The start of my ‘Year in review’

It’s a bit late, but, hey, I never have time to do this stuff…

2023 was a doozie… computers, guitars, jobs, and Legos (plus cat vet bills, and some crazy incidentals)

First up – Apple

2023 was an amazing Apple year, but also one that pissed me off a bit. At the end of 2022, the M2 Macs were released, and the M2 Pro / Max notebooks came out at the beginning of 2023. I had decided that my M1 Max with 32 gigs of memory wasn’t going to be enough (I’m a developer that runs Docker *all* the time working with a Microservices environment that has waaayyyy too many services), plus “needed” extra drive space. So, I sold my M1 Max Mac Studio and my M1 Max MacBook, and grabbed the M2 Max notebook, with some great, bumped up specs. Woo-hoo!

Then WWDC happened… While the Vision Pro is amazing, with my eyesight, it’s definitely a ‘gotta try it out’ product… BUT… the M2 Ultra Mac Studio was released. As I said, I’d sold my M1 Mac Studio, and normally would be happy with the M2 MacBook Pro I have, but there were some issues that popped up with the notebook, and I *wanted* a cool desktop. So, an ‘up’ed spec’ M2 Ultra was purchased. All well and good, especially with macOS Sonoma, everything started working *extremely* well. Safari with the profiles (I didn’t realize Edge and Chrome had them already, *doh*), Edge getting the iCloud password manager to work on macOS, Stage Manager working pretty well, and just a great year for polish for iOS/iPadOS and macOS… not many problems lately, enough so that I’ve back off using betas to get my problems ‘resolved’

So far, so good… so what pissed me off?

The M3 MacBook Pros… I bough the M2 MacBook Pro in March, and it was out of date by October. I wouldn’t be so upset, except the rumor mill so thoroughly had things wrong, that my planning sucked. If I knew that an M3 Max MacBook Pro would keep up with and usually *beat* the M2 *ULTRA*, I’d have just waited. Usually Apple gives us at least one year to be ‘new’… kinda feel cheated, lol… and I’m sure the updated Mac Studio’s are not too far off, either. Ok, first world problems, and I still have two computers that I *rarely* ever push, lol

Guitars

This one, I hate to talk about. I had SWORN I didn’t need another guitar at the beginning of 2023. I really have backed off playing, and wasn’t looking to do *anything* any time soon. Of course, that’s the *worst* time because I could experiment with different guitars and setups… lol… 2022 had ended well, with me getting a STUNNING Taylor well under what it should have gone for. I should have been very happy at that…

Unfortunately, I live on the same street as a Guitar Center… lol

2023 brought several opportunities for guitars I had been searching for for a while. One amazing Fender Telecaster showed up, and almost immediately the one I *really* wanted popped up. So, I ended up with 2 guitars I had no intention of buying, but hey… then a unicorn appeared. A guitar that I haven’t seen available at ALL popped up for a really good price. A PRS DGT model with a rosewood neck. *very* rare. Unfortunately, I know why, lol… Ok, so I was DONE! and I mean DONE! Except… the week before Christmas, I get a call to check out a guitar. A model I tried before, and was NOT impressed by at all… but, I go check it out. Amazing doesn’t even *begin* to describe the guitar. Not only that, playing it through an old, used Fender Hot Rod Deluxe basically checked almost everything I’ve been looking for. *sigh*. Oh well, nice Christmas present…

So, good year for guitars, depending upon how you look at it.

Legos

Yes, I’m still a kid at heart… and the Lego sets for the last two years have been on a completely different level. Lego finally figured out that older people love more complicated sets, and will spend lots of money on them. The sets I grew up with were big and complicated, and had a couple hundred pieces. Now, the little poly bags have that much! And Lego figured out that people like me will do the spends to get good Gifts With Purchases (GWPs). And 2023 was an amazing year. The Lord of the Rings set was just the beginning last year. The big one for me was the Orient Express. Initial pictures didn’t look great, but the set has turned out to be excellent!

Job

Enough about stuff… one thing that did happen was that I got caught in a layoff early in January of 2023. I lucked out and had a job a day later, though. The new position is everything I’ve needed, it’s pushed me WAY outside of my comfort zone, and gotten me to be a much better writer and thinker. I’ll write more about it soon. Frankly, that was one of th best things that happened last year (once I calmed down and settled in!)

