Today, I am trying out the demo for Slate Digital FG-X Virtual Mastering Processor I have downloaded from their website.
I have the plugin installed and I'm gonna use Reaper with it of course. While the reaper is loading my other plugins, I'll say that I read thru their Instructions Manual and it already sounds like it's a serious tool for audio engineers. Knowing the price, which is 299$, makes it sound like it's a very serious tool.
Hmm Reaper doesn't show up any new plugins. Also when it was turning on, I got an error message saying that I have to install an iLok system. Why? This is the demo version!!!
Oh Creep! Checked my E drive and it's full of files.. these weren't there! C++ 2008. Yeah FG-X did install it. But I still can't get it to work! Hmmm
http://www.slatedigital.com/fgx.php
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Kontakt 4 and Synthetic Drums 2
So lately I was given a new challenge: writing some electronic/techno beats. The first brand that came to my mind was Native Instruments so rushed to their website. After lurking around for an hour or so I finally found the best plugin for me. I originally wanted to go with Maschine but that's a lot of place on HDD and the price is also high compared to Synthetic Drums.
Anyways Synthetic Drums was already installed and ready to use as well as Kontakt 4. So I begun setting up my Synthetic Drums samples in Kontakt. As always I am using Reaper as a VSTi host. The Kontakt's window is qutie big for Reapers plug-in window but reaper gives you sliders. Not that comfortable but better compared to Massive which doesn't give you sliders and makes some knobs and buttons unreachable in Reaper. The documentation says that Kontakt is a powerful sampler and can host up to 64 instruments. So I started with one drumset or whatever they call in the techno world. The sounds are quite good, i doubt it'd be bad since these are actually Synthetic. It's always easier to get a good quality on virtual instruments (not VSTi) than getting a nice Piano or a real drumset VSTi .They have a lot of drumsets to offer each having bunch of clicks, bumps, crashes, fades and every other sort of noise. The drums aren't really mapped to the usual drum mapping as like 36-kick drum, 38-snare drum. 49-57-cymbals... The drumsets actually are signature drumsets and thus I think every artist wanted their own mapping. Though I also had this impression that neither of them really knew anything about real drums and drum mapping standards so they only wanted the "keys" to be more comfortable on their keyboards. So after fiddling around for another hour or so I decided my track was getting boring already (with this sort of beats you can't really put a lot of variation as with real drums which is a totally different kettle of fish. This is when you realize that real drums can be considered and actually have to be considered as musical instruments) I decided to add another drumset. The adding bit is quite easy and it game me no huge CPU load. That's quite good. What's bad is that I wanted the 1st drumset on channel 1 and the 2nd one on channel 2. So I did: found that little midi button and clicked on it. chose Group A and then channel 2. I also changed the new beat's notes to Channel two. The 2nd drumset was playing alone. I then went back to the previous bar to see how the transition goes from the first drumset to the second one and I was surprised to hear both at the same time. I changed the channel of these notes to 1 again just in case and still got the same result. Changing it to channel 3 or 4 didn't help either! So after a half an hour of anger with the "stupid VSTi" as i called it then I decided to read the documentation. Read it and it says "the little midi button." Just what I've been doing for half an hour. anyways I didn't really get to use two drumsets on one track with one plugin. What I am going to do is try and download Kore 2 from NI's website and check SD with that one. Elseway I could export the track for the first drumset as an independent wav file and then import it back on another track taking away my ability of changing notes further way thru the song.
As for the drumset sounds, I believe these are quite good. As I said, you get a LOT of sounds and if you can get the midi thing working than you can even mix and match your favorite sounds from several drumsets! The library also comes with all the snares, cymbals, kicks, etc. organized in separate folders. Kontakt say's it allows you to make a new instrument but that, I have a feeling, is gonna be super complicated for some reason. I am looking forward for trying Kore and hopefully making my own drumset there if it has the ability.
For anybody looking for this sort of beats I'll highly recommend Synthetic Drums libraries 9of course if you can use your Kontakt)
Vendetta V
Samples coming soon
Anyways Synthetic Drums was already installed and ready to use as well as Kontakt 4. So I begun setting up my Synthetic Drums samples in Kontakt. As always I am using Reaper as a VSTi host. The Kontakt's window is qutie big for Reapers plug-in window but reaper gives you sliders. Not that comfortable but better compared to Massive which doesn't give you sliders and makes some knobs and buttons unreachable in Reaper. The documentation says that Kontakt is a powerful sampler and can host up to 64 instruments. So I started with one drumset or whatever they call in the techno world. The sounds are quite good, i doubt it'd be bad since these are actually Synthetic. It's always easier to get a good quality on virtual instruments (not VSTi) than getting a nice Piano or a real drumset VSTi .They have a lot of drumsets to offer each having bunch of clicks, bumps, crashes, fades and every other sort of noise. The drums aren't really mapped to the usual drum mapping as like 36-kick drum, 38-snare drum. 49-57-cymbals... The drumsets actually are signature drumsets and thus I think every artist wanted their own mapping. Though I also had this impression that neither of them really knew anything about real drums and drum mapping standards so they only wanted the "keys" to be more comfortable on their keyboards. So after fiddling around for another hour or so I decided my track was getting boring already (with this sort of beats you can't really put a lot of variation as with real drums which is a totally different kettle of fish. This is when you realize that real drums can be considered and actually have to be considered as musical instruments) I decided to add another drumset. The adding bit is quite easy and it game me no huge CPU load. That's quite good. What's bad is that I wanted the 1st drumset on channel 1 and the 2nd one on channel 2. So I did: found that little midi button and clicked on it. chose Group A and then channel 2. I also changed the new beat's notes to Channel two. The 2nd drumset was playing alone. I then went back to the previous bar to see how the transition goes from the first drumset to the second one and I was surprised to hear both at the same time. I changed the channel of these notes to 1 again just in case and still got the same result. Changing it to channel 3 or 4 didn't help either! So after a half an hour of anger with the "stupid VSTi" as i called it then I decided to read the documentation. Read it and it says "the little midi button." Just what I've been doing for half an hour. anyways I didn't really get to use two drumsets on one track with one plugin. What I am going to do is try and download Kore 2 from NI's website and check SD with that one. Elseway I could export the track for the first drumset as an independent wav file and then import it back on another track taking away my ability of changing notes further way thru the song.
As for the drumset sounds, I believe these are quite good. As I said, you get a LOT of sounds and if you can get the midi thing working than you can even mix and match your favorite sounds from several drumsets! The library also comes with all the snares, cymbals, kicks, etc. organized in separate folders. Kontakt say's it allows you to make a new instrument but that, I have a feeling, is gonna be super complicated for some reason. I am looking forward for trying Kore and hopefully making my own drumset there if it has the ability.
For anybody looking for this sort of beats I'll highly recommend Synthetic Drums libraries 9of course if you can use your Kontakt)
Vendetta V
Samples coming soon
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