katapult

The FX mid way through rule:

Sorry, but I am not going to go out and buy every plugin that someone else has just so I can collaborate with them. Additionally, getting all the presets is more of a PITA than I care to tackle on a one-off collab project. If it was going to be a longer-term relationship I might be more inclined to do so. That said, we are saying the same thing just with different points of view.

You would be lucky if you can find someone to collaborate with that has the exact setup as you regarding sequencer, vsts and outboard gear. Wait, scratch that - its practically impossible. Loops or entire individual tracks are rendered to audio files are typically passed back and forth. There are rare occasions where you might have all the necessary components for a track, but even with Jikkenteki and myself collaborating on tracks together it has been difficult working on unrendered tracks. One might have a sound module or pack that the other doesn't have so we either needed to track it down or the track sounded different for each of us. Additionally, we both have very different external gear so all outboard sound gets rendered to wav files and we send those back and forth along with the Cubase file (In the past, it was a Fruity Loops file). As we progressed, we typically bought the same sequencers and some shared vsts but our studios are still incredibly different.

That is the greatest quote I have ever read.

You are joking right? Like "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids." If you are not, FL is a very capable music program. "It is what isn't" was written on Fruity 3. Some GREAT enhancements have been made since then. If you don't believe that Fruity is a decent program for writing music, search through the posts here. There is a thread listing different tracks that were written on Fruity. The list will amaze you. Kat

www.recording.org

Does the mic come with the speakers or do you have to use your own? I am curious because every mic has different properties, so if you use your own mic I am curious how they could account for how the mic pics up different frequencies.

This may answer your question: http://www.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php...91d7aabe14a0035

Sure you can master your own stuff, but why would you? If the mix isn't how you imagined it to sound when you mixed it, ask yourself why did you mix it that way?" Actually, I am glad that artists are buying what we are selling. or or Mastering puppets are pulling your strings. Yes it is an absolute pleasure to work a sound treated studio with phenomenal monitors but don't let the lack of equipment or experience deter you from learning all you can about mastering. The more you know about the entire process, the better decisions you will make at the beginning of making a track. All of the decisions made throughout the creation process add up to the final product - DUH!!! There are many artists that master their own work. Mastering basically comes down to knowing what to do in order to get what the artist perceives the best sound for their music is. There are many tips that you can use if you are going to master your own work. One of the best is to step away from the music for a while once you have finished the track - don't listen to the songs you are going to master for a few days. This will give you some separation from the music and your mind will allow you to focus on the track as a whole instead of individual parts. If you find yourself changing sounds on individual channels while you are mastering, finish your changes and then step away from the track again after removing whatever mastering processing you may have applied. Return to the song once it isn’t running through your head all day long and begin the mastering process again. Just because mastering was done on high end monitors does not mean that the song will sound terrible on low-end speakers. It is the job of the Mastering Engineer to know their setup and how their work translates onto different systems which is one reason "experience" is quoted on almost every mastering website. One thing to note however is that it is not necessarily the ME's fault for a song sounding bad. Often times it is the artist that demands what is done to a track. There is a lot that can be done with adjusting the EQ of a track to get it to sound louder but in today's market, heavy compression is the standard. IN THE MOST BASIC EXPLANATION, compression equals distorted sound. When mastering on high end speakers, you WILL hear the parts that will not sound good on crappy speakers. You just need to make the decision of what you are going to do with the track. For example, most computer speakers do not handle the bass-intensive dance music tracks very well. It is the job of the ME to work with the artist to find out if they want something done with the bass so that it sounds good on the computer speakers or if they want to flood the dance floor with bass. Many people on psynews have bought PAR-2 compilations. I did all of the mastering work on those CDs. Our goal when working on those was not to have the loudest cd out there but we also didn't want people to have to change their listening volume much when they changed CDs. We made some compromises in overall levels so that our tracks could be played on a wider range of systems. Just some things to think about. Kat