Everything else…

There was *so* much more that happened (good and bad)… Iggy passed away, even though I tried to do everything I could for him… I’ve still not really come to terms with that.

I’m hoping to write some more, the amount of things that have gone into my brain on the positive side is pretty overwhelming…

More to come!

Follow up to the Apple ‘Sherlocking’

Sooo…. The Game Porting Toolkit story got a LOT more interesting after I wrote my original blog post (https://dscheidt.wordpress.com/2023/06/07/this-years-sherlocking/). How did it get more interesting? Short answer… Apple change the licensing of the Game Porting Toolkit to allow Codeweavers to include the Game Porting Toolkit into Crossover!

I honestly don’t know if what Apple loosing the licensing terms came from the feedback from the community, or if the original licensing terms were just boiler plate that was going to be replaced at some some point, but around September, Apple changed the terms of the Game Porting Toolkit to allow it to be used in Crossover. My guess is that because people were already hacking together Crossover and Game Porting Toolkit, Apple just went ahead and gave in.

Here’s the Crossover announcement: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2023/9/27/crossover-235-is-a-real-game-changer

And, what have been very interesting is that Apple changed from not even acknowledging Codeweavers, to now allowing Codeweavers to use the newest version of the Game Porting Toolkit before even releasing it to the general public! Very cool changes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FkstFAJ-9s

WWDC 2023 was a doozie…

June 5, 2023 will probably become an important day in history for Apple. The 2023 WWDC Keynote was one of the most insane product announcements that the company has done (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYkq9Rgoj8E)

First off, in the first 15 minutes, 3 products that had not really been expected were announced. The 15″ MacBook Air was expected, but the M2-based Mac Studios and the M2 Ultra based MacPro were definitely not. Most rumors had stated that the Mac Studio wouldn’t get an upgrade until the M3 or later, so that the Mac Pro would have time to shine. Fortunately, Apple had other ideas, and just released them all together. There is a bunch of head scratchers from all of this, though. With the Apple Silicon transition effectively ‘done’, we are starting to see the roadmaps form with the different lines. It feels like the M1 was a great processor, but on the professional side, it’s been a bit behind. There were some definite issues with the graphics engines that the M2 addressed, which makes it feel like the M2s were rushed out to cover the M1s. Two other things are really weird… one is that with the Apple Silicon transition, the iMacs didn’t get an M2 version at all. So, they are almost 3 years old. It seems odd to not have at least put an M2 chip in, since they’ve been able to put them everywhere else. Second thing is Apple kept referring their Xx performance numbers to *Intel* iMacs… what the hell? I’m guessing that the M2 numbers are definitely better than the M1s, but in a 10%-20% way, not 200% (2x). It’s sad that Apple is having revert to these kinds of marketing hand waving. Still, it was an impressive and unexpected first 15 minutes that was aimed at developers / pro users. Definitely started things off well.

Next up was the operating system refreshes. Nothing really ‘jumped out’ as a killer feature like last year. 2023 feels like the ‘year of the widget’, with the implementation from iOS going to iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. watchOS seemed to get the most changes, but still feels clunky. I wish Apple would at least take a stab a using some of the user designed interfaces for the watch that are out there. The fluid app display sucks, and the list view isn’t any better. There were some very notable ‘non-mentions’… Apple CarPlay and HomeKit. After last year’s big ‘next version of CarPlay’ announcement, you’d think there might be some follow up to it. HomeKit not getting a mention is a bit surprising, since Matter 1.0/1.1 has been finalized and released. Considering how much time Apple took to show off stickers in everything (ugh…) I would have hoped for some HomeKit news. Fortunately, one of the follow ups mentioned an addition to HomeKit that is welcome… storing 30 days of events. Now, if they’d just figure out a way to allow an external monitoring company to work with the system… Also no mention was the camera app. (or, if they did, I missed it while taking the garbage out…) Final Cut Pro for the iPad put an AMAZING camera interface in, was hoping that it will show up in the regular photos app… Also, Apple is definitely starting to focus on games. It might have been a short segment of the talk, but there is *definitely* a lot going on to try to get game companies to port to the Mac.

