There are 6 basic steps to making music. Compose → Perform/Monitor → Record → Produce → Master → Distribute.

A lot of people ask what’s the point of outboard gear, when you can do it all inside a DAW for less money/time. People still like and use outboard gear IMO due to a few basic fundamentals.

#1 You actually OWN outboard gear/instruments. No company, change, update or data loss can take your gear away.

#2 many find the tactile experience of real life tools/instruments, more inspiring.

#3 Natural sound. Analog electronics add saturation/warmth. Outboard digital devices have pre-amps and converters, which can add color, and onboard processors/memory are always optimized per application. Lastly the most impactful piece of outboard gear, a musical instrument played by a human adds a plethora of individuality, identity and uniqueness.

The downsides to outboard gear is, it’s more time consuming/expensive, and real life instruments take practice/talent to play. It’s hard to beat the efficiency of the DAW for most music making steps. Where the DAW lacks IMO is performing/monitoring and mastering. These 2 steps, especially performing/monitoring, benefit most when done outside the box, provided proper gear/instruments are available. Real instruments played by real people always sound more natural in every way. Mastering outside the box adds natural harmonics, saturation and filtering, which have a different sound signature than artificial ones in the DAW.

Hybridizing music making steps can be tricky because of latency. I’m always surprised how much this gets overlooked. High latency almost always interferes with a performance/recording. To get extremely low latency, you must spend a LOT of money on your DAW/computer/interface. Nullifying one of the main benefits, the low cost. So it seems, it’s best to do entire steps either purely inside or purely outside the box. For instance perform/monitor outside the box, while using the DAW to simply record. Once done, then stay purely inside the DAW for production. Once done, stay purely outside the box for mastering, using the DAW to simply play/record.

https://youtu.be/Kjjzeib69FQ

People don’t need to make stuff up or believe urban myths to be confident in their abilities!

So apparently most audio “engineers” on youtube don’t know what sampling rate is @.@;

Sampling rate is not sampling range. Sample rate is the set number of samples taken per second. It stays the same, no matter what frequency of sound you are recording/rendering. Higher sampling rates aren’t for recording higher frequencies (like ones you can’t hear). They are for recording/rendering any audible frequency in HIGHER RESOLUTION. I reiterate, sampling rate is the SPEED at which a computer samples audio. Not the bloody frequency range it samples! The higher the sampling rate, the higher the resolution (sound quality).

The real math is simple: Divide the sampling rate, 44.1kHz (most common/standard), by the frequency of your audio sound, say 60Hz (bass kick), and you get the number of samples per cycle for that particular sound (735 samples per wave cycle in this case). That means, when you record that 60Hz sound, the computer has no more and no less than 735 steps to estimate the shape of the waveform’s fundamental cycle. Like if you laid out 735 square blocks in the shape of a wave. The blocks can be what ever size you want, it's the number of them that's important. Here's an example of a single wave cycle (the shape you would be trying to draw with your blocks): https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zer0DTeKD8o/Us0Qc4TIE-I/AAAAAAAABqY/3hoUpAh81To/s1600/sinewave.png So as you can see, the more samples you have per cycle, the better you can fake the curves of real life sound waves. It’s EXACTLY like the number of pixels in a picture. The more pixels/samples, the higher the resolution of the sound/picture.

The higher the frequency of the sound being sampled/rendered, the more cycles that particular sound has per second, thus the fewer samples will be taken of each cycle. THIS IS BECAUSE SAMPLING RATE FUNCTIONS AS A CONSTANT/PER SECOND. A 6Khz sound has 100 times more cycles per second than 60Hz. So out of your 44,100 samples taken per second, only 1/100th of them will be made for one cycle in the 6Khz sound. Compared to the 60Hz sound, sampling a 6Khz sound at 44.1Khz sampling rate, gives you only 7.35 samples per cycle to construct your waveform. Try drawing any kind of convincing curve with only 7 blocks or a coherent picture with 7 x 7 pixels. It can’t be done. What’s worse, MOST SOUND IN THE REAL WORLD IS MADE UP OF COMPLEX WAVEFORMS. These waves include fractal harmonics extending well into the high frequency range. The fractal nature of the physical world is a proven fact. To say sound is the exception, is ignorant. Point is, these real life sounds are even harder for a computer to draw than a sinewave. So at 44.1Khz sampling rate, how many samples would you get if you recorded a 16Khz sound? Answer: 2 or 3. That’s it. 2 or 3 blocks. You literally can do NOTHING but draw a simple square wave with that few. Just 2 giant blocks. One up, one down. There's your wave cycle. A simple square wave.

