1

[VOLiTiAN]

This is an issue with GuitarPro, the articulations and nuances you create in GuitarPro aren’t saved in a GM (General MIDI) format. So therefore when you export the track, any programming aside from the physical timing of the note will be lost due to the fact GuitarPro has it’s own way of handling MIDI/Accents – GuitarPro is the exception, had this problem in the past where someone said to me they’d written all the drum parts only to find out he had to go through *every* note again as they were all levelled to like 100 velocaity IIRC.

Anyway, sorry it’s not better news, there is nothing wrong with the setup just the auditioning/playback of GuitarPro isn’t handled in their exporting process, hence why it doesn’t sound right when imported and played back through a *proper* host….

Kind regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

It’s pretty simple..

I’m basing it on the fact that the Axe-fx II is approx £2,000 (or $2000 or whatever currency really it’s purely for illustrating the point)

A laptop dedicated to the task can easily be bought for £300-400, I’m not keen on posting direct links as that seems a bit cheeky for the forum, but ebuyer has numerous laptops, dual core i5’s, half tera drives, 4gig ram etc all from £260 upto £400, there is a good selection on the low end, and they more than exceed the requirements to run a full project, let alone a few standalone instances of some plugins running real-time.

Then the pre-amp, apologies for any confusion but I mean the interface, i.e. a good way of ensuring the signal coming in from the guitar remains as clean as possible. For that single task you can get a very simple high quality interface. Focusrite do them from £100 upwards.

So we’re at say £600 max for a setup which can now not only produce tones (lets not forget about the huge library of free preamps, modellers, IR’s etc, some of which have actually been used in the Axefx firmware…) but we can also record our own music and can give me pretty much limitless instances of any routing i’d want, all still rendered digitally.

Now throw in something like a behringer FCB-1010 (approx £115) which gives you almost complete midi control of your laptop, (midi learn functions are almost second nature in alot of the amp sims) and I went for the UNO chip mod which helps flexibility even further (another £15 or so, 5 min install by hand), even chuck in a novation nocturn for £70

After that you could still even go and buy a few used items or new, a 2nd hand sansamp PSA1 goes for about £250 here in the uk for example.

All I’m saying is look at all the gear you can get for less than half the price of the Axe-Fx, for the rest of the money, you could buy an extra pair of handy reference speakers, say some PM1’s which are handy (around £350 a pair), a couple more monitors for your home DAW (2x 22″ @ £150 ea.), and still have money to burn on some random purchase of a vintage pedal you’ve always wanted to buy. I joke but you see where i’m going with this madness 🙂

The fact about having cabinets etc is moot due to the fact we were talking about modellers and guitar fx in general, even if you have an Axe-fx I think it’s still obvious you’d need an amp for live (aside from going direct to desk)

I’m not an Axe-fx hater, far from it, I think they’ve created a powerful unit dedicated to the task which can yield excellent results. I just feel that in this age where technology such as laptops are so readily available etc we can explore other potentially more cost effective, potentially more flexible options, surely it’s open to discussion.

For the record I’ve had extensive experience with a lot of the processors on the market Axe-fx included (but not the Axefx II, although doesn’t it feel more like an Axe-FX 1.5? anyway) but over time you begin to formulate which units have the best workflow and overall sound which works for you.

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

I think its fair to say that once you’ve actually tried the ideas above you’ve mentioned, you’ll effectively answer your own questions. That or end up coming back with more specific questions. It doesn’t necessarily matter what others do, in this digital domain the world is your oyster, setup everything how *you* want it, then compare to commercial mixes and see where (if at all) the mix falls down, then either look at EQ’s/comps etc or modify you’re approach.

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Hi, I’d also be interested to know this, we’re always looking to expand the v-drum kit and the traps heads look like a good way to expand with meshheads, however as I understand all the pads are single zone? Apparently the pads feel nice to hit and the brain is pretty responsive, so aside from adjusting to your particular style they can be hit quite softly and still response to alot of nuances. The hi-hat control leaves something to be desired as I understand, however that is the part of an e-kit which is always a bone of contention even when you get to the big TD12’s/TD20’s

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

If you’re wanting to play the drums in real-time using e-drums I’m 99% sure the problem you’ll be having is because you’re using an internal/proprietary soundcard. Basically you need something that will support ASIO (like some applications need video cards support Open GL etc) you can get hold of free generic “ASIO4ALL” drivers which can sometimes help, but if you’re new to this setup then its potentially something that can confuse the issue.

ASIO will allow you to get to nice low latencies, drummers seem to like anything under 128samples so around 2-3ms. I would look to get something nice and cheap, running firewire or USB2.0 there are plenty of things available second hand just check the driver support for your current OS before putting any money down. M-Audio/Edirol/Focusrite are brands off the top of my head which have pretty good all round features, driver support and have budget offerings.

After that, is the processor in the laptop only a single core? Either way dual-core should be the min, expecially when you start running a few FX etc on the drums and the kits get larger.

Is the OS you’re using 64bit? If not you’ll probably want to look into setting a memory switch to force a bit more useage of the ram by applications.

HTH

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Or just apply the delay direct to the track with a mix control?

In fabfilter timeless you can specify crossovers, mix, left/right linking etc, so no need to bus to an external track… and the cut-off’s/envelope of the delay can all be tuned, in fact doesn’t Cubase’s own delay fx all have EQ’s?

Just saving the mouse clicks 🙂

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Or 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc with inversions displayed in parallel?

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Hi pearlasteele,

We’ve got another 15-20 tracks of similar length, we wanted to be ahead of the game whilst we’re out promoting, we’ll be uploading to all the usual sites once we’re happy with a mix, then up go the videos aswell, and thanks – glad you like 🙂

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Okay I posted a few of the new mixes up, if anyone fancies a listen and giving me a heads up as to what they’re hearing that could be out please feel free to speak up 🙂

Again in no particular order…

Whilst Hidden: 7.17
http://snd.sc/WePhiq

5 Minutes to a Brighter Future: 8.10
http://snd.sc/OOeYTO

Unstoppable: 8.33
http://snd.sc/WePwtN

R.E.M.embered: 13.48
http://snd.sc/WePBO5

Rise & Shine (The Doctor Will See You Now): 7.11
http://snd.sc/OOeMDX

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Put a pitch shifter on the output channel? 🙂

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Hey buddy,

Nice tutorial, wanted to add something though, seems as though Logic has a cumbersome way of routing MIDI, in cubase, to assign a note to another channel/output you just double-click the part to be edited (the whole drum MIDI whatever), it’ll load up the drum editor and then alongside the note no./name just set the output of the individual hits, you still have to load the additional instance of superior but the routing to the sampler seems waay simpler…. just a heads up really as it requires no copy/pasting or additional channels to be loaded.

Aside from that, why can’t you just assign an x-drum to the kit, send to the same room, and then just from the main construct window adjust all (or just one articulation only) of the levels for that kit piece?

Perhaps I’m missing something, but surely you want to process all your cymbals and effectively treat them as though they were in the same room, you’re still going to have the overheads (resources used) for loading the sample, however you’re not needing the extra processing to run the VSTi and it’s own channel strip of fx?

I do agree though, to be able to treat the cymbals individually as their own entity would be a god send…

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Hi buddy,

Cheers for the feedback, funnily enough this was posted a month ago and you’ve prompted me to upload the newer versions, you’re right the mix was a touch thin and lacked a bit more bottom end grunt, not sure where the “2k added” comes in though.

The note about the guitars, whilst I agree to an extent, this is still *metal* afterall, so they are going to be upfront, but aside from it’s genre I certainly wouldn’t say they are dominating the mix, the song maybe, and the genre to suit, but I don’t think from a mix context but I appreciate your feedback nonetheless – out of interest what did you audition the mix on?

The problem that occurs is that the guitars in some tracks are tuned quite low (drop G in some instances on a 7-string) however the bass note fundamental is lower than human hearing, so it’s the trick of making the bass sound like it’s there when it actually isn’t ironically, the main issue has been adding warmth say 2-400hz but not getting too muddy etc…

Also on another sidenote, you’ll never get me using waves plugins – I love fabfilter, crysonic, blue cat audio, izotope, voxengo etc but waves are horribly sterile, in that instead of adding colour I find they take away character from various sources I’ve tried, good phase alignment, sidechaining and EQ’ing will be the technique for the bass….

I’ll post a note when the new mixes are up, see what you think, thanks for the feedback, I know it’ll come across as a touch elitist however I’m aware of the techniques it’s just tuning my ears and working what translates to other systems without ending up with an iPod mix….

Cheers again for taking the time to reply!

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Reason is a closed product!

Almost *every* other DAW worth it’s salt, supports VST, RTAS, TDM whatever but yet Reason won’t load VST, in fact they’ve even omitted MIDI-out from previous versions (still the case??), a pretty basic prerequisite if you ask me and one of many very clear signs that P.H.’s aren’t looking to have much in terms of cross format, 3rd party support. They claim that by not having VST’s you don’t have “errant code” running around causing crashes, and that the program is much more stable as a result. Well unfortunately times have changed and the knowledge/practise of writing VSTi’s has vastly improved, so draw from it what you will….

Considering many standards are already established, it’s surely upto PropellorHeads to sort the compatibility issues, all they are doing is forcing their consumers hand.

Personally, just ditch reason, get a “proper” DAW and house reason/SD/ad inifinitum, all under the same roof…

This kinda request just defies me a touch, you’re asking it the wrong way around….

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

I’ve gotta agree this is a common problem I find with some of the presets, it’s like the initial transient is just skipping past any limiters, It’s like you can’t find a compressor/limiter with a quick enough response/look ahead time, and these are produced presets, so surely there was some allowance made for the tone being created but still not smacking the nuts off the signal chain…

You can turn things down, and I would suggest a decent meter in the channel strip to check what you’re doing, effectively I put this down to an issue I sort when fully mixing, and I’m using look aheads on the limiters (not ideal for a live project) and linear phase mode on the EQ’s just to make sure there’s not a smearing of freq’s that’s causing a peak…

Unity gain anyone? 🙂

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[VOLiTiAN]

Hi buddy,

As I’m sure others will tell you, having a drum mix without the rest of the instruments there is almost counter-productive.

You’re looking for a sound that’ll work in context yet you’re not actually providing that context 🙂

Plus there’s mastering etc which will inevitably show up more issues.

Overall, not a bad sound, I think when it’s put in situ you’ll find that it’s perhaps a touch roomy and the EQ’s will need to be worked on so that individual kit parts can cut through, the most notable first port of call from my ears would be the snare, I just don’t see that cutting through with any intensity given it has very little top end…

Get some other instruments in there and go from there….

Regards

D.

www.myspace.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundclick.com/VOLiTiAN www.reverbnation.com/VOLiTiAN www.soundcloud.com/VOLiTiAN

[Author]

Replies