Presenting SM9 studio

I've just spent some times last week to take some shots (pictures and a short movie) of the new ADR studio.

We are sharing the studio with an other band, and the chill-out place with some hip-hop DJ/lyricists.

Just take a look to see where we spend our time to do music:


To get a more precise idea of the studio just go to the dedicated gallery.

The studio is situated in the center of Lausanne City (Switzerland), Saint-Martin street, number 9.

Digital mixing desk

I've just received yesterday the christmas gift I made to I-Self, after having bad experience with Behringer I usually don't bought some device from this brand, but this time I needed a really cheap MIDI controller, mainly to have fun more than use for production (cause I use analog hardware for production... software simply can't emulate all that wobble that occur with analog hardware).

Hope this little gift are not going to break the budget I'm actually building for the Murcia versionist gathering ...fuck... I'm just falling like a child in this Christmas commercial time, fortunately it's not the case each year.

Now let see the beast:

A simple 4x8 rotary fader midi interface, exactly what I needed to control my Orion software at home, and my 64Studio workstation at studio.

Don't going to use it to do live dubwise cause love analog hardware, but going to be really useful to do mixing of other project at studio, and of course, having lot of fun doing live electro set at home !

Just experienced mixing some Orion project, and tried some minimal stuff... it's a real pleasure !

Not bad for a Behringer product...

Mastering abuse and the RMS value

I've just spend last weeks to mix a demo for a band sharing studio with I and had learn so much about mastering and general way of working to get a good sounding mix.

After having good discussion on the versionist forum and long exploring of the wikipedia, and now I understand all the debate that running around mastering.

The main problem is that during last decades worldwide producer have done a war to get the maximum loudness possible of their production. Perhaps they had think having a track louder than other studio is a proof of quality, but this war was go to far and until the majority of 'major' production was over-compressed resulting in killing all 'sensibility' of the sound !

A song from 1983

Same song remastered in 2005

So when you have a perfect mix it must not be a problem, but otherwise it's compromise between loudness/sensibility...

This loudness level are call 'root mean square' (or RMS), I'm actually compiling all information about mastering on the ODF knowledge base, so you can get more info here.

Be the master of mastering

Sound mastering is one of the most complicated task for sound engineer, anyone having done music and recorded some tracks have notified the problem of mastering.

If you record a song without using any compression and without doing mastering your going to hear a big volume gap between your production and the one's available on a professional release (CD/LP/WAV).

Since today I was always doing mastering manually using my hardware compressor and different software... Compressor was doing a good job put it wasn't enough to get a real powerful sound, so I tried using some PC plug-in without a real success... The only way I had to get a good mix was to manually remove peak !

All that is finish, for sure I keep all my tube-filter and analog compressor (really useful for live...) but I can now forgot all other sad plug-in used before, JAMin is the only one today !


Just try it out (under Linux with JACK) and you will see his true power... really incredible, nice eq, really good dynamic compressor... and all module can be fine tuned. This software is free and can do better job than some semi-pro expansive software !

Remote dub conference

Just discover this software with the help of versionist community.
NinJam

This software enable musicians to play together using Internet connection.

The problem when doing remote connection to play music is the latency, the solution proposed by ninjam is to use latency measured in measures, and that's what makes it interesting.

Hope to do jam soon !

Orion an easy digital dub studio

Unfortunally Linux isn't perfect for simplicity. It enable anybody doing music but like I talk with others dubmaster on versionist, he doesn't integrate so much 'user friendly' feature keeping focus on function available.

The biggest advantage for Windows is: Simplicity.

It's what I had understand using Orion while doing a digital reggae song.

I'm in love with Linux and recommend all to try starting with this OS when moving to computer music creation, but for people searching for simplicity without need to understand all feature... Orion and Windows make a nice couple !

Composing music in freedom

I started composing music in 2002 and from this years I was shocked by the price of audio software.

Professional MIDI sequencer can cost several thousands of dollars. But basically what they did is simply sending MIDI messages. I observed same problem with synth module, when wanted to emulate musical instrument with computer I was finally starting to work with SoundFont due to the cost of other professional alternative.

At the begin SoundFont was patented by EMU and usable only on specific Creative product (that include hardware RAM on sound card to load sound wave tables).
This kind of hardware was really useful when PC hardware wasn't able to play (with an acceptable latency) SoundFont.

But today SoundFont can be considered to be an open format. Creative as open documentation and a lot of free tools are available, and today's PC can run it without any problem and without using specific hardware.

So all that to explain that I made transition from Windows to Linux with all what I need to compose music (including SoundFont) with minimal latency. And the best is that it's totally FREE !

I now use Rosegarden as MIDI sequencer, and I want to say that this sequencer is really better than a lot of non-free sequencer you can found on the market.

You find all professional functions needed by a musician to compose a whole song, and with the help of QSynth you can access to huge collection of free virtual instruments using SoundFont technology.

Rosegarden is part of 64Studio distribution, I recommend to all musician working with computer to take a look to powerful Linux tools available for audio production.

Linux is a formidable opportunity for every beginner in music production to start experiment freely professional tools and techniques (preventing use of illegal license in home-studio).

New studio ready !

The studio is now finish and work fine !

I've just receive the new sound card (M-Audio Delta 1010 LT) and after installation spend lot's of time remixing live with the analog hardware. SOUNDS SO GOOD !

I love the analog sound but the use of digital technology to replace multi-track recording is really comfortable. For sure you loosing some warm, but using tube I feel getting the good compromise !

I'm actually recording new materials for ODF, and mixing new tunes to release for free on the records.

64Studio an open source audio studio

I have spend some times this week-end and Monday to do my first installation of the 64Studio Linux distribution.

I'm using every day Linux (Ubuntu) on my home PC until the begin of the years and I'm really happy with it, I can do all stuff I done before using Windows but for free and in an open world.

I'm still running Windows on my musical PC, but I wanted to know if possible to switch to linux using open source software. I'm actually preparing the computer for new studio (St-Martin 9) so I took this opportunity to try 64Studio, all can I say: Stop use Windows for audio production ! Linux is so powerful !

The studio PC is a Intel P3 800Mhz with 384Mb RAM and 250 GB HDD (half linux/half windows, I'm not alone to use it... so I needed to install windows too) all hardware was automatically recognized by 64Studio.

But the things fantastic with Linux and the ALSA audio platform is the possibility to create 'virtual' audio card. I plugged 3 standard (SoundBlaster to not name it...) sound card in PCI slots and then using ALSA configuration file I created a 'virtual' 6-in/6-out sound card. I now can record/playback simultaneously 6 mono track !

I'm a lover of analog hardware and use a lot, but I think the use of computer as mulit-track recorder is really comfortable. Using Linux anyone that have standard PC and some good sound cards can build one !

In addition I want to say that Ardour is really beautiful and useful. All feature needed are easy to find and I prefer Ardour's GUI than Cubase/ProTools/...

Next to basic recording software, 64Studio includes other useful free software enabling drum sequencing and midi composition.