It's been a while since Frontier released the world's first Lightpipe audio card, the WaveCenter. Without much hype, the WaveCenter managed to establish itself as a solid ‘workhorse' digital multi I/O audio card… and quietly helped to usher in a new era in PC Audio. At last, PC DAWs could digitally record/transfer 8 simultaneous channels of audio!

That was roughly two years ago. So what has Frontier Design Group been up to lately?

Well, I can say this much, they've done their homework and have come up with a powerful new ‘modular' series of audio hardware.

Dakota

This shootout has been a long time coming and even a longer time waiting. I won't pretend that it isn't way overdue, so my apologies go out to everyone that's waited for it.

Nevertheless, it's here! We're throwing a handful of the top of the line DirectX dynamics processors into the mix and seeing how they stack up. We're going to use and abuse each one of them. In the end, we will present a rating from 1 to 10 in terms of sound quality, ease of use, features, processor efficiency and an overall rating. Rather than presenting the overall rating as a composite of the other three categories, the overall rating will be this reviewer's subjective rating of the relative need-to-have factor.

Note this is the third article in a series on compression. If you didn't read Part One or Part Two, you ought to go back and check them out.

A ... Read More »

Comments (0)

Rip Rowan

I'm a big fan of new ideas. Whenever a product comes along that really pushes the envelope, I get excited. Hyperprism is one of those products.

Like all boundary-stretching, paradigm-shattering products, Hyperprism does have its drawbacks and shortcomings. It is far from perfect. But Hyperprism does many things that no other processor plugins even attempt to do, and I applaud Arboretum Software for the creativity embodied in this package.

Overview

Note from the Editor: Waves sent us a full CD of software for review. Always the overachiever, Pete reviewed all the software sent to him - many of which are not included in the Native Power Pack. The Native Power Pack includes the Q10 EQ, the C1 compressor, the S1 StereoImager, the L1 Ultramaximizer, and the TrueVerb. The other plugins reviewed here - Renaissance Compressor, DeEsser, and MaxxBass - are part of the Native Power Pack II. You can read a full review of NPP II here.

Ever heard this one?

" If you spend one more *&^% penny on that &^%$ studio we're getting a divorce!"

Well, I have some bad news for you. You are very likely going to spend that penny and a little more, because here is one product that you absolutely have to have.

All of the tweaking, all of the endless hours you spend getting that "perfect" guitar tone, or that "killer" snare tuning doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you blow it all when you lay down the lead vocal. How many times have you put all your heart and soul into a lead vocal only to play it back and find that although the feeling was there, and the emotion was there, on a few phrases the pitch just wasn't quite in the pocket?

Ok, here we go again.

You punch in here, you punch in there, you finally get the intonation right, play it back and discover the emotion is gone, the moment is gone and you may just as well take it all from the top once again.

Frustrating as hell i ... Read More »

Many people have expressed a desire for a transcription tool that would let them take the melodies they hear in their minds, and convert them to music notation, or to transcribe an instrumental solo in order to more easily learn it.

Autoscore is a program from "Wildcat Canyon Software" (WCS) that attempts to fill this need. Although it isn't perfect, Autoscore does seem to do the job to some degree, but there may be some MIDI cleanup left to do afterwards. A skilled singer who can sing on key most of the time will get much more use out of this product than the average person.

The product was sent to me in two flavors - Deluxe and Pro. Deluxe appears to allow step entry only. It comes with MidiSoft Studio for Windows, but will work with other sequencers, like Cakewalk.

The Pro version ships with Cakewalk Home Studio, which is pretty much the old standard Cakewalk 3.01 sequencer, sans a few nice features. It appears to install Home Studio by default. Fortunately, it doe ... Read More »

Frequency filters

ProRec is considering a new style.

We've been laboring under the assumption that you want to read about stuff monthly. We never bothered to check out the facts.

We were trapped in our paradigms. Lost in our mental models.

Sufferring terminal hardening of the categories.

After all an e-zine is supposed to be an electronic magazine. Magazines don't send you articles one at a time as they're written.

But we want to keep giving you the scoop. We were the first source with in-depth information on many of the leading products available today. Like DSP Factory, Layla, DSP/FX, and Pulsar.

Nothing sucks worse than having the latest information on a killer product and sitting on it for two weeks while we get the 'zine complete for the month.

So we're planning on dropping this monthly convention in favor of a new model of continual news and information as it becomes available.

Does this sound like a good idea or not? If you lik ... Read More »

The time has finally arrived.

Your latest and greatest work is almost done. You started with what you feel is a damn fine song. You carefully planned the arrangement. You've captured some killer tracks. And then, you sweated every detail of the mix. You tweaked, pulled, pummeled, and then re-tweaked, re-pulled, and re-pummeled those tracks until it all sounded something like what you thought you were hearing in your head when you started. And finally, you now hold in your hands The Final Mix. No more hedging. You're ready to commit forever. This is the sound you're going to leave to posterity.

Your magnum opus is now ready to be mastered.

Right?

Well, maybe. Or, maybe not.

One of the most important things you should expect from any good mastering facility is a well-trained set of ears listening to and evaluating every minute detail of your music. That facility should then give you a brutally honest, totally objective opinion of the quality of y ... Read More »

What in the world have we here?

