music production

PreSonus Quantum: Their Fastest and Best Sounding Audio/MIDI Interface

PreSonus Quantum: Their Fastest and Best Sounding Audio/MIDI Interface   PreSonus recently unveiled Quantum, the new audio interface they’re calling “our fastest and best sounding audio/MIDI interface” to date. Early reviews from Superbooth have been positive, and the specs for the machine are incredibly impressive. This has potential to really be their “fastest and best”, so let’s take a closer look. PreSonus wants the Quantum to be the central hub of your recording studio. Offering 26 inputs X 32 outputs with a high-speed Thunderbolt 2 bus, and a direct-to-DAW signal path with no DSP creates extremely low latency. Incredible 24-bit, 192 kHz converters with 120 dB of dynamic range and PreSonus’ recallable XMAX microphone preamps combine to create superb audio-quality. If you need more I/O channels than the already 26X32 Quantum offers, simply stack up to 4 Quantum interfaces via Thunderbolt to create a 96X96 system. For studio use, two main …

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TC Electronic’s Incredible Mixing and Mastering Tool

TC Electronic’s Incredible Mixing and Mastering Tool   A common theme in music production is “ultimately, use your ears”. You’ve probably read that in more than a few of our blog posts, on everything from mixing to recording to sound design. However, as technology keeps advancing at an exponential rate it would be foolish not to use the tools available to our advantage. We recently came across TC Electronic’s Clarity M, a desktop mix and master audio meter with serious precision. From everything we’ve seen so far this piece of hardware is a great complimentary decision maker to your ears, and could save you time in those long sessions when you’ve heard a mix so much you really have no idea exactly what you’re listening to anymore.   Out of the gate, the Clarity M comes with stereo and 5.1 audio metering for mixing, mastering, and post production in music …

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Getting to Know Your Different Reverbs

Getting to Know Your Different Reverbs   Reverb is one of your most important tools for sound design and mixing as a music producer. The perfect reverb type with the right settings (dry/wet, decay time, size, etc.) can make a sound or mix come alive, and the wrong type and settings can kill a mix for a variety of reasons. Your most important tool for the right reverb is your ears and while it is a relatively simple concept, like everything in music production, reverb becomes a deep rabbit hole once you start getting into all of its possibilities. Ask Audio recently did a nice overview of the different reverb types and we thought we’d do our own to provide our community with what we found to be some very useful tips and guidelines. Below we’ll go over a few of the major types of reverb and their common usage. divider style=”clear” …

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A Virtual String Instrument for the Modern Music Producer

A Virtual String Instrument for the Modern Music Producer Output always impresses and brings a modern touch with their software instruments. Their latest, Analog Strings, is a virtual string instrument for the modern era of music making. The instrument is based around blending two sound sources – users can choose from a variety of Orchestral Sounds, Vintage Synths, or Creative Sources – and an engine built to combine, modify, and mess up string sounds in really interesting ways.   The Output team spared no expense in recording all of their samples – recording both a 22-piece and 60-piece string orchestra at the beautiful BMC Concert Hall in Budapest. All of those harmonics and rich textures are ready for manipulation. Users are also able to choose between close and far mic placement, allowing for a more intimate or more cinematic sound. Within the Orchestral Sound Sources there are also interesting soloist patches that combine …

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The Hyve Touch Synthesizer is a New Breed of Synth

The Hyve Touch Synthesizer is a New Breed of Synth   Developed by Skot Weidmann, a technician and instructor, the Hyve Touch began as a soldering kit that could be built in only a few short hours in a workshop setting and then taken home as a playable instrument. Skot thought of the idea to try and inspire interdisciplinary ideas between engineers and musicians at his school’s campus. He wanted to show students how the two seemingly unrelated disciplines were actually very much related and how concepts from one could bring about new ideas in the other. Mainly that music theory and geometry have a commonality that is extremely powerful. The relationship of musical notes ARE mathematical relationships. Here Skot introduces the Hyve Touch:   su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn-Oo8Gcbpg” showinfo=”no” rel=”no” modestbranding=”yes” https=”yes”su_video url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjb4U-cUGSE”/su_youtube_advanced divider style=”clear”   The Hyve Touch brings the human element of “touch” into the synthesizer, and as someone …

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IK Multimedia’s New Fender Collection 2 – Ultimate Fender Amps Emulation?

IK Multimedia’s New Fender Collection 2   Digital emulation of analog gear has become almost unbelievable in the past few years and falling in line with that trend is the new Fender Collection 2 from IK Multimedia – a collection of seven models of Fender’s most classic amplifiers made popular by rock n’ roll legends of the 50s and 60s. IK Multimedia uses their new Dynamic Interaction Modeling algorithm to recreate the intricacies of each amp’s sound with such accuracy Fender has given approval for official use of the certified amp models. The classic amp models available are the ’65 Super Reverb, ’53 Bassman, ’57 Bandmaster, ’57 Custom Champ, ’57 Custom Deluxe, ’57 Custom Pro-Amp, and the ’57 Custom Twin-Amp. Check out this overview video from IK Multimedia to get a taste of each amp model: divider style=”clear” su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI92rWWxIS4″ showinfo=”no” rel=”no” modestbranding=”yes” https=”yes”su_video url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjb4U-cUGSE”/su_youtube_advanced   As you can see, …

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