Fun with Vst's and other Freebies

Recently I was looking for some free audio tools I came across this great little website called VSTPlanet.com. VSTPlanet has very nice collections of freeware, and share ware programs and applications. There you can find anything from VST effects to multi track mixers, to VSTi insterments to audio editors.

If you work with any of the major and many minor multi-track audio applications or sequencers than I’m sure you have heard the term, VST. VST is a plug-in platform that was created by Steinberg and really pushed the digital audio world.

Wikipeda states “Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology and its acronym VST refer to an interface standard for connecting audio synthesizer and effect plugins to audio editors and hard-disk recording systems and also giving the plugins a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for easy manipulation. VST and similar technologies allow the replacement of traditional recording studio hardware with software counterparts. Thousands of plugins exist, making VST the most widespread audio plugin architecture. The technology can be licensed from its creator, Steinberg.” From that definition you can see how useful VST’s can be.

I had initially found the site when looking for a alternative to Cubase and discovered Reason, which I tinkered around with over the long holiday weekend. I returned to look for an audio editor, and they have quite the collections of them as well.

If you ware looking for VST’s VSTplanet.com has all sorts of freebies and shareware plug-ins for your audio pleasure.

Free Lunch

My folks always said there was no such thing as a free lunch. I think at the time I would have agreed with them. Now in this day and age where we rely so much on technology I would dispute that Idea. I had stated earlier that I was going to try and find a replacement for Cubase. I have spent a long weekend with reaper and trying out some other similar applications. In the end I’m going to get out the old debit card and purchase a copy of Cubase.

I really loved Reaper and may still use it but one thing that annoyed me that I did not experience with Cubase is clipping. For some reason when I used EZDrummer to insert in my Midi drums I’m getting a lot of clipping on some parts. I have attempted to turn down those tracks but I’m just no happy oh how it over all turned out.

I’ve also stated before that recording should be a creative process and not really a technical one. With as much time I have spend messing around with stuff over this long holiday weekend I could have had this song done by now. It could have been done even if I am as picky as I am about the little details.

Reaper is a fairly good product, and I plan on still using it form time to time it just will not be my main application of choice. Reaper gave you the option of choosing an audio editor and Midi editor for different file types. It does not have its own. I liked this idea, or at least the option. I could use Wave lab lite or Audacity to edit my wave files.

So there may still be a free lunch but it looks likes it’s on day old bread and served at 5 in the morning.

Happy thanksgiving!

Happy merry thanksgiving! I thought today it would only be appropriate to take about what I’m thankful for. To keep it related to this blog I though I should only talk about music and recording related items.

I’m thankful for software, which is both a blessing and a curse. I have recently been thinking about this. I have software that came free with my soundcard but I have felt it lacked some features, mainly with VSTi of EZDrummer and not being able to drag and drop it. This has forced me to look for alternates. First I though about Cuabse, and went out and downloaded Cubase SX 3 using bit torrent. I know, I know I broke the law, but I really only had intentions on testing it out and figured eventually I would purchase a legal copy. That is until I saw price. I have since uninstalled it. I have done the same with cakewalk Sonar and have also uninstalled it.

I’m thankful for good inexpensive software. Since the professional mainstream applications are a bit out of my price range I decided to look at some alternates. I found to rather inexpensive programs that do alto of what the big boys do like Cubase and Sonar. One I Reaper which for a non-commercial license is $50 ant the other is n-Track Studio which is $64 for a license. Both seemed to work win EZDrummer. I am going to attempt to stay “Clean” as far a software licenses go and plan on reviewing both of these in a later post.

I’m thankful for cheap imported guitars. I love cheap imported guitars. You can create all sorts of different sounds and feeling out a cheap imported guitar and be easy on the wallet. Figuring that I usually pick my guitars up second hand I can get them even cheaper.

I’m thankful for stable PC hardware. In the eternal Mac vs. PC battle, I firmly believe that the PC as a hardware platform is much more flexible that the Mac. Look at an online retailer like Newegg or tiger direct. They carry Hundreds of motherboards, video cards, printer’s memory, etc. now go over to the Mac section or the Mac store and lets compare what my options are if I own a Mac. There is no comparison. Then look at price. Proof that competition lowers prices.

Well I hope every one has a good Thanksgiving!! But I do think they will be changing the name of thanks giving to “Christmas Kickoff” some time in the near future.

An Experiment in Linux Audio

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had tried out Linux as a DAW a few years ago. I had figured it would be fun to attempt it again. I downloaded a 64 Studio and had a copy of Ubuntu 7.10 lying around. I am no slouch when it comes to Linux and went a couple of years running only Linux on my personal PC. The reason I was running Linux was because I was a poor student, and my hardware was old, which caused windows to run very slow and unstable. The reason I switched back to windows is I was studying for MCP certification and needed to get to know Windows XP.

