Colin OOOD

http://www.oood.net/audio/Colin/Colin_Benn...0_-_track_3.wav

I have one I wrote for a computer game back in 1993; GM only and designed to loop after about 3 minutes. I'll try and upload it at some point but it might take me a while...

Is that someone on this forum? A few people have apparently cybered with her on MSN but no-one who has ever written anything about it has ever said they've actually met her, apart from Thomas. No photos in the studio, DJing, or even partying.

What evidence do you have for this?

Well it is, partially

Well there are now two copies of Breathing Space on Amazon for about £60 - £70 and one for... wait for it... £203.40 I don't know whether to laugh or cry. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B...0714310-9027611

Really. The two are a pair and interact in a complex manner to produce a quite unique sound, and driving a MIDId-up TB303 from a computer sequencer produces very different results to driving it from its internal seq. The '303 sound' is a product of both elements; this is a major reason why 303 emulations also attempt to model the sequencer, rather than just the synth part. Also, because programming a TB303 is so fkn difficult, you quite often get very unexpected results, and I'm utterly positive that more than one classic 303 tune is based on the happy accidents this causes.

The TB303 sequencer is just as much responsible for dance music as the sound of the synth.

I've never used one of these but Doepfer make good shit. Ott has a fair-sized Doepfer modular and it has a lovely sound, rich and smooth. I'd be glad to have an MS404 in my rack.

Everything You Always Wanted to Hear on the Moog* - when I was about 7 I guess. Then when I was a young teenager, Art of Noise - Close to the Edit and all subsequent albums, Propaganda and many other of Trevor Horn's productions, as well as the album 'Time' by ELO. *but were afraid to ask for

Unless you really mean we're the anal emission of digestive gasses, you should describe us as 'old farts'.

So will I! :posford:

Reckon I'm second-oldest, then

hehe I know man, I was just playing with you with that excuse for a survival instinct we Brits call a sense of humour.

Read what?

Hey Jon, thanks so much for voicing your thoughts, I'm really glad you like it as a whole. I agree that Eye of the Beholder is a standout on the album, and this is why we decided to use it as the last track. However I think you are indeed asking a lot of us to produce an album full of material with the same vibe, as - let's not forget - that track was written with and arranged and produced and engineered by someone who has no part on this next album! Basically, you can ask for whatever you want from us (as of course you can with any artist), but in the end we can only write what we write. You will be disappointed if you're expecting an album full of Eye of the Beholder. All I can promise is that we are taking as much care and time and putting as much love into this next album as we did with the last, and that the end result will be something that we as a band are all individually proud to put our names against. Free Range was what I call a 'fuck it' album - "fuck what everyone else thinks, fuck trying to sell shitloads of copies, fuck getting lots of gigs off the back of it, let's just make the record WE want to make and make it the best fucking record we possibly can". FourThought has a similar attitude in its creation at the moment and I'm sure it will surprise some people, for good or ill... whether this will translate to a similarly good set of reviews is another matter; I have hopes but no expectations. It would be great if it did... if not though, well fuck it.

Hey Jannis. Good to hear some news. You just write what is in your head and all will be cool. Take all advice with a pinch of salt (including what I said!) - remember it's YOU writing your music, not us. Looking forward to hearing the results of your hard work... C.

Lucky bastard. Buy one then visit this site... then this one. Then send it all to me

Advances in engineering skill make it possible, but it's human nature that's made it inevitable.

You need to find the MIDI CC# for the parameter you want to automate, and use the MIDI automation for that controller on a MIDI track in SX that is sending to the Reason device you're automating.

Look on this website for step sequencer plugins suitable for use in Cubase. To learn how to use VST and MIDI plugins consult the Cubase manual.

It's impossible and can't be done. Not in Reason 2, 3 or 4. Extremely unlikely ever to be a feature of any future Reason version either. I suggest you look for a VST plugin that has the functions you want from the Matrix device, and use it in Cubase.

I fully understand there can be a tradeoff between perceived level and dynamics, and that there is a degree of subjectivity over what sounds good and what doesn't, but your car stereo is not an audiophile playback system and the bolded phrase above implies that you're letting your eyes trick your ears to some extent. The only real question is "does the album ACTUALLY sound badly mastered?" Don't let yourself be tricked into hearing something you're not actually hearing. When listening at home, at regular levels, do the tracks sound overcompressed? ie., do they seem to get a little quieter when they kick in after a break, or sound grainy and bass-light? The better the basic mix, the more level it's possible to get out of it without negatively impacting the sound for a mastering engineer inclined that way, and Mr. Pepler is getting quite good at this by now. Having said that, I'm looking at the waveforms for Tarantaloid and Sucker Unit now, and with a peak RMS hovering around -4dB they do seem (when considering just the numbers) to be mastered a little past the extreme of what accepted good practise considers 'too loud'. But then again, for all that it's louder than most other albums, it sounds ok...

You have a volume knob, no? Turn it down. Bob Katz has a good take on it in his Mastering Audio book; the aim of the mastering engineer is to make the music sound as good as possible on as wide a range of replay equipment as possible. We can see that the optimum playback experience on a 50K Opus rig has different requirements from that for an MP3 player with shitty earbuds being listened to on a crowded train. The first scenario needs very little compression, as the available dynamic range is simply immense, and the rig has more than enough headroom to accurately reproduce the loudest peaks when the volume is such that the quietest passages are nice and loud; unless you have hot-swap eardrums, the second scenario requires relatively heavy compression to ensure that either quieter sections don't get lost in the background noise, or the louder sections don't make your ears bleed when you've got it turned up loud enough to hear the quiet bits. It's the mastering engineer's job, then, to hit the top of the bell-curve of listenability; to provide as good a sound as possible on as many replay systems as possible. This will inevitably involve compromises - there will always be some replay systems unable to make the most of any particular master, and there will always be some replay systems for which the music has been over-squashed - but this is unavoidable when there is only the budget for one distribution format and therefore one mastering per track. The mastering engineer has to be aware that the track will be played on big festival systems and iPods alike... and since tracks are played more often on personal music systems than on 50K Opus rigs, the mastering is inevitably skewed in the direction of more squash. Plus no-one wants their track to be quieter than others when they're being played out. Sometimes when DJing it's not possible to raise the volume of a track past a certain point (for instance if you've been warned twice already by the soundman for clipping the mixer ) so if your peak level is fixed, each track needs a similar RMS to sound the same level, which also skews mastering in the direction of matching the louder tracks out there. $0.02

x2