Finally, the ‘one more thing’… VisionPro. All I can say is… dayumn… some of the craziest rumors turned out to be true. This is a device I don’t want to want, but actually see many good cases for it. This is what Apple does differently than anyone else. They actually brought out some compelling use cases for the… whatever the hell you want to call them (I’ll go with ‘glasses’ for right now). The idea of my monitors floating in front of me just gives me the chills. That one use case alone makes them interesting to me. The fact that Apple is partnering with a lens manufacturer to put prescriptions in really impresses me. And, so far, the initial 30 minute impressions that visitors got from the Apple campus have been that, at least in the initial peek, they work pretty well. My biggest concern with the VisionPros are how ‘singular’ it makes you feel. I can’t imagining cuddling up on the couch with a significant other with two sets of glasses on… ‘Netflix and chill’ would become more ‘Netflix’ and much less ‘chill’… lol. Still, I see this as a winner for Apple in the long run.

All-in-all, a great WWDC this year, mainly hits, just missing some ‘wishes’ (why can’t normal people get multi-user iPadOS!?!)

2020 – The house

Where to begin?

This year marked the ‘lucky 13th year’ I’ve been in my ‘new’ house, lol. This year, the choice of house has paid off in spades. In the middle of March, my company sent out an email to start working from home due to COVID-19, and they had no idea when we would (even IF we would) come back to the office. That simple email changed my life (and house) for the rest of the year.

With me living and working from home, several things had to change. Home previously had basically been a place to sleep, wash clothes, and take a shower, and little more. I was usually gone by 9 a.m. and frequently would return home anywhere from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. (wtf!?!) To not need to get up and drive almost an hour each way every day was an absolute blessing. (I actually started working at 8 a.m. frequently!) As I settled in to ‘living’ in my house, first off, it started to become ‘home’. Odd thing to say after 13 years, but, for the most part, I’ve never been a homebody. Since I was here a large percentage of my day now, I started to get ‘tech lazy’ (basically buying technology gadgets to do simple, yet annoying things around the house’, lol)

It all started with the thermostat.

I’m an Apple Junkie to the core right now, and Homekit has always intrigued me. It seems like a great idea but because I was never home enough, it wasn’t very interesting (plus the devices seemed to be expensive). Well, the first that started to get annoying was setting the thermostat. It’s silly that one or two degrees can make a difference in being comfortable, but it was true. I started having to fiddle with the ‘normal’ thermostat, and if I was downstairs, I’d have to go back upstairs to change the temperature. That could be at some ‘inconvenient’ times, so the first Homekit-enabling device was a new ecobee. I feel proud of myself, I was able to change it out all by myself. Ecobee’s site and Youtube were great for providing tutorials. The app works well, and one thing that really changed was now not having to worry about a ‘heat / cool’ slider. Awesome!

That was so easy, I started looking at more things…

Ah… the front door lock. Level.co came out with a HomeKit* door lock that just replaces the bolt, not the knobs. (I’ll explain the asterisk in a moment). You’d never know the lock was electronic. So, I decided to try it. This one turned out to be simple, too. Just undo the bolt mechanism, slide the old dead bolt out, and the Level lock goes right in. Perfect! It works great! Except for that little asterisk…

One thing that wasn’t clear to me (I was probably just excited to get a lock I can open with the phone) was that the Level Lock DOESN’T HAVE WIFI. Let me repeat that, there is NO wi-fi connection on the lock. Uh… then how does it work with HomeKit? The Level lock only has low power Bluetooth. What I learned *after* getting the lock was that the lock needs a HomeKit server (I didn’t even know those existed!) A HomeKit server turns out to be something like a HomePod or an AppleTV (or even an iPad that just sits somewhere). I have an Apple TV, but it was too far away from the lock to be picked up via Bluetooth… Fortunately, a good friend had a ‘old’ Apple TV that wasn’t being used. He gave it to me (THANK YOU RICK!) and I was able to get it updated and just set beside the front door. Problem sorta solved. What sucked was that the company August came out with a similar lock that DOES have Wifi, but you need to change the batteries out more, and the inside looks more like a knob instead of a small little handle to turn. I would have definitely gotten the August lock, but it wasn’t available when I bought the Level. Oh well, the ‘work around’ has been doing well enough. It feels cool to be able to lock and unlock the front door with… wait for it… my freakin’ watch! Starting to feel like James Bond, or (in my case) Inspector Gadget! lol

Those two projects gave me a lot to like about HomeKit. I’ve since added a couple of in-house security cameras that use HomeKit to store video. Plus, recently, I grabbed a light that can be controlled via HomeKit. I know these things sound trivial, and are certainly ‘first world’ stuff, but it makes me feel better that I can turn on and off the lights for the cats, and see how things are going.

