adamg67

So, my current mini project is to have physical control of my virtual amps. I want 2-way comms with the controller, so that if I change presets or switch between tracks or plugins the values on the controller update. I picked up a second hand Kenton Killamix Mini ([url="http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/midicontrol/kmix-mini.shtml"]http://www.kentonuk.com/products/items/midicontrol/kmix-mini.shtml[/url]) for doing this, and it's a great little box. Not sure I'd pay £270 for one but at £100 off ebay I'm happy with it. It has 9 endless rotary encoders with LEDs round them, and 9 buttons, plus banks so by pushing any of the knobs you get a different midi channel, so 9 x 9 knobs and 9 x 9 buttons easily selectable, plus you can can get more by holding down knob 9 and pressing another one. Class compliant, talks to anything, I really like it. The tricker bit is getting 2-way comms with the virtual amp and fx plugins. They are all geared up for one-way MIDI control, which IMO is no good at all for controlling parameters - it's a proper PITA just for turning stomps on and off, I've been through all that with my multiamp. What you do get now with DAWs, including Studio One v3, is the ability to map a control surface to a plugin using the automation interface between the DAW and the plugin. That's designed for both read and write and is a normal way for the DAW and eg Amplitube to communicate. Sadly, it's not that simple. First, Amplitube and BIAS FX have a limited number of automatable parameters which you configure to control what you want. That seems to make them look different to the DAW, but after much faffing I've got the 2-way control working - but by trial and error, and the method for getting it mapped is not how it shows you in all the videos. Quite a few people have given up at that point from what I can see, but I perservered. Anyway, you soon run out at 16 parameters for Amplitube and even 20 for BIAS, although that's more workable. I probably could have worked around that but by this point I was determined to make it work. So I thought I'd just have an instance of Amplitube for stomps and one for amps, that would be fine. Set it up, it works, saved it, loaded it again, all instances of amplitube have the same mapping instead of the different ones I'd set up for stomps and amps. Goes the same way with plugin presets, it seems like I can have one mapping per plugin, not per instance of that plugin. So in the end I've found a VST wrapper that has 100 parameters and lets you map them to multiple plugins, so with that it looks like I can get it to do what I want. It's just taken ages longer than it should and is more complicated to set up, which takes the edge off the niceness of having real knobs to tweak.

... or are there still some serious problems with the attitude to standards and inter-operability in the computer music world? It seems like a lot of companies have Microsoft's Disease, abusing standards or coming up with their own way of doing things. I'm reasonably technically savvy (MSc in parallel computing and 25+ successful years in development, ops and other tech fields, and still going strong) but I've never had so many technical problems with anything as I have with the music related stuff I've used in the last 10-15 years. I know it does amazing things, but sometimes things just don't work when they should. Anyone else feel like the digital audio companies that take our money also take the p*ss when it comes to making things actually work properly, especially with other company's software or gear?

The was a slightly ironic story to selling the orange head, and the weighty 4x12 fake Marshall cab I had, to a mate when I switched to Bass - he then recruited me as bass player for his band and as he was carless and lazy, I still ended up carting it around half the time, as well as a Peavey TNT 150 that felt like someone had filled it with concrete. Lightweight gear is one of the wonders of the 21st century.

I am tempted to say my old Orange valve head (guitar, not bass), but it was heavy (in weight) and only did one sound, so I'm not sure I really would have it back. I sold my first "proper" guitar, a nice white Ibanez Les Paul copy, and spent 30 years not finding anything I liked as much, until I bought a PRS earlier this year. I wish I had kept my MarkBass Traveler 102p cab, I kept the 151 instead and I like it but the 102 was so light and good enough for pretty much anything.

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1509622691' post='3400346'] You'll need to spend (invest..?) a bit of time to get optimum results, time not always available when renting studio space, but well worth it.[/quote] This is pretty much what I was about to say, and it's more from knowing how not to do it than how to. Even if everyone's getting bored, you need to make sure that you've got the raw stuff sounding decent on the way in, and don't be tempted to think you can sort it out later.

That's more like it! I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to guitar, and I play bass like a Gorilla, so we're off to a good start.

Still not sure whether to go for this on the box room if we're likely to move, but if I do I'll definitely look at Sonarworks

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Antonio bought an audio interface from me, and was really good to deal with, good comms and payment and everything went nice and smoothly! Thanks again mate.[/font][/color]

If it looked like a bad elf / pixie / , I might be inspired, but it looks like a real goody-goody elf to me. It's all just an excuse for the fact that whatever I try and write ends up as blues rock.