The application of this math is easily proven by entering your desired frequency and downloading the sound file from onlinetonegenerator.com Sine wave shape should be the easiest to work with and shows the degradation that happens as you sample higher and higher frequencies using 44.1Khz sampling rate. Open the file in audacity. Zoom in to find exactly ONE wave cycle (as is shown in the linked sine waveform above), then count the number of dots. Each dot in audacity is a sample. This is how digital audio works. Because of the math sampling functions under, the resolution of digital audio goes exponentially down the higher the frequency of the sound you are recording/rendering/reproducing. Digital resolution is very high in the bass bands but practically non existent in the higher bands. To get high resolution across the entire audible spectrum, you’d need sampling rates in the megahertz range. Not kilohertz. 8Mhz sampling rate would be adequate. That’s 8,000,000Hz not 44,100Hz. Kind a bit of a difference there. With modern technology, it should be possible but since everyone’s convinced 44.1Khz is fine, I’m not holding my breath for it to change.

This is why engineers who do know how digital audio works, facepalm when people say analog has inferior resolution. Digital has better editing capabilities by far, but not high frequency sound resolution. Modern digital sampling can’t even accurately record a 6Khz complex waveform, let alone a 16Khz one. Analog gear can though. Because it doesn’t need to sample. In analog, recording is a straight shot of electro/mechanical physics. A good reel to reel or vinyl has MORE resolution than any digital audio to date. All those hard edges on the digitally estimated waves also produce distortion (mostly odd order). Just play with a subtractive synth for a minute and listen to how different a square wave or saw tooth sounds compared to a sine wave. Edges matter. Wave shape matters. Accuracy matters. It all adds up.

Most people don’t seem to know this stuff though, usually substituting techno babble they heard on youtube. They have no real reference, so it’s not surprising. Most analog gear is too expensive to buy, too old to function properly, or too hard for noobs to handle. Most what people hear these days, is digital or analog that has been digitized for the internet. Digital decoders have a few tricks to mask the poor high frequency resolution and noise though. However, pretending decoders are perfect (which they aren’t), even if the decoder could completely make up for noise and wave warping, you’d still be missing what the computer didn’t record in the first place. That being all the details and curves of those higher frequency sounds, as they get mangled or left out entirely. There’s no way around it, you loose definition/detail when you digitize.

Some people act like this kind of information somehow insults their talent. To be blunt, if you suck at music or production, you will suck regardless if you are using analog or digital gear. The quality issues brought up in this article have nothing to do with one’s abilities and EVERYTHING to do with the pure mechanics of audio sound quality. Instead of flaming, people should look at what they CAN do. Digital or analog, if you can make something that puts a smile on your face, does it really matter if there are better tools you could have? Is it worth being jealous and petty over it? No. Believe in your self. Make music and be happy!

Boopaboopadoo The end. : P

Bit of an article concerning the new surround sound music production tech apple is promoting. With technocrats pushing production as more important than composition or anything really, and apple needing more of your money, surround sound music as a standard wouldn’t be surprising. It might mean they could resell you all the stuff you already bought. The application possibilities though, bring up questions:

Most music you hear in movies/shows/games plays OVER the visual material not WITHIN it, because otherwise it can interfere with immersion. Sound effects/dialog are different and play within the realm of the visuals, thus making sense to use in surround sound. It’s been used that way for decades. It works in open theater, which are rapidly disappearing thanks to c4vid19. It also works for PROPERLY set up home theater, which, most people don't have.