Funny story… all of this came together when an offer to have an impromptu getaway for a couple of days came up. My normal cat sitter couldn’t make it, so I had to find someone on the fly. Fortunately, the person I found (thank you care.com!) was tech savvy enough that I could just send that person a code to load the app to open and close the door lock. My pet sitter never needed a key, I got notifications when that person came and went, and I was able to watch while they fed the cats and did some cleanup. Made for a much more enjoyable trip, as I was able to see things that I’ve never been able to see before.

One ‘non-HomeKit’ thing that happened was that my washer and dryer finally decided to die. One was helped along in dying, and the second was natural causes. I learned a couple of valuable lessons. First thing, the manufacturers really are terrible about supporting their products. For the first time in my life, I GLADLY bought the BestBuy extended warranty. I wish I’d done it for the dryer, but after that lesson, the washer definitely had the BestBuy extended warranty. (It took over a MONTH to get a 2 month old dryer fixed, since GE wouldn’t just replace it, and if I’d had the BestBuy warranty, it would have been replaced within days)

Various other things have come up, and I’m a bit proud of being able to do most of them myself. It’s now fairly easy for me to change a toilet fill valve and replace the washer rings on a ball faucet 🙂 I’ve changed more light bulbs than ever, but it’s certainly made my house much more a ‘home’. And, I don’t see ever WANTING to work from an office again. LOL!

2019 Toys that made enough sense to buy or subscribe to…

After reading a post on The Furrygoat’s Experience blog about his year in review, I decided to post the things that have made sense for me to purchase and sign up for. 2019 has been a rebuilding year, as the last couple of years have been doing things only out of necessity, not out of what I wanted to do. So, in no particular order, here’s some of the things that made sense for me this year:

Services:

1. Disney+: Ummm, everything Disney which includes Star Wars, Pixar, and the Marvel Universe… for $7 a month… oookaaayyy, how do you NOT sign up for that? Bonus, the Mandalorian was good out of the gate. It’s not Firefly, but, hey, what is?
2. Youtube Unlimited: NOT the TV Service. This is $11 a month to remove the ads from Youtube (and gives you the music service). Frankly, it’s sad that it’s worth it to remove the ads, but it truly is. I watch training and product videos, and nothing is worse than the ads popping up. Now that they are gone, I find myself actually using the video management feature rather than just searching all the time. Bonus, I did sign up for the TV service to be able to watch some things away from the house. Second Bonus, YouTube integrates with the Movies Anywhere platform, so my movies from everywhere else can be watched on Youtube.
3. LinkedIn Learning / Groove 3 / Udemy: These three get lumped together for education. I find most of what I ‘watch’ comes from here, as I been working on learning new skills, and brushing up on my old ones. Some advice, before buying a class on Udemy, make sure you search for coupon codes, the classes should never be more than $10-15
4. Mint.com: Actually free, but worth being a target for ads for. This one is a bit controversial, my friend and I go back and forth on this one. There’s no ‘paid’ tier, so there’s no way to get rid of the ads. For me, thought, it’s been very helpful, allowing me to finally retire Quicken. The betas of the iOS apps look promising, as they move the ads out of the main pages. Not sure if that’s good enough, but we’ll see. Hopefully they’ll offer a way to pay to get rid of the ads at some point.