Sorry for slightly misleading you. The picture IS of the mondo traps but I just grabbed that one from the RealTraps site because I liked how that one portrayed the traps. That said, I have the mini and micro traps. They are basically the same thing in terms of appearance. The only difference is their thickness. Now on to the question. I absolutely love them. I may have been able to acheive the same final affect with other materials but the installation of these was an absolute dream and the end result is remarkable. They are installed in a 10' X 15' room with sheetrock walls and the rear wall is layered with Sheetblock and Green Glue for sound insulation to the adjacent room. While installing, I couldn't really hear much of a difference with the first 2 hung up, but once I got to 4 there was definitely a difference. By the end, just walking into the room you hear a differnce in the lack of ambient sounds. The room is quieter than the hallway into the room and this is not because of the sound proofing. An identical room is right next to my studio (sharing the same sound insulated wall) and you do not hear the difference walking into that room. The simplest test that I love to show people when coming into the studio is to have them clap their hands in the studio and then go into the identical room. The room without the Traps has this zinging sound after clapping whereas the studio basically does not. I say basically because there is still some action in the room as not every inch has been treated, but the reduction is drastic. On to the bass question. I had just finished up mastering a project prior to treating the studio. As a reference, I went back and listened to my work. Immediately I wanted to go back and redo the entire project as I was able to hear things I hadn't previously. Especially on the bass end of the tracks. The original work wasn't bad, but if I had heard what I can now, I would have done some things a little differently. I can't say if they are worth it for you to spend the money as they ARE expensive. There are a lot of companies out there offering many kinds of sound treatment options and will give varying results depending on what you select and the room you are treating. Do your research to see what will best fit your needs. One place to learn more about sound treatment is http://www.recording.org/forum-34.html One final thought is that for someone who had never installed sound treatment before, RealTraps made it an easy project to get right the first time. (I sound like an advertisement, but I guess if I didn't like them as much as I do I wouldn't be giving this type of review.)

Mackie HR824s with wall to wall RealTraps

1. Jikkenteki - The Long Walk Home - PAR-2 Productions - June 2006 2. Hydraglyph - Kinetic - Sanskara- January 2006 3. 11 Vs Symphonics Aka Ph - Far East Technology - ELF Music (JP)- October 2006 4. OOOD - Free Range - Organic- November 2006 5. Can't decide

Please try to be patient. I know it is hard to wait for new trax to show up, but the Post Office is truely messed up. Haris is selling our CDs from his shop and our first shipment to him took almost 3 months even though when I mailed them from the U.S. I was told they would be there in 7-10 days. Throughout those months, every time I emailed Haris he promptly responded with an update. When the CDs finally arrived, he emailed me letting me know they were there. I take his responses as a man with integrity and would like to let you all know that PAR-2 will shortly (Post Office permitting) be selling Jikkenteki's new album through ITAthens.

Let me add a little bit of history regarding mono bass tracks. Back in the day, the popular medium for music was records. 45s to be specific. As you know, in order to get the music on a record, grooves are cut into the vinyl. The more musical information contained in a song, the deeper and wider the groove needs to be. When a kick or bass track is in stereo, there is a lot more information, in the form of sound waves, that need to be transferred onto the vinyl. If there is too much information, either the cutter will go deep enough to where the information will actually "leak" through to the other side of the record or, when you are playing the record, the needle will simply jump out of the groove. 12" (33s) records were created to accomodate for more bass intensive songs. The 12" allows for wider grooves to be played at a slower rpm thus reducing leakage and skipping. To further aliviate the issues, mixing engineers put the low end sounds to mono channels. Now, the questions to ask yourself when you are mixing a track are: 1. What medium are you going to release your music on? If you are going wax, I would highly recommend you sticking with mono channels. If you are going CD, it isn't as important. Just get it to sound good. 2. What listening environment do you think the majority of your listeners to be in when listening to your music? If you are just burning CDRs for your friends to listen to at home, stereo is just fine. But if you think your track will be played on large sound systems, stick to mono for the low end tracks as the wave reflections of a bass stereo track in an enclosed area will greatly distort the sound. Katapult

I checked out your website and I am sorry I didn't know about you last year. I was down in Antigua on vacation and absolutely loved it. I would like to work with you in the future if you are interested. Kat