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Archive for the ‘Audio Software’ Category
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
 Logic opened What you see above is Apples Logic 8 – I bought it before a while and installed it on my Mac Mini with Intel Core Duo (not to be confused with Intel Core 2 Duo!!) and 2 Gigs of Ram. I was afraid that it won’t work with my old box, but gladly everything turned out well!
Logic 8 runs like a dream – it seems that it doesn’t need more performance than Logic 7 did. I have composed simultan between 5 and 15 tracks with both, mixed audio and audio instruments. No problem.
As far as I can say I don’t miss anything. Tons of synthesizers are included. The GUI is very intuitive and I like it MUCH more than the old one. It reminds a bit on GarageBand, but more profesional.
At least – i expected that and I am so happy that I finally have done it. Recommended!
My new CD will be finished with that Software now 
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Monday, March 9th, 2009
Before a few days I bought Parallels 4.0 for my Mac 10.4 (Tiger) whcih is running on an Intel Core Duo Mac Mini. Since I have a windows box running for mastering, paying taxes and for internet browsing for my wife I suddenly had to exchange data from one computer to another. You should also know that I own a few external harddisks. My 2Big triple from Lacie is one of those, a perfectly nice Raid controller with 2 disks in a decent box.
For several reasons I had to format this one in NTFS and most of you know that this is a total game over for my Mac. Mac cannot access this format safely. There are other options to access NTFS from a Mac, for example Paragons software, but really, I don’t trust those geek software in that case too much. Hej, this is my data! My music! My life!
Then I came to Parallels Desktop, a Virtual Machine Player (and Creator) which is known as well integrated into the mac enviroment. And yes, it really is! I was never so surprised by any kind of software like I was here. Parallels makes you feel 100% integrated on both sides! With Tiger I cannot use all features, for example this Bootcamp stuff, which allows to play with your VM on a native speed level. However, for me it’s enough to see my windows apps looking like mac apps and that I can drag and drop between Finder and Win Explorer as I want.
Back to NTFS. I plugged in my NTFS drive but couldn’t create any folder on it nor could I copy a file. After some curses I figured out that I have mounted my 2Big Triple as a Network Storage, not as a local harddisk. Of course as a network harddisk I would need write access within mac, so I had to mount this drive directly to Parallels. This is easy under normal cirstumances. You can do this on the right bottom of the Parallels window, or, if running in coherance mode, from the menu bar “devices”. Simply choose one of the devices which you want to plug directly to your Windows.
I did so, but failed. The reason is beeing shown in the Device Manager of Windows. My USB Hub didn’t get any driver. I double clicked that b**** and told it to update the drive. No problem for windows since everything was prepared on the update site. After the install I had a locally plugged Harddisk – and know I can access to my NTFS harddisk from my Mac, ah, Windows, damn Macdows without any problems.
Great stuff, that Parallels. I will track this software for sure.
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Friday, October 17th, 2008
For a few days I had the luck to get a brandnew Apple MacBook Air to my hands. The notebook is running with Mac OSX Leopard of course and iLife 08 is preinstalled. This in fact means that I got a copy of GarageBand 4.1.2 which I meanwhile tried out.
Normally I am working with OSX 10.4 means Tiger. I am composing ideas usually with GarageBand 3 and then, when the idea envolves, switch over to Logic Express 7.3 where I work out everything. GarageBand is a very useful tool to quickly record ideas when they come up and I cannot live without this. Well, actually I could, but my life is easier with GarageBand.
When I fired up the iLife08 Version of GarageBand 4.1.2 everything looks familiar. There were no surprises, never. At the start screen is a new button which invites you to create a “Magic Band” song or something like that. I really didn’t understand what this crap is. It’s a bit like a computer game without sense. Choose your style and you see a stage with several instruments on it. Click again and you have some fitting loops in your player. Well, don’t know why one should consider this useful. So, my choice is to ignore that “new feature”.