Hardware:

1. Apple TV to Apple TV 4K upgrade: I did this one because someone I know needed the older version, and hey, I wanted to get the latest and greatest Apple TV. Probably wasn’t worth the upgrade cost, but it does allow me to seriously think about a 4k TV in the nearer future
2. Apple 16″ MacBook Pro: my iMac was OK, especially with the external SSD HD upgrade, but when a friend of mine gave me a 4k monitor, all hell broke loose. To get the monitor to actually work required changing out my Thunderbolt 2 dock to a thunderbolt 3 dock, changing the display types, and various other machinations. In the end, the good discounts on the MBPs and the desire for more CPU / better video card won out over common sense, so the new MBP came home. So far, it’s been a good upgrade, as it’s got me back to using the computer. The iMac just wasn’t inspiring. For next time, always upgrade the memory. I didn’t this time, and am already kicking myself a bit. I’ll survive, but I should have gone 32 gigs…
3. iPhone 11 Pro Max: Ok, somewhat better name than the XS Max, still horrible. Basically, it was a photographer’s upgrade. The camera and the software that works with the cameras is amazing. The battery is better. Everything else is the same. One word of warning, though. If you are sending back an iPhone to AT&T, MAKE SURE TO GET THE TRACKING NUMBER!!!!!!
4. AirPod Pros: This is a no-brainer for me. I work in a rather noisy office. The noise cancellation feature made these an automatic purchase. Great upgrade over the AirPods. I just hope the battery life is better than before. The AirPods had a nasty problem of the charge that they held went to 1/2 in months (my talk time went from 2 hours to 1 in a shockingly short amount of time). This time, AppleCare was offered, and I’ve bought that for them if the battery charge dies like that again.

This year has been a great tech year. Finally, some compelling reasons to upgrade and some very compelling services. Looking forward to 2020!

Getting to know Pro Tools

Hi, I’m Dave, and I’m a DAW junkie  (DAW is a digital audio workstation, or software version of a mixing console for all the non computer music people)  I’ve worked with several different DAWs over the last 20 years or so… First Cakewalk / Sonar, then Logic, then Studio One, and back to Logic X.  I’ve usually stayed away from ProTools, as the hardware requirements / copy protection and perceived complexity have always been issues for me. A couple of years ago, I purchased an Avid MBox 3 Pro which included a copy of ProTools.  I didn’t really think much about it, but was able to get Version 10 and 11.  I plunked around with ProTools, but quickly went back to Logic, as Logic X came out.  For the most part, I’ve sat out all of the drama surrounding Avid and their upgrade policies, as I really wasn’t interested in upgrading…

That was until about 3 weeks ago…  A band I’m with recorded a live video at a studio, but we tracked all of the audio to a ProTools session.  I wanted to see what I could do.  After working with the guy who did the recording to come up with a mix for the 6 songs, I wanted to see if I could do a different job.  Since I knew I might need to bring the session back, I went ahead and did my upgrade to ProTools 12, and opened up the session.

From this point on, note that all of my statements are going to be subjective and not based upon comparisons.  I did no null testing, I didm’t try to duplicate my mixes in every DAW; i’m just going off of my memory, so take this with a grain of salt…

The first thing that I noticed was how open the sound was.  This may be due to the fact that the recording was done inside of a big room, not the normal small studio, but I’ve done a bunch of live band recordings and worked with Logic, and none have started off with the openness that I was hearing in Pro Tools.  The second thing that I noticed was that the meters in Pro Tools were REALLY good.  I feel like in Logic, there’s a bit of a ‘fudge factor’.  With the ProTools meters, i was able to see the peaks really well.

I started off my session pretty simply, just using some Waves plug-ins.  That didn’t get me exactly where I needed, so I brought in a couple of tools that turned out to be critical to me getting through my mix.  The first set of tools was the FabFilter Pro Bundle from FabFilter.  I used every plug-in in that bundle.  All of these plug-ins are incredible.  The spectrograph on the EQ is very helpful for ‘seeing’ problem frequencies, and dealing with them.  All of their plug-ins show you what they are doing to the sound, so you can really understand what is happening.

Second tool that I would not use ProTools without is Melodyne.  I’m no fan of doing ‘fixing’ vocals and guitars with plug-ins like Melodyne and AutoTune, but, there are times when it’s useful.  I was able to take a song that didn’t sound very good to pretty rockin’ with Melodyne.  Given the time and budget constraints, Melodyne worked REALLY well 🙂  Sometimes, you just have to make it sound good, and darn the ‘how’.