64 Studio is supposed to be ideal configured for audio, video and graphics work. It features JACK Audio Connection Kit, Ardour, Hydrogen and Rosegarden. Each application is very powerful and could replace commercial professional grade programs such as Cubase or Sonar. May I could not wait to get this downloaded so I could try it out.

I had previously downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 but had not had a chance to use it. I was initially going to install in and 1 GHz machine and use it as a file server. I pulled out the CD and set it off to the side incase 64 Studio had some issues.

So I popped in 64 Studio rebooted my computer and ran through the installation which took about 30 minutes or so. When I was all done I booted up to a nice and colorful black screen. i figured Xorg had failed but could not see anything in the log files. Also it did not seem to have vi so I could not attempt to change the xorg.config file. I booted back into windows and check a forum off 64 studios main site and found that someone else had the same issue but did not see a clear fix. Rather than spend hours trying to fix it I gave up and tried Ubuntu.

I know Ubuntu very well and there motto is “Linux for Human Beings” and it a very simple and easy to use distribution. I booted off the Live CD and begin the installation. It went really smooth. 20 minutes later I booted into my new Linux OS and started tinkering around to make sure my hard ware worked. And wouldn’t you know my sound card is not being recognized. I am using the E-ME 0404 card. Again rather than comb the corners of the internet to find a solution I decided to scrap it all together.

This was a very frustrating night. Being a musician I do have a bit of a rebellious side to me. Nothing would give me greater pleasure that to “stick it to the Man”. But in my experience with my hardware I just could not do it quire yet. I’m going to keep my eyes open and when I find something that will support my hardware I may give it another go, but until then I’m going to have to settle for Windows.

EMU 0404 PCI Sound Card

I have been thinking about buying a decent sound card for the past several months. I have been extremely discouraged by latency issues with my current sound card that was so bad that if I recorded while listening to a digital track on my computer I was half a beat off.

I had to decide what I really needed first. Since I only record track at a time I figured that if I had 2 audio inputs (Left and Right) that would be fine. Additionally I wanted to have 2 speaker outputs (left and Right). As for my digital needs I wanted to make sure I had MIDI capabilities and S/PDIF coaxial for a device I had. I have fought with a latency in the past so it had to have low latency, and be windows compatible.

I did some looking on several different sites. I first went to online computer hardware retailers, like www.newegg.com and looked at what they had to offer. They really did not have much to choose from. Most of what they carried was for typical user sound cards that a gamer might require. I could either choose a consumer grade sound card which is something I wanted to shy away form or go after something a little more professional. My current sound card is a consuer grade and has caused the pains of lantacy. I found an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card I though would be really nice and cost about $149 plus shipping. Another card I found was the E-MU 0404 for about $99. I decided to steer away from USB cards because of the limited bandwidth and the way my chipset on my motherboard dealt with USB versus PCI. Since I do not have a fire wire interface I choose to stay away form that as well.

I wound up choosing the E-MU 0404 mainly because of price, and a review off of Toms Hardware.http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/04/creative/index.html. Now that I’m ready to buy, I log into new egg and they were sold out. I decided to check out some other retailer that would be local. I did some searching and guitar center shows that they have it online, and I could have ordered it. I called up the store that was local here and they did carry it in stock. So I stopped by there and picked it up that night for the same price Newegg had it for.

Before I could really get started I had to buy some adapters and made a stop at the local radio shack. To start out with I’m just going to use a 3 piece speaker system for monitors until I get some decent monitors, and because of that had to combine dual mono ¼ inch jack into 1/8 inch stereo. Radio Shack did not have what I was looking for and I wound up butchering a couple of other cables I had at home to create what I wanted.

Installation was very easy, as long as you are comfortable with computer parts. The EMU had 2 different dongles that plugged into 2 separate DB connecters on the back of the card. Both the analog in and out were red and white for left and right and were clearly marked either in or out.

The EMU also came with quite the collection of software and tools including; Cakewalk SONAR LE, Steinberg Cubase LE, Ableton Live Lite, Steinberg Wavelab lite, IK Multimedia AmpliTube LE, Minnetonka DiscWelder Bronze Trial Edition, and SFX Machine LT. There was also a mixer application that has several different options and effects that starts with windows. There is a lot of configuration with the mixer but right now I’m not sure how helpful it really is. Most of the software that came bundled would be good for someone really new to pc recording but I found that it did not have all the features that I required.