[quote name='Sibob' timestamp='1508668421' post='3393605'] I think specifically it was enthusiasm about the fact that the latency is so low, that there's no need for 'direct monitoring', which you would usually setup using the manufacturers 'mixing' software, it can all be monitored via the DAW. As a result, Presonus have decided not to include any kind of control software. [/quote] From what I was reading, they've gone slightly further than that and removed everything from the hardware as well, so every input and output is as direct as possible. I'm not sure that makes any noticable difference, since as you say less than 10ms is going to be fine, but simplifying things is always good and it's not needed on thunderbolt interfaces anyway, and is just confusing. That also removes the need for any DSP to make direct monitoring sound better, which is another confusing dupliction gone. I think I've got this right (my maths is shocking sometimes), if the speed of sound in air is 1,000 feet per second, then 1ms latency is like standing an extra foot away from your amp when you're playing. I'm playing it safe with the Quantum with buffer sizes and dropout protection and still getting 3-4 ms round trip times according to the DAW. I do like the fact that all the stuff on the Quantum like pre amp and headphone levels is controllable from software, the interface sits on a shelf to the side of my desk and I only have to touch it to switch it on.

I've just got my little studio room all back together, after dismantling it, redecorating and putting in some new furniture to maximise the space, I'm looking forward to another go at this, thinking I should have time before the end of Oct... and someone posted a picture of a fairy. Typical!

Ah yeah, I saw somewhere (SOS probably) that there was a TB3 Red, looks very nice as well, but even the Quantum was a bit of a stretch. I could see myself with a Focsurite, they have a good reputation, but I'm hoping the Quantum will last a good long while now. Especially as I just bought an NI S88 Keyboard and a Faderport 8 as well. My new hobby is scouring the house looking for things to eBay to help pay for it all.

[quote name='Sibob' timestamp='1508012602' post='3389352'] Please don't take this as some aggressive 'oh you should have bought this' technique, far from it, you're obviously more than happy with your interface, and that's all that matters of course. But if I can get the above info about Claretts out there a little more and seen by others who might be on a Google search, then that's a good thing . [/quote] No, not at all, it's interesting. I think I'm a bit of an edge case (I think that's what they said...), the main thing I needed with my laptop was a developer workstation that would be a significant upgrade on my old desktop, which was creaking a bit. The machine I've got will do me for a good few years, but if you go for a top spec laptop now you won't get TB2, if it has Thunderbolt it will be TB3. I wanted an audio workstation as well, but wasn't even 100% sure it would be the same machine. In the end it looked like a Win 10 laptop with Thunderbolt 3 would work, but I knew it would limit the options. I actually wanted to try a Focusrite Thundebolt interface, but they really aren't supported with Thunderbolt 3, the links you posted above are pretty clear on that, on here: [url="https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207355215-Clarett-Windows-Compatibility"]https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207355215-Clarett-Windows-Compatibility[/url] - "[color=#000000]please note that we do not support Thunderbolt 3 connections at the time of writing", [/color]and I checked when I get the laptop. I was actually planning to make my current firewire setup do for a while, it was working initially but via 2 adapters, but then the Quantum came out and I had some issues with FW. I'm really happy with the end result, I plan to have another crack at learning to record properly next year and it works brilliantly for live use. For the record, the Quantum is supported on Thunderbolt 3 via the Startech TB3 to TB2, and so is the UAD Apollo.

My laptop is my (Linux) software dev environment as well as my audio machine, and other things. I could switch to Mac but it's just as propriety as Windows in the end, even if it is BSD underneath. So for now for me for audio it's Windows 10 + thunderbolt 3. That ruled Clarett out from the off as far as I could tell, no support for my setup. I was hoping that TB3 would be the technology that made things work nicely on both platforms, but it's not looking that way just yet. So was always down to TB2 interfaces with Windows 10 support, which was pretty much UAD or the Quantum. I liked the approach with the quantum of going for low latency and doing everything in the DAW, that's why I bought such a beefy laptop in the first place - best Macbook Pro is about half the speed, they seem to be going for thinner and lighter without updating the spec, and still charging crazy money. It seems to work, I can run more virtual amps and effects than I'll ever need and still get stupidly low latency. Weighs a bit more than a Mac though