Finally, the last thing that got me to really like Pro Tools was the mix down.  Normally, when I do a mix down in Logic or Studio One, especially to MP3, it feels like the MP3 doesn’t sound very good compared to playing the audio out of the DAW.  With Pro Tools, I FELT LIKE THE MP3 SOUNDED AS GOOD AS THE DAW.  To re-iterate, this is VERY subjective, I did no testing.  I just know that with Logic and Studio One, my MP3 mixes never sounded as good a the DAW mix.  With Pro Tools, the MP3 equaled the DAW.  That ALONE is reason to use it.

In the end, my final result came out pretty good.  I definitely had a couple of ‘oopses’ that I wish I’d been able to fix at the time. I’ll probably do more learning about Pro Tools, and hopefully getting faster.

One last thing that I think is very telling… Graham from The Recording Revolution constantly tries different DAWs, but he always seems to come back to Pro Tools.  I know that he knows what he’s doing, and I’ve seen him do awesome mixes in Garageband, Reason, and definitely Logic, but he has always returned to Pro Tools.  I can assume that part of that is comfort factor, but I also assume that there is something more.  I certainly can see why Pro Tools is different, and I hope to learn a lot more!

My guitar rig…

In all the ‘year of gear’ posts, I don’t really think I’ve discussed what has worked and what hasn’t.  I figured it might be a good time to go over what’s working for me for my guitar playing, and what hasn’t…

First up, pedals…

Things I can’t live without now:

One of the best pedals I’ve picked up lately is the Wampler Ego Compressor.  This is an awesome compressor that is very quiet, and has some great features.  One of the best features is the parallel compression dial.  This allows the original signal to go through unaffected and to be mixed in with the compressed signal.  This allows the pick attack to still come through while the rest of the signal is compressed.

Second ‘can’t live without’ pedal is the ISP Decimator II G String. This is a great noise gate pedal that has a very unique feature.  The pedal has two inputs and outputs so that you can run the pedal in two places in your signal chain.  I have the noise gate first in my effect chain, right after the guitar, and also as the first thing in my effects loop on the amp.  This setup eliminates almost all noise when I’m not playing.

Finally, my TC Electronic pedals.  The main one is the ‘can’t live without’, which is the PolyTune 2 pedal.  This is an amazing tuner that I’ve never had any issue with.  I *might* switch it up for the new PolyTune 2 mini pedal, if all the features are there :).  I also use the TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb, the Transition Delay, and the Gravy Chorus.  Great pedals that are easy to dial in and get a good studio sound.

More to come!

Free Eventide Channelstrip plug-in (registration good through July 8th, 2014)

All,

Just a heads up, Eventide is giving away a free channel strip plug-in.  Check it out from the Logic-Pro-Expert site:

http://logic-pro-expert.com/logic-pro-blog/2014/06/09/free-plugin-logic-pro-eventide-ultra-channel-249-value.html

I’m liking Apple’s support for Logic X

Seven releases in less than 8 months!  And here most people, myself included, thought Logic was dead inside Apple.  Apparently, X has a much better support team.  Some of the updates have been pretty small, but all have been very significant.

Great job Apple!

Jammin’

This is kind of a zen post, a bit of train of thought stuff, but I wanted to capture the moment…

I picked up an interesting guitar book recently, Introduction to Jazz Guitar Soloing.  In the first couple of pages, the author made an interesting statement, ‘Most key centered solos can be compared to pointless conversation’, and that really hit home.

Ok, gotta back up and explain what that means before moving forward…

When playing a solo over chord changes, there is usually a specific ‘key’ of notes that can be used over the whole chord progression.  One can play any note in the key, and it will work with the overall tonality of the chords, and sound OK.  Personally, I don’t think that there is much wrong with this, but it amounts to ‘noodling’ (something I do a fair amount of! 🙂 )

What the author is point out is that without some idea of where you are going, or what you are trying to achieve with a solo, it can be just kind of a ‘random note’ thing.  Of course, he has his ideas of how to not have ‘pointless conversation’, which is interesting to absorb.