Can it really be true? An $85 high quality sampler?

Well, err, yes! It seems so!

For years the very word "SoundBlaster" has been enough to send shivers up and down the spine of any self respecting digital audiophile, and rightfully so! From poorly written drivers to, shall we say, "somewhat misleading" advertisements, to package info that boldly claimed "full duplex" when such was not the case at all has left a bitter taste in the mouth of those who have attempted to use these cards with a digital audio sequencing app.

The real truth is that these cards were not primarily designed for digital audio they were designed for gaming and here, as any rabid "Unreal" player will tell you, they have greatly succeeded.

However, in an attempt to garner a bigger market share, Creative Labs decided to try and grab a share of the rapidly rising "computer musician" market. With the release of the SoundBlaster 32 series of cards, Creat ... Read More »

Hello readers. This month I'd like to concentrate on the songwriting aspect of the music business, as I've come to know it.

Over the past 8 years I have had as clients some of the biggest-selling songwriters in the music business. They are in addition to the other ‘as of yet unknown' writers who like what I bring to their songs. From working so close with these people I have come to learn a few things that seem to be consistent with all of them:

1. You are only as good as your current hit.
2. Nobody cares what you did yesterday.
3. Nobody cares at all which software or computer you wrote your song on
4. Nobody cares.

I had always assumed that just because you had a few big-time, #1 records to your credit, that automatically entitled you to special consideration by every record company A & R person when it came time to pick songs to be recorded by an artist. No such luck. Just because you had a big hit on Toni Braxton's last album, don't expect her to ... Read More »

Mastering.

The word is a meaningless black cloud to many musicians and amateur engineers. And, sad to say, some pros.

I used to wonder what the hell the mastering engineer even did. After all, the song is mixed, right? What else really needs to be done?

Also I got really suspicious when the same names kept popping up. Bob Ludwig. Bernie Grundmann. Eddie Schreyer. Ted Jensen. Stephen Marcussen. Do these guys ever sleep?

Maybe - MAYBE - they really don't do anything at all.

Or maybe they are the operators of the Magic Mastering Machine - one button, that's all. Feed your mix in and out comes the mastered product.

Well, this is sheer balderdash. Mastering is one of the most important and least understood roles in commercial music production, and you have to understand it if you're going to engineer a product that will stand up on CD, on tape, on RealAudio, and most importantly, on the radio.

This article does not presume to teach anyone ... Read More »

Introduction

I just love microphones.

I am constantly scouring the classies, garage sales, web sites, and music stores for deals and steals -- the vintage, the obscure, and the just plain weird. I have a smattering of just about everything, from the common workhorses to the all-time classics to the super-el-cheapo pieces of junk.

None of them are the perfect mic for everything (I don't believe any one mic can be), but all of them (well, at least the ones that function!) are the perfect mic for something. As my dear mother used to say, "there's somebody out there for everyone," and so I believe it is with microphones as well -- for every task there exists the perfect mic, and for every mic there is a task to which it is perfectly suited. I also believe that if you can acquire the knack of choosing the proper microphone for the job, and can place it properly to obtain the sound you're striving for -- before that sound hits the rust -- your job as a recording engineer is about 80% accomplished.
Read More »

A couple of months ago, I detailed Samplitude 2496 (from SEK'D). Since this DAW software supports 24Bit recording at Sample Rates up to 96kHz, and all major DAW software is soon to follow... it makes sense to also review the hardware side of a 24Bit 96kHz system. That brings us to this month's review of the Prodif 96 and the SEK'D 2496s A/D D/A converters (AKA the little guy).

Prodif 96 - The Audio Card

Features

Cosmic Message...

Time Travel

Welcome to the long-awaited third (and final) installment of All Things Being EQ-ual, a series of articles on equalization that started back in April 1998. This final article, a titanic, tussling tête á tête of software EQ programs for the PC, was supposed to appear in the June issue. It didn't. I won't go into the reasons for the delay here; suffice to say that I do sincerely apologize to all the ProRec readers who waited so patiently for this article to be published. I hope it will have been worth the wait!

If you're jumping on this train late and missed the first two installments, or would like to review, please follow the links to check out Part One and/or Part Two. Have fun, and don't worry... we'll still be here when you get back.

Back already? Okay... let's move on then. We'll be reviewing and comparing software ... Read More »

I'd like to devote my column this month to a subject that seems to be a mystery to most musicians, producers, engineers, and songwriters - Background Vocals. Let's start with a simple definition: "Background Vocals" are those that are not the lead or main vocal. They can come in various forms - ooohs, aaahs, actual repeating of the lyrics, completely different lyrics, or moans and sighs (especially in hip-hop and rap).

The people who perform these vocals also come in different shapes and sizes - from thin, sickly looking Caucasians who can read fly-shit without a drop of feeling to great big huge African American women straight outta the Church, who can turn a collective "Yeah" into a spine-tingling chant that is far more powerful than even our beloved national anthem. Put on the radio and start singing along. Chances are that even the most tone deaf among us will pick up on the "chorus" sung by the background vocals, rather than the riff-laden lead vocal, which is usually beyond the vocal ability ... Read More »

Part 1. Introduction