circus drums

marcel, I would like to thank you and the others in this forum for giving me hope for the music business. Everyday seems like I bow my head and sigh, threaten at least once a month to sell all the gear, quit the "biz", and start myself an alpaca farm... but just based on some of the replies on this topic of metering and overall signal level, I have some hope left that there are actually people out there who are not retarded and do their best to do things the right way and help those along the way that don't. Almost daily I can't help but get on craigslist... mostly looking for gigs and work, but also to see the deplorable state of music making. Just in the last couple of weeks I have seen ads by guys who have a macbook pro, logic, powered monitors, an apogee duet, and a mojave mic and they are trying to book and sell "studio" time. The most recent post of note was the person offering mastering services... for $10 a song... At that point I have visions of pulling a jay and silent bob, with my massive print out of all the offending people, getting on a plane, and flying around the country to personally knock on every door, and smack them all in the face for making the rest of us look bad... "I'm a produca, I make beats." So keep chiming in, it might be one of the few things that give me hope. Oh, and in case you anyone needs some quality studio time with the chuckle head from CL, and I quote "RECORD IN 24 BIT FOR AMAZING PRICE" I was very tempted to contact him and see if I could get a discount if we only used 16 bits... I suppose he could bill by the bit... Whatever, now it's no surprise I only lasted 2 weeks working at the guitar center... I really needed the money, just not THAT bad.

thanks... that will work just fine!!!!

forgive me, I guess my college degree and passion for doing things the right way has no place in this compressed, squashed, and limited world... I've worked lots of audio gigs in my day... not saying that to brag or boast, just making the point that I have been fortunate enough to learn proper technique and theory behind audio and recording, and gain structure is the #1 most important concept that 99% of the audio world professional to amateur do not understand nor implement in their work. My internship after college was at the eastman school of music where we recorded everything!!! Aside from it being "legit", we were maintaing a recording archive that dates back to around 1910, so we had pretty strict rules to adhere to, including the -18dB digital reference. Every single recording we made digital was a 0VU tone off the console set to -18dB on the digital recorder. Now I will agree with you that I might be a dinosaur of sorts, but funny how when you adhere to this "standard" your tracks magically sound better, there is less overload and distortion on every other bus in your signal chain, aux, eq's, tape sends. digital converters along with every other piece of gear on the planet are designed around some unity gain reference point. As I had mentioned, the digi 888's were designed and calibrated at -18dB (per my conversation with my digi rep at the time.) So when all of the "professional" engineers slammed the hell out of the 888's it would cause all sorts of issues through the rest of the studio. One time for the fun of it myself and an assistant friend of mine (we met and became friends while J Lo and posse were locked out at the studio... for over a year!) We had a drum kick mic-ed up and recording into PT... we put the waves meter plug on every input in PT and adjusted our gain so that our peaks were around -15dB. Then we did another pass with levels slammed like most of the sessions he had to work on... Huge difference when unity gain is taken into account. I would love to go on a mission around the world spreading the gospel according to unity gain and gain structure. inquiry I know you were busting balls which I very much appreciate... so I apologize for my soap box rant... I've just seen so many "professionals" who don't even know what gain structure is. So along with my mission to spread the gospel of gain, I would also like to beg and plead for the music world as a whole to rediscover this thing called "dynamics" and work hard to bring it back... I suppose that will eventually lead to retards calling it "old school" as if they just discovered it... then once we get that happening we can go about reminding the world that when making music, a novel idea would be to incorporate these things called "musicians"... oh but wait, I bet there is a "musician" plug-in out there already...

I came across this and just had to chime in briefly... unless I'm mistaken this post was started by Humberto Gatica, engineer for celine dion. When I was the PT tech at the hit factory NYC, the biggest rig I ever had to build was for humberto and celine... This was soon after PT HD had come out. We had 2 HD rigs, one big one for tracking and a smaller one for print back and mix downs. I had to combine them both for a total of... 109 outputs!!!!!!!! mac was full of PCI cards, expansion chassis was pretty full, it was crazy... You know your session is huge when you have 29 tape returns coming back on the small faders of your SSL J console... because it's only an 80 input desk. I will never forget having to do this and the whole time wondering... Does a song really need 109 discrete outputs back through the console??? The worst of it was doing the "alignment" on 109 channels... gone were the days of the digi 888 where the tweak pots were on the front of the interface... on the 192's they were on the back, and very small pots, UNDERNEATH where the db-25 connecters were... If humberto was the original poster, it's nice to see him coming here looking for help. So humberto, did you really need all 109 outputs... I would love to see the track sheet for that one...