One of the first exercises in the book is to play over a progression, and record it.  This is great practice, as it gives one a better idea of how one REALLY sounds 🙂  Tonight, I decided to create my own backing track to play over for the exercise.  I decided to play around with Logic X, as the new drummer piece is incredible for doing good backing tracks.  I recorded a couple of bass lines to add some basic definition, and then proceeded to jam out on the guitar.  I didn’t even dial in a fancy sound or anything, just used Amplitube’s default patch of a nice clean sound.  Wow, did I have some fun.  My little backing track had enough dynamics for me to switch up a bit on, and I tried a bit of the different techniques from the book.  That turned into some very cool stuff.  I haven’t played like this in a while, and, boy, did it feel good to have some nice melody and dynamics, and it was pretty much effortless.

It just all comes back around to having fun making music.

Ok, Zen off… 🙂

Correction on something I said about Logic X

I have a correction to make to one of my posts about Logic X.  In this blog post, https://dscheidt.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/decisions-decisions-decisions-personal-daw-comparison-of-logic-x-studio-one-and-pro-tools-11-with-industry-thought/ I incorrectly stated that Logic X only did strip silence destructively on the audio file.  That is incorrect.  There is a ‘Strip Silence’ command that works on the clip in the Arrange view.  The menu item is hidden on the toolbar.  That is exactly what I was looking for.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions… (personal DAW comparison of Logic X, Studio One, and Pro Tools 11 with Industry thought

It was bound to happen… Apple hasn’t released a major version of Logic in 4 years.  The MOMENT I install Pro Tools 11, Logic X shows up.  (You can thank me at ANY time 🙂 )

So, what does one do with 3 DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation software)?  Why compare and contrast them, of course!

First off, I’m not a pro.  I *might* fall in the pro-sumer category, but I think I fall into the ‘talented amateur’ column.  So, any thoughts here will be from that point of view.

My DAW journey has been interesting, to say the least.  In my PC days, I only used Cakewalk Pro Studio and Cakewalk Sonar.  I had some success at learning to record with it, but never ran projects like I do now.  In ’07, I switched to the Mac, and have basically never looked back.  I did mourn the loss of Sonar, as there is no Mac version, but instead switched to Garageband and then Logic.  I was mainly doing very basic stuff with Logic 8 & 9, just trying to learn my way around a DAW, still in the newbie stage for a long time.  I really didn’t push my learning of the software too much.  Both were good, but not exceptional, as Sonar had been, but as I wasn’t really doing too much recording, it really didn’t matter too much.

Then, Studio One happened.

Somehow, I had started working with a church on doing their sound.  They got a Presonus 24.4.2, and started recording all of their services.  I ended up using Studio One to mix the weekly worship and create the pastor’s podcast.  To say that my knowledge and understanding grew would be a VAST understatement.  Week in and week out, we had problems, difficulties, and challenges that had to be overcome.  I learned a LOT during those three years.  I learned what *I* needed a DAW for, and what the challenges were for a small personal+ studio.  I’ve helped record, mix, and master a couple of EPs for other people, plus my own band’s material.

Having said all that…  🙂

I’ve only started to learn Pro Tools 11.  I recently upgraded (sorta) my audio card to an MBox Pro 3.  That’s the subject of another blog post, though.  Since I bought it after the Pro Tools 11 announcement, I was able to get the Pro Tools 11 version.  Woo-hoo!  My initial impression has been interesting.  I’ve spent a lot of time reading the Avid forums, and it seems like there are a lot of people who missed out on the announcement information.  Pro Tools 11 is a complete rewrite of the audio engine.  Avid dropped all 32 bit support, and went 64 bit, new plugin format only.  For some reason, the community didn’t understand that, and have been upset with Avid.  From what I’ve seen, that’s been a great move.  Sometimes, the legacy code will kill you.  Ask Microsoft… 🙂  Users have dismissed some of Pro Tools 11’s features, like the faster than real time bounce.  What isn’t clear is how MUCH faster than real time it is.  I saw some posts stating that 90 minutes of audio were being rendered down in under a minute.  Folks, that’s an AMAZING number.  Rendering the church’s audio usually took me 10-15 minutes, and that was for a measly podcast.  The one thing that the prosumer / consumer market doesn’t get is that tools that people make money are are usually designed to do one thing only… and that is let the user get something done as quickly as possible, with money rarely being an object.  Why do you think the studios buy high end computers, converters, boards, effects, etc?  You can get the same sounds with much less, but at a huge cost of time.  Pro Tools is centered around workflow, and using the least amount of anything to get the job done.  Watching someone do drum replacement on Pro Tools is insane, it’s that fast.  Unfortunately, the cost is that Pro Tools has a high learning curve.  Nothing that can’t be overcome, but one must live with it day out and in, trying to get as much done at once to get the real benefit from it.