The first new feature I saw was that “arrangement” bar on top of my tracks. It makes it possible for me now to arrange several parts of my song and give it a name. Means: I mark a part of my song and name it “chorus” or “middle part” or whatever. Later I thought I can easily copy the whole part and drop it whereever I want. Well, not true. I just can move the whole collection around, but copy and paste is not possible. This makes the feature nice but doesn’t help in praxis. I really would like to copy past and then modify some parts. I hope that one improves. I read later that apple states that this feature works with copy and paste, but at least I couldn’t figure out how. That’s not what I expect from my Mac!
One cool new stuff is the extension of the automation features. Similar to old garageband where you could draw your panning and your volume for each track, you are now able to draw EQ and echoes too. Thats a very nice one, I like it! I really could use a feature where I can connect my own automation tools, but I guess this will stay future.
Multi-Take recording. Well THIS one is really great and is a feature I really have missed in Logic Express. But since I record all my instruments in Logic Express and just do some demo voices in GarageBand I will not buy Garageband 4.1.2 only cause of that.
Visual EQ. OK, nice to have. But again, I didn’t miss that since I have own plugins for the job or use Logic Express. However, it’s comfortable and useful. But not the feature that gives you the urgent need to upgrade.
Sooooo… OK. What’s new also?
You have the chance to burn a CD directly out of GarageBand. Well, I couldn’t do this since MacBook Air doesn’t have any CD-R drives or burning utilities. I guess It will work.
The LCD is a bit more comfortable. But nothing new here.
Instruments are strange. The laptop was preinstalled, but some of the instruments where missing. When clicking on the light grey instruments, GarageBand is telling me that it searches the instruments in the net and that I need 1,2 GB on space. What the heck? I didn’t try that out any further. If Apple really thinks I want to download 1.2 gig – no guys, are you kidding me? As I allready told you, I have no CD-Rom so a download is the only chance I have. Bah!
At least, I tried out if I can open a GarageBand 4 song with GarageBand 3 – it failed, of course. The import of a GarageBand 4 song into Logic Express 7.x fails too, of course.
Finally I am not very impressed by the new GarageBand version. If I would upgrade I get a multi-take feature and a nice arrangement tool, which doesn’t work at first glance. Automation is a bit cooler, yes. On the other hand my new GarageBand songs are not compatible with the products Logic Express 7 and not with older GarageBand versions. Means I would have to upgrade to Logic Express 8. And, hell, my Mac Mini which I use at the moment has not enough RAM memory for that version, so I would have to buy new Garageband, new Logic Express and a new Mac.
Really… not worth for me. I stay at Tiger with GarageBand 3 and Logic 7. These features are not enough. And if I would upgrade – I surely would leave GarageBand completly and use Logic 8 instead, since this has been enhanced visually a lot. So…. no go for GarageBand 4.
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Saturday, April 26th, 2008
Before a few days i tried to install my Roland TD-20 Drum module at my mac. The TD-20 should take MIDI data, play, and the mac should recieve 8 tracks of wonderful audio files. This way I have everything seperated for a mix.
When I tried that, i figured out the very first time when GarageBand is not enough. GarageBand cannot use the MIDI out slot of anything – it’s simply not possible. After a while I realized that I have other problems with that sequencer, like: export MIDI from GarageBand.
Altough I like the GUI of GarageBand more, I had to switch again to Logic 7, which I bought before long time (and for expensive money, altough it was used!). It didn’t want that software cause it was ugly, complicated and well, oversized for my needs. It seems that I am now an adult haha.
However, connecting the TD-20 to my Phonic Firewire card was quite easy.
I started the Logic Setup Assistant. Here i could tell Logic where my MIDI Device is connected. Nearly all enviroment work will be done by Logic no. As soon as I understood the I have to connect an Instrument port to the little “Drums mapped” icon at the enviroments window (APPLE-8), I just had to make sure that the track, which uses that instrument has chosen the correct MIDI-channel. In my case, the TD-20 uses channel 10.
I am now more into MIDI than i was before weeks, and everything was going well for me now. I got some other surprises by Logic now and altough it’s ugly, I think I’ll stay with it for a while. I mean, why should I not use my hardware modules? I understand more and more now, and meanwhile it’s something like…. hu… love?