I am trying to save myself from having to click and move the playhead all the time... I'm zoomed in enough so I can see each quarter note while adjusting my tempo map. Yes I can keep scrolling back a couple bars so I can audition the changes I just made but building tempo maps for 40 songs translates into excessive amounts of scrolling just to move the playhead. Moving the playhead but in this case pre roll is what I want and need... and thus far as I mentioned it should be very obvious as to where it is and how it works. I'm really hoping I missed it because such a basic feature should not be so obscure...

thanks for the replies... I will check out that meter plug in. I changed the meters to linear and was much more like it. Still unclear on the pre roll option... it was indeed checked the project preferences but is still not working. Unless I am missing something, pre roll should start playback before my current playhead location by an amount I specify... I have not found where I might decide on my pre roll amount nor how to enable or disable it. I have been doing tempo maps on dozens of songs and would like to be able to pre roll my playback 1-2 bars before my playhead so can audition the tempo changes I just made. Again not to keep going back to PT, but it's a key command to turn it on and off, and a simple click in the transport bar to change the amount of pre and/or post roll... then again logic's click on the ruler and PT click in the audio file are very different approaches...

coming from both the analog and digital world, I am curious if there is a way to change the meter ballistics and/or divisions in the meters themselves. upon inserting a test tone on an empty track I see that the meters break at -3dB and -1dB. While this is helpful for peaks and avoiding the dreaded digital "0" it would be helpful to have a color change or additional division on the meter around -15dB (AES standard for 0 VU= -18dB ) I have seen some great posts on being able to use alternate images for buttons, knobs, even the meters but is there a way to customize the meter behavior? I have finally started recording audio in logic and find that the metering looks and feels very low even though my input signal is where it needs to be. I was the ProTools tech at the Hit Factory years ago and know all too well about digital vs. analog meters and calibration. When PT HD came out it became typical for me to do 2 separate alignments on the 192 interfaces (A and B pots) one at -18 the other at -16 so the engineer could decide which worked better for the session. Of course most people using PT mixing back to an SSL will usually slam the levels in PT as they still think "analog" in regards to metering and also want to use all the "bits"... which is another story entirely. At one point I asked my Digidesign Rep about this and he told me that the 888's were built and calibrated for -18. I'm still getting used to Logic, still learning, but also trying very hard not to keep going back to "well in ProTools it would work like this..." Sorry for the story time, thought it was relevant to the topic... PS- where the heck is pre/post roll for playback? in PT it's right on the transport but I can't seem to find it anywhere in Logic... (I'm guessing I will get scolded for posting 2 questions in one but I'm adventurous and wanted to see what would happen.)

OMG thank you for this!!!!!!!!! I have just started learning the beat mapping and could not figure it out.... thanks again for all the helpful insight. This is all of the stuff that should be in the manual... maybe an appendix in the back labeled "things that make you crazy"

Not sure where I am using this. I tried it in the arrange window, as well as sample and hyper editor. I get the microfilm analogy, just not sure where to use it in logic. I tried this key combination and mouse action but can't seem to evoke the cool microfilm surfing.... I'm still learning logic so what am I missing? UPDATE: I figured it out. I tried to come back and delete this post but couldn't figure that out now!!! How do you delete a post???

I can't agree more. I have been using PT since my sophomore year of college, so to sound old it's been about 15 years!!! back in the day of sound designer. It's too bad apple didn't take a look at PT which right or wrong is what most people use for audio editing. So far in my conversion process from PT to logic, I still find myself saying... "in PT I would just have to do this..." I am not a beginner when it comes to DAW, but it seems like most of the learning material out there is geared for beginners. I have read ALL of the logic manuals cover to cover (my intel mac mini that runs logic came from ebay and the shipping took a while, so I had logic sitting around with no computer to live on so that gave me about 3 weeks to read all those manuals!!!) Someone really needs to write a book geared for many of us who have become fed up with digidesign and have finally made the effort to make a change. I used to be a PT tech at a major New York studio and had to deal with six 48 channel mix systems and 2 HD systems. I have been been in and around digi for a long time, have spoken to their reps many a time, and even had a guy on the inside on speed dial for those emergencies. Maybe all of us "switchers" could start collecting info and try to put together a manual of sorts for what seems like the many trying to cross over... if nothing else I feel your pain and might even try and write the book that I need to read!!!

so now that I've come to grips with just having multiple exs instruments on each of the 3 slap bass tracks, this brings me to another question. (ski, this sound actually shows up in the garageband folder.) I found the related files for this patch in the exs and the sound files total about 63 Megs. the manual says that the exs loads the samples into RAM. So if the solution to my problem is to add an exs on each of my 3 tracks in the arrange window and load the same patch in each one, does it only load the samples into RAM once and know the samples are the same, or does each instance of the exs load the same 63 Megs for a total of 189 Megs? MIght seem like a dumb question, but this was why it seemed "silly" to me in the first place to have 3 of the same exs instrument loaded. I guess I can try this out with activity monitor open and see what happens. you mention above that exs takes up very little processing power, but after a while I have to use this method with other arrange tracks then eventually I will have a bunch of the same instruments and it might start to add up. I don't mind the easy way, I guess my brain can't let go of the redundancy... I'm all about efficiency and this just is counter intuitive for me.

thank you all so much for the quick and helpful replies. After reading through the posts it seems as though I will just have to have a separate exs for each of my tracks in the arrange. window. "wiffbi"... that is exactly what I was getting at. I think my issue is the logic workflow, i.e. arrange window "tracks" and mixer window "channels". "fader8"... I see what you are saying. I meant to say that in protools that when you create a track, it usually has a fader and console like controls along with it (even MIDI tracks have fader, pan, etc...) I get the concept of using aux channels in protools and in logic ( I have kontakt 2 in PT) I'm just used to having even just a fader for each of my midi tracks in PT... which in logic are now tracks in the arrange window. I suppose it would be similar to using sampletank in PT, and to accomplish this same setup i'm trying for in logic, I would have to assign the same "sound" to 3 separate midi channels in sample tank, and then route the 3 midi channels in my mixer to the sampeltank MIDI inputs. This however only uses one instance of sampletank, it just occurred to me the other problem I am having is the concept of the exs... even though it is capable of being a multi output sampler, it is really more like a dedicated instrument that can only play one sound at a time. I am still a bit confused about exs in multi out mode. Even the logic manual doesn't really help (it does with ultrabeat which I had no problems setting up with additional auxes for my kick, snare and hat) I tried several times using exs in multi mode, clicking the "+" in the mixer channel strip, adding 2 aux channels, and they automatically assigned to "slap bass 3-4 and 5-6) but after that I can't get anything to talk to those aux channels in the mixer. I tried to reassign my arrange window tracks to the newly created aux channels but nothing happens. I'm guessing part of this learning curve is going to be the environment section of logic. I apologize but I'm just used to PT being like a console and a tape machine... everything has a fader, pan, etc.... even MIDI data. I will just drop in the other 2 exs instruments with the same patch and call it a day. Glad I spent all day trying to figure it out when the solution only took about 10 seconds!!!! FWIW- I am the former ProTools tech from the now closed Hit Factory in NYC... thank you all so much for the objective and helpful replies... it's nice to be on the receiving end of tech support for a change.

been a protools junkie for many years and just made the switch to logic. Aside from the almost 5 hour install it's been fun using it. I was hoping to not have the "well in protools I just do this" moment on my first day in my first session but that's what happened. I have been working on this all day and have been through the manual and this site and still need help. I know this is very basic but I can't for the life of me figure it out. I was playing around with a slap bass patch in the exs24 and ended up with 3 tracks in the arrange window. one track for the low bass note, one for the top slap part, and one for the dead notes... all 3 together sound like a pretty decent bass line. all 3 of these tracks playing back on the EXS channel in the mixer. All I want is a separate mixer channel for each track in the arrange window and have them each play the same exs instrument. I managed to play around with the ultra beat as a multi output instrument and had a separate mixer channel for kick, snare, and hat... couldn't get this same concept to work with the slap bass and it's 3 tracks. Like I said if I was in protools I would just create 3 MIDI tracks, and route each one of them to my aux instrument track and that would be it... a fader on the mixer for each set of regions on their own tracks. but logic uses MIDI tracks for external devices. I tried a multi out version of exs and assigned each one to the slap bass (1-2, 3-4, 5-6) but then when I reassigned the track objects to the newly created aux channels (using the plus in the exs channel strip in the mixer) nothing happens. I really hope I"m just being dumb as this seems like it should be very easy to do. I guess the easy way would be to just have the same exs instrument and patch on each of my 3 tracks, but it seems silly to use the same plug in 3 times when I just want to be able to control each track with it's own mixer channel. Also, since both the keyboard and numeric number keys (0-9) are mapped to key commands, how do you enter numbers in data fields? I was in ultra beat and was trying to change the length in the sequencer section. I would double click the current value (32) and try to type in '16' but as soon as I hit the '1' it would jump to screenset #1.