So Apple, not at all known for pushing gimmicks, has got surround sound music and special headphones for it. Enthusiasts claim these headphones “kind of” reproduce the 3d surround sound. As apposed to normal headphones that can already reproduce a 3d sound stage just fine. Or good normal speakers which, when properly set up, can ALSO reproduce 3d sound, though not quite the same as headphones can. In Logic Pro, WITHOUT creating a surround sound project profile, one can simply adjust the imaging placement of any sound/effect, using the onboard plugin. Effectively changing the perceived placement of sounds when listening under normal headphones. It also works to a certain degree when listening on a properly set up normal stereo pair of speakers. This technique is likely available in most DAWs worth a damn and gives the same effect of immersion/dimension as surround sound. It can also save bandwidth by utilizing phase or imaging appropriation. All without the more expensive time consuming surround sound music production.

Surround sound enthusiasts talk about recording an orchestra twice, so they can use surround sound to seat the listener in the middle of the concert. You can do that with just one recording and no surround sound production, by simply using that head shaped mic thing sold for less than a studio surround sound rig. Just place it where you want the listener to be in the concert. Done. Simpler, faster, less expensive, just as effective. Apple’s headphones “kind of” reproducing surround sound, insinuates a proper surround speaker system would be needed. All the while the trend in gaming is VR head sets and such, which means gamers will be on headphones, which they mostly are on already.

Enthusiasts claim: surround sound for music is good because it “complicates the profession”. Rubbish. From an engineering point of view, complicating a profession usually decreases efficiency. Good engineers know, one of the foundational pillars of engineering is efficiency, and simplicity goes hand in hand with efficiency. Surround sound enthusiasts also claim: More complicated=more professional. Hardly. If 2 people do the same job, with the same outcome but one takes twice as long, makes the process twice as complicated and spends twice as much money, most will say the faster person was more professional, because they flippin are. Professionals get the job done as efficiently as possible knowing, there is a set time/budget for any project. The more time spent on needlessly complicated production, the less time left for composition and other important things that impact the quality of the end product. Not surprising that some technophiles would love surround sound music production as the new standard. It would allow one to rack up more hours to be paid for doing busy work and shift attention away from their possibly subpar composition skills. Surround sound music production sure smells ripe for posers.

So, with surround sound you can make music surround the listener. The exact same thing one can achieve mixing normal stereo tracks utilizing proper phase/imaging placement, with before mentioned logic plugin, without the extra time and financial expense of surround sound production.

Preserving/promoting immersion depends on situation. In movies/shows/games, unless the music is IN scene (coming from a radio within the imaginary environment for example), it almost always plays OVER the visual realm, not WITHIN it. For music, re-creating acoustics of a scene would often confuse immersion. Sound, particularly music, is one of the most potent brain stimulants. If you made the music sound IN scene, your brain might ask: Why’s music playing in this hallway batman is sneaking in? Where is the sound system playing this music? Why are the characters not reacting to the music that’s obviously IN scene?

On the flip side, if surround sound music recreated a perfect concert hall or other sound stage unrelated to the scene, it has the possibility to compete with the scene’s immersion. The brain might ask: Why does the dialog/sfxs sound like they are in scene but the music sounds like it’s in a concert hall that I’m NOT in? Furthermore, if you DO match the music acoustics to the scene, every editing cut, game player movement or environment change, would shift the music’s acoustic phase, often creating audible whiplash, possibly harming immersion. It would be unrealistic to provide a recorded acoustic variant for every situation. So, for games, it’d be more feasible to feed it a dry normal stereo music recording and let the game system process environmental acoustics as was appropriate. Which would not require one to produce the music in surround sound in the first place. There’s also the issue that music does not always sound good in a lot of environments period.

Exceptions to all this exist of course but they don’t seem common enough to justify surround music production being a standard, as the exceptions require very specific situations and careful implementation. Otherwise, immersion can be degraded. I could be wrong but in general, this is why, MOST music, not sfx/dialog, plays OVER the visual realm, not within it. Oh, and very kindly, apple can eat a bag of dicks. Just sayin.

Music is currently one of the least appreciated, least valued, least respected and least outwardly noticed forms of art. Not insulting anyone, just stating something I’ve noticed over the years. The interesting thing though is, music is actually, literally, the most used form of art in the world. There’s even music in the frickin public bathrooms. Music is the most important ingredient in ANY modern entertainment.