When switching back to Logic, i didn’t find my GarageBand Instruments anywhere. I get ravenous, i had installed them on my external drive. However, i found it as Instrument / Insert / Channel Strip – no worries here. My article about “moving the garageband instruments” still work for logic
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Thursday, April 17th, 2008
Before a while i installed the Native Instrument “Kore Player” App at my Mac. It was pain, cause everything started up, i choose my Firefly-Interface and heard – nothing. I asked at the message boards but nobody could help me. I tweaked everything around and around. I also installed my Cubase LE Version which came with my Firefly and then suddenly my Mac was slower and slower, with the result that my Songs couldn’t be played well at GarageBand.
Last weekend I reinstalled OSX and my songs played well, but still Kore Player refused to give a sign. It was frustrating and then there was enlightment: I was used just to choose my sound and everything works, but Kore Player needs to DOUBLECLICK! I did so and hej, the player played.
Kore Player is quite nice and integrates well as a “Generator” into GarageBand, but the standard installation just gives you 100 MB of sound. This is ok for testing purposes and for use sometimes, but I am not excited. The sounds are fine, mostly for electronic music, but didn’t leave me stunning. I will now try out any longer and leave it installed, but I am not sure if I should buy these Kore Packs, with which you can extend your sounds.
However it’s a nice idea for all those of us, who have not 999$ to buy the NI Komplete package 
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Monday, April 14th, 2008
I just have 80 Gig on my harddrive and this is quite less when doing development work at daytime and music in nighttime – in fact, it’s not possible to have more bigger music project at the same time with this space. The loops (i don’t use them, but installed them to see what’s behind that stuff) take more gigs than i can efford, same goes for the garageband instruments.
This morning i had a reinstall and decided to put all that space consuming stuff on my external harddisk. If you want to do like i did, i recommend you about 300 Gig space on a Mac OSX journaled filesystem. I had a FAT32 on my mac to get on it via Windows too, but this harddisk is not always activated when i need it. I have to make a harddisk check to activate it, which is quite uncomfortable. I guess you don’t want to have that problems with your instruments.
However, having your instruments on an external disk is straightforward. Please note, my volumes name is FELIX, replace that name with whatever you call your harddrives.
LOOPS
I created the folder:
/Volumes/FELIX/audiolib/loops/Apple Loops/Apple
With my Finder I clicked at “Macintosh HD”, where my loops are currently installed. Switch further to
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple
and copy all that folder in there to your new Loops-Folder (and delete the old content). You can do the same with “iLife Sound Effects” if you want. Cause you instrument installer indexed all that loops, you have to go to:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/
and delete all txt files in there (maybe three or four or simliar- depends on how much Jam Packs you installed, i guess). Start up GarageBand and open you Loop-Browser. It will tell you that you don’t have any Loops installed. Open your finder with your new loops-place, drag the folder where all subfolders with instruments are and drop the into your loop-browser. GarageBand does the rest for you.
INSTRUMENTS
It’s a similar process for your instruments. I created:
/Volumes/FELIX/audiolib/instruments
Then i copied everything from /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library to this folder. I emptied the Instrument Library Folder. Please note: if you have some stuff allready installed in you new folder (FELIX in my enviroment) pleas copy carefully. OSX will delete old stuff when you just copy folders, and this is not what we want. In this case you have to copy manually file for file. And: you’ll need your superuser password for this action. If you don’t have any yet, open a terminal:
> sudo su
This will ask you for a password. By default you have none. Press enter. If you are in without error message, do this command:
> passwd
and get a new password. By the way, you should do this ALWAYS, it’s a bad idea not to set a superuser password – everybody can login and manipulate your computer this way.
Before you do that, of course i cannot give any guarantees. And please note, i have some kind of bug with my method, if you know how to fix that, let me know. All my instruments are now in the same JamPack, which may be a result of my heavy metal copy actions
When you next start up GarageBand i tells you that it has no Instruments installed. There is “Choose” Button where you can point to your new Instruments folder.
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