The new Logic X is very interesting.  It feels like it’s definitely trying to get back into the race.  So far, from just a couple of days of puttering around on it, I really like the new version.  Look and feel are awesome.  It always bothered me that Garageband looked good, while Logic seemed to be stuck in the 90s 🙂  That certainly has been fixed (well for the most part).  Just playing around, the new workflow looks good.  One issue I did run into is that certain things in Logic are destructive.  I’d thought that destructive audio edits were long gone.  Unfortunately for Logic, working directly with the audio files can be surprising if you are used to Studio One.  The example I ran across is the strip silence command.  In Logic, that works directly on the audio file.  Frankly, that’s a bit scary, and probably VERY unneeded in today’s world with 1 TB hard drives.  Correction:  Logic X has non destructive edits for Strip Silence.  Hooray!!!  One other thing about Logic X has been that it is completely 64-bit only.  I think that’s a great move, and long overdue.  Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to come from any code clean up, more like just not enabling the 32-bit build flag in XCode 🙂  I do expect that there are going to be ongoing updates with Logic, just like Apple did with Final Cut Pro.  Which brings up one of the major cons about Logic… Apple itself.  Apple has been VERY tight lipped about updates the last couple of years, even more so after the Final Cut Pro X debacle that happened two years ago.  There were rumors floating round that Logic had been rewritten the same time as FCP.  My guess is that the ‘next’ version of Logic was done, but just like FCP, did not have feature parity with the current version.  After the FCP backlash, I think that Apple decided to modify the current Logic instead of coming out with a completely new version, hence the 2 year delay.  It would be nice to get a *bit* more warning that a new version is coming out than a text saying ‘Logic X is out’.  Pro communities usually like a *bit* more interaction than the current Apple silence.  I bet the FCP people have the same issues…

Still, my go-to right now is Studio One.  Even though it is being updated constantly, it feels like it’s falling a bit behind.  The look and feel from v1 to v2 seems to be a bit of a step backward, but the usability has been excellent.  One of the things that I like is that Studio One is making changes with each and every release.  v2 added a lot of features that people had been asking for.  When some of them didn’t exactly work like people expected, the updates changed the functionality in a pretty timely manner.  Studio One feels like it falls between the uber-Pro-ness of Pro Tools, and the simplification of Garageband / Logic.  Are there some pro level features I’d love to see?  Sure.  But, one thing that Studio One has that neither Logic nor Pro Tools has is unlimited track count.  Again, in this day and age, why should track count even *remotely* be an issue?  My laptop runs circles around my old Mac Pro.  Plus, the 100% non-destructive editing (unless you tell the DAW to do destructive editing) REALLY rocks.  I don’t know how many times I’ve clipped something short, then just been able to lengthen the clip to get the rest, even across projects.

All three have a different focus group.  Since I’m not doing as much church work and needing to be under the gun, I’ll probably switch back to Logic.  All of my plug-ins work in Logic, and I’ll be very interested to see how often Apple updates it.  My guess is that there are a couple of extra features on deck, just like the FCP updates.  The major issues I had with Logic are pretty much gone.  Get to 100% non-destructive editing and update the look and feel of the plug-ins, and Logic is a pretty much slam dunk for me.  The songwriting tools look VERY strong, which is where I’m going to be living for a bit.  Not as much audio production work going on right now.  For that, though, it will either be Studio One or Pro Tools.

It’s GOOD to have choices!

The good…

I has been a good week, aside from the car accident.  I sold my GT-6, and replaced it with a Boss GT-8.  For all you guitar players out there, the GT-8 is UNBELIEVABLE!  Also, I had a wonderful dinner with a friend of mine that I used to work with.  Work has been productive, there’s a new Star Wars trailer out, and Robots opened today.  I know what MY weekend plans are going to be.