skijumptoes

You may be noting that many people consume music via VR style headsets in a few years time, and that's an avenue where I can see Atmos/spatial audio being a selling point and potentially more noted by the mainstream. Someone is going to nail it soon, and platforms like Spotify will fit in as a virtual player who's job it is to stream users playlists into that environment.

Well drummer doesn't have to comply with musical theory so it will be based around the chord track and more similar to how EZBass/EZKeys operate I guess? It will be interesting as to what it comes up with as I see you can tap out a rhythm, and as it's AI based it must be learnt to a load of MIDI patterns that it can then freestyle around? You would imagine that there will be some kind of pitch quantisation for other tracks if the chord track is making a proper return too. So for song composing it could be a really handy toolkit to create basic ideas to build on afterwards. I could see it being good to sketch ideas on a Macbook even if you have no MIDI device connected. i.e. Come up with basic song structures/chord progressions etc. And then move to a desktop/larger setup to build on those core ideas.

Sorry, reading through this thread I see you asking a few times with no direct response: So what i'd say in my experience, is that you would use Nektarine for custom mappings, it's a universal system hence it's existence and relation to the CS12. Difference is that you don't need to use it as a wrapper with the CS12, however. You can either load it standalone or as a plugin, and there's a toggle on the beta that allows it to connect directly with the CS12 so you can map in real-time. The big advantage of the CS12 is that once you've created a mapping it's picked up by ControlCore which runs in the background meaning that you get the benefits of a custom mapping but without the need for wrappers. There's a bit of a learning curve, and few a quirks but once you've got your head around it I don't think there's any other controller that can offer this level of mapping without going through a wrapper. i.e. setting up named pages of parameters, and contextual mappings where rate can link to ms or beats depending on those toggles.

I want to like AI, but I fear it's effect on people's jobs and the watering down of skills. However, Those composition tools would be great on a laptop if you're just wanting to muse with ideas. I hope the chord track will work in a traditional sense as it did before too, and not only for generating music.

Waves Maxxvolume currently free to claim: https://www.waves.com/account/free-maxx-volume-mastering-com

I picked up a 50" Samsung TV (QE50QN94A) on a refurb deal through eBay for £450 and it's been fantastic, I mount it on a floor stand behind my desk which means I can set it back a little, and it leaves my entire desk clear for anything else that I want. Honestly, other than my Mac it's been the best purchase for years. If you want to break out of the 60hz refresh rate I'd really recommend trying to find something that can do 120hz and look for 4:4:4 chroma subsampling as it makes the text so much better (It's not compressed) - that was why I went for that model, it ticked all the boxes and couldn't believe my luck when I found it cheap. Also, check that the Mac you buy can output 4k @ 120hz over HDMI as that will increase your flexibility in using TV as monitors (Needs to be HDMI 2.1). I think a lot of the M2's have this option now, my Macbook M1 Pro didn't - that was maxed to 4k @ 60hz on HDMI. If you want a good display that's going to last then it's well worth considering those factors (imo).

My fear is opening a project in future and wondering where the hell I got that plugin from that's failing to load! So I document each one with a .txt file and a copy of the installer in the same folder! 🙂

That's going direct through Yum Audio, the $0 offer is with pluginboutique so get it through them.

Ohhhh lovely jubbly! Thanks for posting this! 🙂

Got Melodyne Assistant and surprised to learn about ARA not able to run in Logic native mode, yet. Hoping this gets fixed sooner than later.

The M2 Air is a great machine. Getting back to your opening post I'd have that over the current 13" M1 Macbook pro by quite a margin, providing 256GB is enough for you, of course. That said, we've got a 2012 iMac sat in the dining room that's been used for 10 years for general use and god knows how many homework projects over the years - and that's still got 60GB left without any kind of maintenance or cleanup of the files.

I believe the 14" is the best choice for a utility machine that's predominately used at home, there was some really good prices over black friday too, but guess they're all gone now. The bigger and better screen and speakers alone make them a much better machine for kids to use, and the base model comes with 16GB+512GB so you're just good out the gate for all tasks. Everything about it is quality. Once you start speccing up the smaller models the 14" becomes a no-brainer. As you're gaining the SD slot which is handy for school projects that involve photos and dedicated HDMI output exists too. But of course, all depends on finances and whether family members will want to be playing games on it (Fortnite/roblox etc.), whether it's going to be used on a fixed desk or on laps, or if any of them have a creative itch for audio/video/photos/design. Need to be thinking 5 years down the road and 256GB just isn't a smart investment (imo). If I was going for the 8gb/256gb models and then the Macbook Air would be my preference as you're getting excellent portability. The 13" macbook pro is more based of the old design I believe. I cant stress how great the screen and speakers are on the 14" models upwards though. Absolute joy to use.

Short-term it does, but long-term you may be creating problems for yourself. Running with such plugins on a template will most likely reduce your dynamic range which isn't helpful when composing, let alone adding latency and CPU load to the project. I used to fall into this same trap and would get bass, drums, keys down and really struggle with getting vocals to sit nice and the bass to sound good. But that's because I was just running everything hot so early in the process by loading up my master bus, thinking it sounded better. For myself, A better approach is to concentrate on getting things right at source... i.e. focusing on obtaining the correct levels coming in, and look to apply EQ cuts on existing tracks to create space, rather than boosting/compressing new tracks above them. But to do this requires absolute belief (and experience) in the mixing process that follows, as that's where everything starts to pop and come together. I've had to force myself through the process many times as I find it very easy to fall into a rut of just creating new songs that never come close to completion, and forget that they don't always sound so good in this state. Sorry, this is probably a bit more philosophical than actually helping with your issues! 🙂

Latency isn't necessarily a performance related issue, it's more than likely that you have a plugin in your project which is adding latency due to it's requirement to 'look ahead' at the audio stream to perform the correct job. Many limiters and maximiser plugins fall into this camp. It's worth toggling the low latency mode on and off and seeing which plugins are being disabled in your template to learn what the cause is. Mastering style linear phase EQ's can cause latency too. You should avoid any such mastering grade plugins in a live songwriting/composing template. Generally though, it sounds like you have some compatibility issues going on here, and should you take the same setup to a desktop machine the same problems are most likely to exist too.... Unless there was a problem at point of installing, of course. It may only be 1 or 2 issues that you have, and everything will be good. Solution is to find out what plugins are causing these errors and hopefully people can help you. As @fisherking says, check everything is up to date and be sure on what is running in a compatibility layer or not (i.e. rosetta vs native modes)

Damn this looks fun! 🙂 Was offered a 5 month trial of Apple Music this week but declined as Spotify family user. But would make use of this over the festive season for sure. Hopefully it's not limited to only the new Apple TV 4k's though!