BigRedX

I have a ticket to go and see Cabaret Voltaire at Rock City in October. Normally I wouldn't buy anything so far in advance because I don't know if there might be something better coming along like a really good gig for my band. I also looked at going to see Kraftwerk at The Royal Concert Hall but I'm not paying £172 to see them at a seated venue where being seated is rigorously enforced.

My Dansette played one side of the stereo image much louder than the other. Because I rarely listened to my records on other peoples systems, the only time I could tell it was making an obvious difference to the sound was on 60s recordings that had stereo mixes with the vocals panned to the quiet side of the stereo image. For everything else I was perfectly happy with what I could hear (or not) because I didn't know any different. When I finally get a system that played both sides of the stereo image at the correct volume I found that lots of my records had additional instruments quite prominently in the mix that I had not been aware of previously, and IMO the addition of these instruments did not always improve the recordings.

But there is no denying that it imposes a number of artistic limitations on what can be reproduced with regards to low frequencies, phase and panning as well as impacting on the running order of albums. It's a matter of fact that should we decide to release a version of the album my band are currently recording on vinyl, it will most likely have a different running order to the digital version because the track that we want to close the album will not sound as good at the end of a side on vinyl. Also one of the tracks where we have done something interesting with the panning of the notes on the Bass VI will need to be at least partially collapsed down to mono. I've already checked what the effect will be and it has negatively affected the stereo movement and spread of the track and is particularly noticeable on earbuds/headphones.

This and only this.

And there's one of the advantages of sticking with just what you get with Logic. If it's doing what you need now, it will still do what you need in the future. Up until a year ago I was managing perfectly well with an early version of Logic X. When you do finally upgrade all your Logic plug-ins will still sound exactly as they did before. Even if they have been updated or depreciated as in the case of ESX24 the new version still loads all the sample sets I made 25 years ago and they still sound the same as they did back then. Unlike my Simmons SDSV plug-in which suddenly made all my carefully edited drum sounds completely different because the developer had changed how a few parameters worked and although there was a single preference setting that needed to be toggled to get them back to how they were under the previous version, it was hidden away and not at all obvious. There is a case for starting with GarageBand rather than going straight to Logic. The OP will already have it without needing to spend any money and has been said previously in this thread the multitude of features available in Logic can lead to option paralysis. I'd been making recordings for over 20 years starting with live to stereo tape and progressing through 4 and 8 tracks adding analogue and MIDI sequencing along the way until I went full in the box DAW, by which time I had built up enough recording knowledge for it not to be information overload.

@Dood I did wonder after I posted my reply if it was a brand new finish rather than trying to fix an existing one. I own the bass that used to look like this: I don't know how it got in this state, but it was pock-marked all over on both the flip finish and the chrome work when I bought it, which is why it was (relatively) cheap and I didn't have any serious competition when bidding on eBay. This how I discovered that successfully retouching the damage to the finish would be impossible, and as a result since I wasn't totally in love with the colour I had it redone in CAR. However it does mean that Simon at Gus Guitars should be able to refinish your instruments with flip paint depending on his availability.

@Dood I was more being practical rather than trying to be the "fun police". Back in the early days of plug-ins (around 2000) I was gifted the complete set of Waves effects along with their authorisation dongle from a friend who worked in studio equipment sales and had an install that was surplus to their requirements. This was back when none of the main DAWs came without any plug-ins included. I had bought ES2 and ESX24 for Logic and a complete suite of effects plug-ins for free was indeed a bargain. I used a selection of those plug-ins on just about everything I was working on for the next 3 or 4 years and they were great. Then I needed to upgrade my Mac (it's used first and foremost for my day job and the music use is a nice bonus) and unsurprisingly the plug-ins no longer worked. I had a look at the cost of upgrading to the latest versions of the few I thought I absolutely couldn't live without but they were scattered throughout the various bundles and IIRC the cost was more than the full version of Logic and that was just for upgrades. I ended up with a load of projects that I no longer sounded the same as they did on the old Mac. I also encountered a similar problem a few years later when I wanted to do a quick remix of a later band's studio session that had been recorded using Logic. The files used a multitude of 3rd party plug-ins and unfortunately many of them had been discontinued by their developer and those that were still available were prohibitively expensive. All I had wanted to do with open the existing project make a few level and EQ changes and bounce down the new mixes. In the end it was quicker and cheaper to pay someone to remix the tracks from scratch using the original stems and the current mixes as a reference point. Since then I have mostly stuck with the plug-ins that come with Logic. I have a Simmons SDS V emulator that replaces the woefully inadequate set of samples I made when I used to own the real thing, but I'm sure I could recreate all the sounds I wanted using Retro Synth or ES2 if I really had to, and Helix Native which give me a bit more flexibility when recording my Bass VI parts, but again it's not an essential item. Whether the 3rd party plug-ins are actually better is entirely subjective. IME what many people are buying when they purchase 3rd party plus-ins is not a "superior" sound manipulation algorithm but access to a few hundred new presets. Free or cheap 3rd party plug-ins might sound great but, they basically work in the same way as your neighbourhood drug dealer. Give you something for free or cheap and get you hooked so that when you need to upgrade you are hit with the full price. After my Waves experience I'm not so sure I want to go down this route again. If I was making a living from my musical activities it would probably be worth it, but I don't, and can't justify the cost when there are plug-ins that I already have that will never go out of date or be discontinued that will do the same job, and if I take the time, I can learn how to get the best out of them and not need to spend any money chasing something elusive. The free Spitfire Strings might be better than those in Logic, but 15 years ago I was able to orchestrate the backing for a selection of Carols to use on an interactive Christmas website for a very well-known insurance company using just the plug-ins that came with Logic which were more than adequate for the job, and TBH I could have probably done that job in GarageBand. And, because of the sort of music I compose for my band, I'm not interested in realism but textures and atmospheres. This is why I also don't care about how realistic sounding amp models are, because what I'm really interested in is being able to make sounds that will work in the context of the music I am creating. For this I already have everything I need within the Logic install. In the end it's up to each individual user. I'm just offering a potentially more cost effective long-term route.