Just imagine a whole season with no music, not even a jingle or sound effect. 3 months with no music, in the car, at work, in your movies, in your games, in your TV shows, in your shipping centers, on your phone. Most people don’t realize but music has a HUGE impact on your mood and behavior, positively or negatively. The impact strength of any game/movie/show/event directly depends on the music. At least 90% of immersion is based in the audible. This is why I always tell game developers, if you add really well designed highly detailed sound effects and music into your game, it will be memorable, even if the other aspects of the game are subpar. Not to say you shouldn’t try hard on the other things too lol but you get the idea.

So What’s the point? Well, I guess be more aware of things in general but really as it relates to me personally: Some people don’t understand why I work so much harder than I really need to on my music. Why I’m so picky about things like the quality and type of instruments I use, or bothering to record my own sound samples instead of using stock ones. It’s all because I know how much of an effect music has on people and that every little detail counts. I want the effect on people to be positive and I’m proud to put in the extra effort to help it be so. Something that makes people happy and ponder the mysteries of the universe. <:3

Something’s appearing more and more. Too many times not to write about it. For whatever reason, it seems most everything I was told for years, keeps being the opposite of what I experience. Since birth I was told stuff like, #1 Your mind slows with age. #2 Digital is faster than analog. #3 New is always better.

#1: Though it’s true your brain does get mushy at the end of your body’s life span, I’ve found myself saying a lot “damn, I wish I could think like this when I was younger. Wish I knew all this stuff when I was younger. Wish I had this kind of patience when I was younger”. It's kinda seems like as you age, you trade body stats for mental stats. Body gets crappier, mind gets better. I don't know.

#2: If any of you studied electronics in collage, you probably know, analog electronics use straight electricity, which moves at the speed of light. When you introduce any digital, there’s processors. They too use electricity BUT because of how processors work physically, they take time to, well, process. Anyone who’s experienced lag, knows this phenomenon exactly. Analog tech very rarely slows the flow of electricity and not in the way digital processors do. When you flip a switch on an all analog synth, the response is literally as fast as the speed of light. Where as, if you flip a switch on a digital, the processor has to do calculations. Whether it’s 0.0001 seconds or 1 whole second, every thing the digital does, takes time. Much more time in comparison to the speed of light. This is why, pure analog systems usually have unbeatable response time.

#3: Ok, so, there are some obvious things that are better if new but a shockingly large amount are NOT. I keep dealing with very new technologies and quite old ones and 9 times out of 10, the old outshine the new. Same with construction techniques, build quality, even interface design. My parent’s analog synth is older than I am, it still works. The new digital synth I bought this year (and returned) couldn’t work properly straight out of the box. Even new contruction methods applied to old tech makes the old tech suffer. 3 times I bought a behringer model D. First came with bad tuning. Next came with not good tuning and an envelope issue. 3rd came ok but then a part failed within a year. Which brings me to malfunctions. When analog gear malfunctions, you can often still use it (the model D still worked, just not well). Maybe the performance isn’t as good but it still “works”. When digital malfunctions, it’s all over. Game over man! 99.9% of the time, there is NO using it what so ever.

I wouldn’t ever mention these things but I run into this stuff over and over. I've literally gone through countless pieces of “newer better faster digital” gear. The only stuff still standing, still working, performing reliably, is the old school stuff, made with old school construction techniques. Amps, speakers, synths, heaters, my flippin washing machine even. It’s always the same story. The same cycle of discovery. Most everything I was told, isn’t proving true. Only thing off the top of my head unarguably better new and digital, is editing. Even THAT seems to be heading backwards though, since the last update of logic pro X, wrecked the editing interface, so it's MUCH slower to edit waves than in logic 9. wtf apple.

