If you had read my last post you would know that I just got new speakers (Monitors) and am wanting to use the old speakers as rear channel speakers.

So my plan is to connect my RP8 speakers as main output speakers and use my RP6 speakers connected to my two available monitor outs on my Digidesign 002 sound card. I have now been told that I would have to use the separate outputs on channel 5 and 6 and use the routing on cubase, but this won't work as surround when viewing Youtube videos and play back of files without Cubase, unless I change my cable configuration. I have found that to get a surround sound setup, I would have to buy a soundcard which would cost in excess of £3000. There is another option, that is to have cables running from my motherboard sound card to the outputs on my Digidesign 002 and have them running into the speakers.

The question is should I bother or sell my old KRK RP6's and just use the money to upgrade at a later date to decent Genelec speakers.

Speaker upgrade

At the beginning of the year purchased a KRK Rokit RP8 G3, to allow me to add my original RP6, as a rear channel on stands. I also purchased a pair of Gorilla stands to go on my desk to bring the monitors upto ear height. Then a couple of weeks later I got the other RP8 for my birthday, so only now have a setup of 8" speakers. This matches my 8" Subwoofer nearly perfectly, but may look at upgrading to a 12" at a later date. KRK's in my opinion are just cheaper monitors which match up with my yamahas, but with slightly heavier bass levels. They seem to be better with dance tracks and some other genres, but they are limited. I will probably upgrade to Generlics, but they start at £600 each for something in my last speakers size. I am now making projects in 96Khz at 24bit, but my digidesign 002 keeps setting save states to 41Khz. I'm guessing maybe as it doesn't have a decent driver to manually set it to the higher Khz rate.

My next purchase will be a desk with 19" rack space. But it looks like a suitable desk will be about £370 from Thomann.de, which is a good dutch/german company to get cheaper audio gear.

I am also aware that I have a five and a bit old machine for everything else, so will probably have to upgrade my PC at some point also. My GF just bought a 2060 graphics card, i only have a 680 which not good enough for more recent games. I think she downloaded anthem which came free with the card, seems cool but seems slightly much for her 4th gen CPU. My PC is good for cubase upto 60 ish tracks of some VST 's.

This is a new track which I am piloting. It is a dance track using Hi-NRG style synths. https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/841847 I hope people like it.

I have an exellent understanding of making sounds frem scratch. about 80% I'll start off with one VCO, and build it from there. I am getting a good response on Facebook for my music. But I see a also slip or a rift which is the equipment we used and we got the best out of the modules, patch cables amd cable management. Most mods I deakt with was using valves. I used to service old radios as a kid. So I know how to build a valve set from scratch.

I like this new track, which I started to add piano abd 80's style voicing, using Vanguard and Pro v3.

I am persenting a new track to you which is called "Brutal" which can be found here: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/839775

I completed a new track which took me a small while to get off the ground. 

I hope everyone likes this new track. 

Play with me right now: 

This is a new song which I designed today, sequenced and recorded everything with highly practiced vocals. This has a 80's and early 90's heavy dance vibe to it, using techniques learned from Giogio Moroder, Daft Punk, Tiesto and many more producers. I recorded a majority of it using my Keystation 61 and using light quantization. I came up with all the synth lines. The vocal which uses a technique which I use alot using Antares Autotune, and dry tracks, makes a slightly chorused sound. I do this to reinforce my vocals and make it sound more structured. I get asked about how I do the vocals quite alot, and this is how I do it. It makes for a very personal signature sound, which I stand by.

I used a bit of light reverb, but otherwise this is largely unproccessed, as I don't want it sounding too muddy.

I might improve it using a bit of flanger, but otherwise this song is complete. 

I really hope people like it as this one has taken a lot of focus and playing around to get right. 

Anyway until next time, take care. https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/831772

So I have just released the 5th segment of the Concept series, which take a lot of the complexity of the original Concept song and making a nice sweet and fun project out of it. This one is pretty heavy in places and has been mixed down across a few different sound systems. I used all the synths I used in Concept Mk1, but I have added in doubles and triple synth lines in places to make a much fatter sound. Tell me what you think, this new song can be found here: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/806387?updated=1526680171 or just via my Music section. 

I am toying with many ideas at the moment, several of which are new vocal songs which I will release in due time, but I'm not completely happy with the tracks as of yet, as I think the vocals could need improvement. One song I'm doing was inspired by a song called "Roads by Portishead" which is a pretty poinyent and emotional song, but I really like the Rohdes piano sound and I've got a few EP sound in Cubase including a Wurli emulation and one by Air called Velvet piano. I'll see what I can come up with. 

New Songs produced with my snazzy new (2nd hand) sound card.

So I got this new Digidesign 002 up and running, after a week break in period I discover that every other time I launch Cubase the audio recordings or any raw audio playback is distorted and buggy as hell. I installed a older driver to get around this issue before and it is now doing the dammed thing again. It seems this is a Beta driver and the only newer drivers are for Mac only with support for newer versions of Pro-tools. So against my original £90 sound card against the older £2200 Digidesign 002 rack, the 002 really sucks! My old iCon AIO 6 which I just sold crashed less regually and the Presonus iTwo never crashed. So this really, really sucks. So I am now on the look out for a cheap 003 or similar sound card as I can't live with the fact that when inspiration strikes, the equipment may or may not be working correctly. 

My new song is called "My World" and is based on consitant problems I am having with this 2nd hand piece of garbage! https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/804983?updated=1525917670

Hello, everyone! Just a small thing which I want to know about and want to get off of my chest (and moobs):

So I've got a thing I am trying to get my head around, I know the answer to a degree, but I have a faint idea. I know if I released a track which was a remix of the Final Countdown by Europe (the track which was made in the 1980's), it would probably sound amazing, but I would have my ass handed to me by the moderators and probably be banned from the audio portal. But as I saw on the front page earlier was a animation short of The Simpsons, titled "Steam Hams", which had a animator draw it up and changed every thirteen seconds. They even used the same audio track, which I know is a blatant violation of copycat rules and regulations. So this is the thing right, I have a fair amount of songs I have released on my YouTube account, which I made on my Akai MPC which contain samples, some of them I have had permission to use, but some of I haven't. For example I have a song called "clint Eastwood" which contains as sample from a Clint Eastwood film which I ended up getting permission to use, but never released on this platform as I didn't know about how to go about doing it, even though I had permission to use it and had the emails to prove that I had talked to the copyright owners and had got full permission to use it, I thought I shouldn't release it on here just encase I ran into any issues. I had anther song which was my song called "My Girl", which had a vocal acapella by some girl called Delia, which released a song which featured her on a track called "Time by Chase and Status", it went down really well and to a point that I had over ten thousand YouTube views before I was unfortunately asked to take it down by a company called "WMG entertainment" which are a company which own many copyrights for Warner and Sony records. I know if I released that here I might have been banned. I also did a remix of Numb by Linkin Park which I again got permission to use.

I also wrote few tracks with some vocal shots, which I downloaded from a free acapella website, with vocals by women saying things like "take me to the top", people saying "1, 2, 3, 4" and so on. