51m0n

As long as your program is entirely loaded into memory then no, but that in and of itself requires a program that is small enough to exist in memory in total, and doesn't rely on reading/writing to the source drive in use...

You're too kind

Each to their own I think that for me there is very little added by virtual wobbling wires and a pretend rack space. There is much more to be gained from an understanding of I/O matrices for rapid routing. Being a software engineer I am very at home dealing with virtual representations of non-real concepts that are logical representations of flows of data within a piece of software, which is kind of a long winded way of saying I don't need to see things made so pretty for the sake of it when a simple table will actually make my life easier by making things quicker and more clear. That's not to say that I think Reaper is ugly, it isn't, it's just not unduly and unnecessarily pretty for the sake of it, animations use up cpu, and if they are only for the sake of prettiness rather than presenting functionality simply and effectively.

I don't really like Reason It's all too much GUI which is just a pretty distraction for me - and I design GUIs for a living 😆 When sound engineering I'm interested in one thing, the sound. I have no need for a DAW that tries too hard to look like hardware, that's pointless. I need a tool that is extremely versatile, has no built in limits other than the power of the machine, and that let's me experiment with creative routing to achieve unusual ideas easily. I also don't want any cpu cycles wasted on anyything unnecessary at all...

So no then? Really thought this was a more popular head...

I remember Logic on Mac back in the day asa a midi sequencer. Macs never crash they said. Hourly it would crash, all the damned time. On any one of 12 available machines. A gargantuan pain in the derrière, and not a patch on an Atari for midi. Hey ho 😆

Sounds to me like it does things a little differently to what you are used to. Personally I prefer audio to insert at the cursor point. Also I use it for mixing/mastering more than composition, and prefer the extreme lightweight of Reaper compared to the monster that is Logic Pro. I can use any VSTi out there with it, and its 64/32bit bridge has always been a super strong point compared to many other DAWs

Wow.... Its the most logical DAW I've ever found :D, a track is a track is a track. Any track can have any amount of channels, any track can instantly become a group, any track can handle playing back any type of item. Routing to make a track the equivalent to an aux channel on an old desk is drag and drop, you can route signal through extra channels in a track if you want to take this stuff to its logical extreme as well (don't know another DAW that can quite handle that actually, they probably can now but they couldn't for ever). The routing is simply amazing. You can add fx to any track, because they all work the same you always do this in the same way. Automation is trivial, and its the same for all tracks. To me it really feels like an extension of a large scale SSL console of old in a lot of ways. Plus I can not harp on about the built in fx enough, multiband compression with unlimited bands, unlimited bands eq, convolution reverb etc etc etc all built in to the DAW and all sound incredible. I love it to bits. Obviously if it doesn't work for you it doesn't work for you, horses for courses etc

Reaper. Without doubt. It's my favourite DAW regardless of price.

Cheers Paul! Fingers crossed there's someone a little closer 😆

Can always find Leslie on Facebook and asked her if she remembers, she's really rather lovely, probably won't even bite your head off 😆

Would love a chance to try one before taking the plunge. Looking to plug it into a BF Big Baby which I'll bring along ☺ Ta!!

I love the fatness of an opto compressor. .... They're just squidgy and add real grooviness that I clearly can't put into words 😂 Or get a great vca compressor, they are a really good best of both worlds workhorse tool.

Another great opto compressor option is the Joe Meek FloorQ. Really good squishy action sounds very fat 😆

Look I am an advocate of using whatever tools you have to get the best results you can for yourselves and your audience. No one NEEDS a compressor on their bass. There, I said it ? You may find one can help you to either achieve a tonal goal or to sit in the mix more easily. You may find its all smoke and whistles and too much shag and hassle. It's all fine. Really. Go play, enjoy the heck out of it. If anyone on herequest ever wants to ask anyone more about compression, ask away. People will answer. If anyone considers someone a lesser player for using compression I'd respectfully suggest they don't really know why someone might want to. It ain't a magic wand it ain't never fixed crappy technique for me, quite the opposite actually, it makes quiet stinky poo louder so any string noise rings right out ? Play how you want. Peace...

Yeah forget basses and bass gear, you don't even get to claim 'its expensive' in the mad world of pro sound engineering if it costs less than 10G

The Cali is an attempt to get a Urei 1176 into a pedal. It wont sound quite like a really nice blackface 1176 though, or a blueface. Its not running at the right voltage for a start. A tip top one of those would be in my rack but A) they're super expensive, and B) They aren't light and are relatively fragile. As for an La2a that would be the PC-2A I have a VCA with a limiter built in, a Focusright Compounder. sounds great, super tweakable and nice metering. But I carry a rack.....

Right, compressor talk 102 in short then (if you know this stuff, skip it etc etc etc):- OK so there are 5 not 4 parameters, and they are as follows:- THRESHOLD LEVEL (level above which the compressor starts compressing) ATTACK TIME (time taken to reach n% of your total compression ratio, this is complicated by the fact that different circuits do this with different curves and get closer to 100% of the ratio by this time) RELEASE TIME (time to turn the ratio back down to 1:1 after the signal drops below the threshold) RATIO (slope) (amount that the compressor prevents the sound getting as loud as it would otherwise, ie 4:1 means the output is 1/4 of what it would have been) MAKE UP GAIN (level) (amount of gain to apply to the signal after compression, its always on though, not only when the threshold is exceeded) If you are looking to add a little 'something' extra to your bass tone, but don't have hella ears/metering/experience then I suggest this process:- Initial set up (this is actually all about setting the threshold level very accurately):- Set the attack to about 20ms, the release to 200ms the ratio to max (at least 10:1), make up gain leave at unity (0)dB Then playing at a quietish level on the A string lower the threshold slowly until either you first meter light (3dB) lights up or you hear it start to squeeze the volume. OK, this is entirely unusable right now, except from now on pretty much every note you play normally will start to compress (oh my God, think of the poor dynamics!!!) Second stage to set up:- So, we now set the ratio way back down to as low as it goes (1.5 to 1, or 2:1 are good) Set the attack back to about 50ms Set the release to about 45ms Play normal stuff. Turn the compressor off, and on, try and equalise the volume with the make up gain so that the volume is consistent whether the compressor is off or on. Now if you need a bit more 'bite' to your tone open up the attack a little, if the initial transient peak is too loud, or you want to hear the compression happen when you dig in then speed up the attack (faster than 25ms will getting very frustrating dynamics freaks!) If you feel your playing is choked by this lower the ratio, if you feel its not doing enough in the mix try raising the ratio very slighty (2.5:1 would be an absolute maximum) If you play streams of notes one after another legato and the attack of the first note is loud compared to the following notes' transients shorten the release even more (10ms is fine), I play a lot of 16th note lines, my release time is very very short Don't worry if you only see the 3dB light when you slam the strings as hard as you can, you know you are always compressing, just slightly, and just the meat of the note, after the initial transient peak. There you go you've effectively emulated a tube channel that is creeping in to saturation, on the meat of the note but left your transients untouched, and you aren't distorting. Hope this helps someone.

Yeah but the dbx just SLAMS the bass, bro! Skol i sspot on, 1186 in 'smash' mode (all 4 buttons down for ultra high ratio) to level the hell out of peaks and an La2a big fat yummy squeeeeze for the grunt work is most engineer's Holy Grail. Of course if any of you guys see a Fairchild 670 in a car boot sale going for anything under 5G then I'll take it off your hands for my live rig, you wouldn't want it

Drummer and percussionist having a war, guitarist and keyboard player have a three way battle with a horn section that includes an orchestral tuba ffs! Yeah I'll take any bit of help I can get

If you turn up the mids, then they are always turned up, it may not be the tone you want, it will probably mask the guitarist's low end, or worse still the vocals low end. They will subsequently feel the need to turn themselves up because they can't hear themselves now. Result = volume war, utterly dross mix, discomfort all round. A well set up transparent compressor wont do that, it will lift your volume later in the note duration, or lower your volume at the transient (if its limiting, ie very fast attack high ratio), depending on the scenario either of these may be what is required for you and the punters to discern the bass as being the correct volume for the overall mix. Did you need gobs of eq to do it? Nope. Did you need to turn up your instrument to achieve this? No. Well yes but not the entire signal, just a part of it. And that's the magic! Imagine turning up every note 50ms after you hit the string by 3dB, then turning it back down in between each note so that the initial transient wasn't so loud. Your drummer will love you, you wont be masking his kick and snare transient, but he will be able to hear you better because you are louder once his instrument is dying away....

This is what a live band sounds like with proper compression in all the right places:-

I will concede that most bassists don't really have an understanding of all this, its not a dig at bassists, its just the truth, then again neither do guitarists, or any instrumentalist at all. Sound engineers should, its one of the big four bread and butter parts of the job: mic'ing, eq'ing, dynamics control and space are all there is to sound engineering, add a dose of psychology and you are golden.

I think this is a very interesting yet false conclusion from what I said before :). As I said, you cannot hear subtle level differences very well soloed, your ears are compressing anything loud anyway. However masking can occur between any instruments in a mix at any and all volume levels. If you set up a compressor 'just so' you get a slightly different envelope to your output. That can change the level by just a dB or so from where it was at that point in the note duration without compression, adding sustain/punch to your tone, which means that the other instruments that were masking you no longer do in the same way at the same time. Your overall level is the same, but your level during a note is different. Yes the change can be tiny, but the effect of doing so is actually huge in the context of the mix. Crucially this difference in the mix is experienced at all volumes. So in the chaos of a pub gig a compressor set up correctly can help you be heard more clearly in the mix without you turning up as loud, because you are heard better where you need to be than before. Net result, quieter instrumentation because less volume wars since less masking, hence easier monitoring for the band, most importantly a better mix for the punters = everyone happier. Eq should be used in much the same way, frequency mixing has been the norm for decades, used correctly it is about cutting unnecessary/unpleasant/masking frequencies from instrument A so that instrument B can be heard without having to increase its volume everywhere or boost its eq unnaturally. By the way the human ear hears boosts as more unnatural than cuts when eq-ing, you can use much tighter frequency ranges when cutting than when boosting without everything sounding horrid. Compression should be thought of as a way to help do this with the level change during the duration of the note, rather than at a given moment in time. Eq is the opposite, it is 'always on'. And I haven't even mentioned dynamic equalisation yet, which is a real head-flip!

No worries