 second) silence and click. Ouch. Otherwise there were no major problems.
As for my luck trying to get a new interface bought, the guy who borrowed Traveler for evaluation can't seem to get a simple driver install done and he's going to borrow the unit for a few more days before he decides. I don't know if I should be pissed off or just mildly amused, but if he returns the unit in the end, without managing to get drivers installed and the basic operation learned during a week or two, I'll probably come to a conclusion that being fair and patient isn't always a virtue at least.
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