#thoughts: I really am at a loss. Was the world just trolling me all these years? Lol. It sure seems that way. God I wish I had known better years ago. All the stuff I was told was old junk, was actually a gold mine. At least I finally have a mono synth that’s legitimate old school (studio electronics). Every time I use it, I’m shocked at how much faster the whole process is, compared to my digital gear. I always think, aw man I want to make a new patch but damn, analog, that’ll probably take hours. Nope, amazing patch, done in 5 minutes, refined in another 5. Then, as if the trolls are mocking me, the digital end of recording the sound, barfs some technical difficulties or something at me, eating up an hour. It’s so backwards. @.@; lol

If what you want is out there, do your self a favor and just get it. Spent most my life only getting to see or use expensive synths when I was at work or visiting friends in the studio. Never had one of my own. When ever I’d think about it, I’d shy away. So much money, nah, it’s over rated, I would say. All this time, I should have just gone for it. Gotten over all the empty space left on the desk. Dealt with having less things but better things. Quality over quantity for sure is the lesson. That and opportunity.

Life can fly by and before you know it, you’re not a kid anymore. I just finished selling a lot of my less expensive stuff and I bought a Studio Electronics mono synth. This thing makes my other synths sound like wind up toys and that's not to put down my other stuff! I didn’t exactly have shabby stuff before. I guarantee though, you ain't heard this level of sound artillery, till you’ve flown a synth from Studio Electronics. Seriously, if you are a synth person, save up and get a piece by Studio electronics. You will want to sleep with it.

Lol I feel like an infomercial person now but just, wow. I honestly think this company might be THE best you can get. There is just oceans of harmonics pouring out of this thing and it's fast. Really fast. Doesn't take more than a couples minutes to get an amazing patch going. The thickness of the sound kinda makes you forget it’s a mono synth. The demo vids/clips do NOT do these things justice. In person, it’s indescribably good. Get a good fundamental wave going, add the sub and tune os2 to a 3rd tone or something and daayyyyyyyymmmm. DAT BASS. Whooh. DAT TONE o.o; holy Jesus.

I completely understand now why these are so expensive. Turns out mine was actually built by the dude who owns the company too! How cool is that eh? <XD They even sound better than some sought after vintage synths I've heard. Ironically they are not the most expensive on the market but they are definitely not cheap.

Peace. <:3

So way back in 2005 ish, I got one of those digital does it all "last synth you will ever need" type synths and for over 15 years I've been asking my self, why I am never satisfied with it. it has just about every sound a producer would ever need. Yet, I keep buying desk top analog synths for that inspiring analog "magic". I always end up selling them though thinking "well, I really don't need it, since I have my digital do it all synth". Predictably I end up eyeing a new analog synth, remembering the mysterious magic the analog synths provide. The thing I don't like about the ones I've owned is, they have some serious draw backs. Time consuming to use. Sometimes lacking features. The cheap ones wont stay in tune. All these issues ofcourse are solved if one is just willing to buy a legitimately expensive analog synth. I've always been of the mind that, price tag shouldn't make a difference and who the heck pays over a grand for a flippin mono synth anyway? After so many things bought and sold though, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't just admit, there really is something missing from my old digital synth that only an expensive analog synth can provide constantly. Maybe I really should just sell a bunch of my junk and go for one. :/

So, my sennheiser phones finally started showing their age. The head band casing broke. With a little gorilla tape and a rubber band though, they are still in perfect working order. Had them since roughly 2004. I decided though, it might not be a bad idea to have a new pair of phones that don't require a rubber band to not fall off my head when I lean over. In steps a cheap pair of AKGs. What a fricken mess. These are so boomy and muffled. I now know why so many likely told me, my mids and bass were mixed excessively loud. Headphones like these. I also know why so many probably mix 10k and above so ridiculously loud (other than they are half deaf). headphones like these. @.@; You can't easily judge a mix with these things. OMG. lol Oh well, it's good to test my mixes. Always want to test mixes on good and bad sounding gear. Teh scary part is though, these are much better than most I've heard in the price range.

So over a decade ago, I got sick of replacing my keyboard every, what felt like 18 months, so I bought a Rosewill. Thing still works, I'll be it the USB port is now getting a little loose but whatever.

Now, I finally also just got sick of replacing my mouse every, what feels like 18 months, so I bought a Rosewill gaming mouse. Though I have doubts it will last over 10 years, it certainly would be awesome if it did.

Why Rosewill? Because I tried so many other companies already with no luck : ( . Anyone know any companies who's stuff actually lasts?