Unfortunately you will need to have all the old flip paint removed and then find someone who can spray the whole instrument in a single pass, because that is what is needed to make the flip paint work. It can't be retouched because there's no guarantee that the retouched parts will flip in the same direction.

Because most vinyl lovers are in denial. There are all sorts of technical issues that affect what can be cut to a master disc in the first place and then what will actually be playable on a typical system once the results have been stamped out of a pice of hot plastic. As much as vinyl lovers would like to tell themselves otherwise, the final stage of the manufacturing process is hardly one of precision and finesse. My current band are contemplating a vinyl version of our album (CDs still sell exceptionally well in our genre) and if we do it is likely to have a different running order to accommodate the limitations of the medium as well as having some the the more extreme stereo effects collapsed to mono in order for it to be capable of being cut. For me, any records I bought as a teenager simply don't sound right unless they are played on my old dansette that cost £8 from a junk shop in 1973 and played one side of the stereo mix much louder than the other. These are versions/mixes of those records I am used to and everything else sounds wrong no matter how superior the reproduction might be.

This. When I went to collect my finished Sei Bass Martin was still making some final set up tweaks when I arrived so he gave me another Sei to play while I waited. Also a fretless 5-string but a different body shape and electronics. It was nice, nut for me nowhere near as nice as mine when it was ready, because the other Sei hadn't been made for me, it didn't have the fine tuning to the design and neck profile that I had asked for. I've owned a few other custom basses that weren't made for me, because they were basically off-the-shelf designs that fact that they hadn't been personalised exactly to me didn't matter as much as it did for the Sei. I still own one of these basses. In fact I liked it so much that when I did have one made for me, mine was almost identical apart from the colour and pickup layout.

When AI creates a form of music that is genuinely new, that's when we need to start worrying.

Isn't the advantage of the Technics direct drive decks that they have a near instantaneous full-speed start which you need for mixing? I remember from my student radio days that we would have to wind the record back about 1/3 of a turn from the cue point so that it would be up to the required speed by the time the music started and you wouldn't get an audible pitch change at the start of the track.

This. A bike box cut down to size is way more sturdy than your typical guitar/bass box. And you can use all the surplus cardboard as strengthening and padding.

No, not at all. However, if the presets are any good you'll find that lots of other people are already using them and you will start to recognise them in other records. And my point was that rather spending money on buying another plug-in it would be better value to learn how to really use the ones you already have. Some of the greatest ever recordings were made with technical facilities that were inferior to what is included with GarageBand and Logic. I'm sure a good mix engineer would have no problem producing a great sounding recording without needing to resort to 3rd party plug-ins.

This is exactly what I was going to say. For simple recording and learning how the process works GarageBand will most likely do everything you want and you already have it with your Mac. Move onto Logic only when you find there are things you absolutely need to do that are beyond the capabilities of GarageBand

But what will you do when your 3rd party plug-ins need to be upgraded because you've upgraded to a new Mac or MacOS or a new version of Logic and old ones don't work any more? Or if the developer decided they don't want to develop a particular plug-in anymore or they go out of business (cf Native Instruments)? And what do you £1800 worth of plug-ins do that you couldn't do already with the massive number that are part of the standard Logic install? Logic already has more quality effects and instrument plus-ins than most of the studios that produced some of the all-time classic recordings. Wouldn't it be prudent to spend the time learning to get the best out of what you already have first? It strikes me that there are a significant number of users for whom the main reason to get a new plug-in is the vast number of pre-sets that come with it rather than learning how to create something new of their own.