As for the card’s performance it is exactly what I was expecting. When I recorded I did not experience any latency issues like I had in the past. I’ll update this article with more information about this card in the future but as of right now I’m very happy I made this purchase.

Linux Audio Studio

One of my new favorite Bolger site users is http://homestudiotalk.blogspot.com/ and had I known about his site I may have not ever started this one. Today there is a new post about Ardour, which is a free open source digital music studio software for Linux and the Mac. I have been really into Linux a few years back and still see the potential for Linux. Several years ago I had setup a Linux box and attempted to turn it into a digital music studio. This was when I was in school and studying hardware and software and though it would be a good opportunity to use what I know about computers and music and put them together. I even went so far as turned it into my teach for extra credit, but really I did it just to say I could do it.

Wow how things have changed now there there are a bunch of different sound audio applications and a whole slew of different distributions just for audio production and recording.

Since the post about Ardour on http://homestudiotalk.blogspot.com/ I decided that I would dual boot my computer and really test out some of the software. As I right this I am downloading Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Desktop. I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about what it was like several years ago. I’m not sure what the exact date was but it was when Mandrake 10 was out and I’m guessing about 3 years ago.

At the time, there were some Linux issues; first was being latency and the second was a new sound driver build into the kernel called Alsa.

There were other audio freaks out there and they had created a low latency kernel that you could install. The problem with the latency in the kernel was pretty basic. Linux is based on Unix and is a server based operating system. It wants to server requests, but also it felt that a request for sound was less important that anything else the CPU might be doing and it would hold off on processing audio. This is what caused the latency. I’m under the impression that this has been fixed in more recent version of linux.

The second issue was with the sound driver called Alsa. Before Alsa there was a set of calls in Linux called OSS. The problem with that is it could only process one sound at a time. Fore example if you were listening to a CD and checking your email. The cd would play like normal but when ever your email program would chime that you have an email it would for wait to play the chime until the music was done. But Alsa fixed this but at the time it was a very new technology.

With my experiment I installed Mandrake 10 and then proceeded to re-compile the low latency kernel and alsa modules. Then other programs. In the end it took about 5 hours not including initial installation.

When I was doing this I was also comparing it to windows using Magic Music Studio Generation 6. I hated to admit that Windows performed better, was easer to use and configure.

The bottome line in creating a music studio is really about building a creative enroment. I want to make music, record my ideas, and produce and process my craft. I do not want to fight with Kernels, sound drivers, compiling source code, and shutting off services. Just let me play.

I’m going to give it another shot and will post my feeling and thoughts.

Another Weekend Burnt…By Looping Mistakes

There goes another weekend gone way too fast. I did get a chance to do some recording of a song I have had for along time. I had two lines on a verse that I could just never seem to finish so I sat on it for couple of years. Friday I just happened to be playing my guitar and started playing the verse potion and boom, it’s now done. So I have been working on getting the basics of it recorded and hope to have it up online soon. But it may take another couple of fast weekends.

One lesson I did learn this weekend is about looping. In the past I would always, record track by track live, but I was also recording on a cassette 4-track. So with this song I have been working on I decided to use the full power of Cubase and utilize looping. So there I am, I have my EZDrummer drum track all setup, I have recorded my clean guitar rhythm parts, I’ve got the bass recorded, some overdriven guitar parts. And it sounds really good so far. I decide to listen to some of the track solo. This is when I start to hear this little chirp. What the hell is that?

So I went to some of my Cubase Tutorials and other resources and I guess it is pretty common to have happen when you cut a track in the middle of a wave. This I did not know. I could have saved some of the project but I decided to scrap the whole thing and start out fresh and this time added a bridge to the song. Further more I realized how great Cubase really is! Now that I realize there are these artifacts in the audio file when you cut the tracks I really began to appreciate how good Cubase is and allows you to zoom way down into the file. I also see that as long as snap Is turned off Cubase is really responsive to your changes. There really is a lot I still have to learn about the program.

Details.....

So here is our simple bass line










With Snap on Just cut it at the start of the Measure.










Every thing looks good until we zoom in and look really close. Notice that our cut is just a tiny bit past the middle line. if we looped the two files it would sound fine but when we would loop just one over and over you would hear a little chirp, or click. usualy if you have drums they would cover it up, but not allways.






Now, to fix this problem is we will take the same file and zoom in to the area we want to cut at, but first we want to take off the snap function. then you want to cut as close to where we were going to but this time but when the wavy line meets at the center line.






Now when we loop this file there will be no chirp or click. make usre to turn snap back on and have fun with you new loop.