Personally in the current financial climate I couldn't recommend any DAW other than GarageBand or Logic to anyone who owns a Mac. GarageBand and Logic are two of the things that actively sell Macs to creative users, and remember that Apple makes most of it money out of its hardware not its software, and therefore they are very unlikely to be abandoned any time soon. Everyone else is not looking as good. While Fender have just bought Presonus I wonder how long it will be before they realise that selling software is whole different proposition to selling guitars and they abandon it. Just remember what happened with Gibson and Opcode and Cakewalk. Cakewalk got a lucky reprieve, but Opcode and their innovative products are long gone. Audition is just a curiosity for Creative Cloud subscribers, and Avid stumbles from one financial crisis to another with ProTools not sitting well with the rest of their portfolio and since the platform was opened up to 3rd party hardware it has never been as robust or reliable.

There's no easy way to answer this, without knowing exactly what you want to do and how you expect to work. I'm a Logic user, but there's a good chance that a lot of the time GarageBand would do everything I need. The synth player in my band does a lot of his initial ideas in GarageBand on the iPad because he finds it very immediate. Those GarageBand projects will open up directly into Logic with all the sounds and settings preserved and then we can work on them in more detail if necessary. It depends whether you want to spend £199 on Logic and be faced with an extra layer or two of complexity before you can start composing or recording. My advice would be to start with GarageBand and if you regularly find yourself wanting to do things that are beyond its capabilities then consider upgrading to Logic. As I said you won't loose you existing work because Logic will open all your old projects directly and they will sound exactly the same as they did in GarageBand.

In my industry (graphic design and artwork) the people who lost their jobs through the introduction of computers were those who couldn't be bothered to learn to use the new methods. I started off with the traditional methods of working in the 80s and those core skills I learnt were the things that meant I didn't mess up when I transferred over to the computer. For me I was just using a mouse and keyboard and looking at a screen instead of drawing pens, cow gum and rulers on a drawing board. It's also those core skills that keep me in business today where a lot of my work comes from sorting out "designs" done on the computer that can't actually be printed properly.

The drum and some of the synth parts for when my band plays gigs aren't "performed" by a human. Although I've done the programming, there was very little playing or performance involved. Most of it involved dragging "notes" around on a grid until I got the parts I wanted. Also most of the programmed synth parts are pretty complex but have lots of repetition. From previous experience we would struggle to find a keyboard player with the required technical ability to play them, regardless of the fact that on their own the parts are rather boring. IMO it's far better to hand these off to a machine that won't complain about them, and doesn't take up lots of additional room on stage or in the band transport.

To get a passable piece of AI generated music you still have to be able to write a decent prompt (or more likely a decent set of prompts) in the first place.

As an artist myself in both music and graphics I would completely disagree with rejection of digital forms for creation and distribution. The internet and digital media both audio and visual have allowed me to reach a far wider audience than I ever could before those things existed. Before the internet became mainstream the best I could hope for with any of my musical projects is that we would reach a couple of hundred people mostly here in the UK, and it was hard work doing just that. The first band I was in produced a handful of albums on cassette and two tracks on a vinyl compilation before disbanding in 1983. In the early 2000s we were contacted by an indie label in the US offering us a deal to put out a retrospective compilation on CD which meant we could now reach listeners all over the world and more importantly our music could be heard without it being buried under 3 generations of tape hiss. Without the internet or the digital domain that could never have happened. Without the internet and digital media the bands I have been in during the last 20 years would have probably done a couple of years worth of local gigs before folding. Instead we've played to knowing and appreciative audiences all over the UK. My current band derives a useful portion of our income from people all over the world streaming our music Similarly with my graphic art. I'm old enough to have worked with paint, ink and Letraset when there was no alternative, and while I produced some cool stuff that way (one example of which has been deemed interesting enough to be in the V&A Permanent Collection) I have absolutely no desire to return to those days. With the computer I can produce something far more interesting and innovative far more quickly and that won't include mistakes that I didn't have the time or money to correct. Again I can produce work for clients all over the world and not be limited to those on my doorstep. Innovators come whatever the medium and they will find new ways to use it that the majority of us had never even considered. IMO those worrying that "The Sky Is Falling" are those without sufficient talent or artistic vision.

But right now AI can't produce something that is as new and different as your three examples were when they first started producing music. Sure your "fat uncle Dave can ask chat gpt to crap out an acid techno banger or a Kraftwerk-style song in under 12 seconds" but it will just be a facsimile of what has already been done. It won't have any of the innovation that the originals had when they were first released. Of course there are plenty of "artists" whose musical output could be described as a facsimile of the real innovators. They are the ones who should be worried about AI. Those who keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible and acceptable are safe for a long time yet.

If you don't like the DRs now, you are unlikely to think they have got any better in another couple of weeks. When I first started to branch out from what was available in my local musical instrument shop I bought a selection of DR strings because they were getting a lot of love here and on the US forum. I couldn't get on with any of them. I didn't like the feel and I didn't think they sounded particularly good compared with what I was used to. It's a fact not every string suits every player, and not every string suits every bass and price has very little to do with it.

That's because the main component of the sound is the steel or nickel strings driving a magnetic pickup and the traditional guitar amplification.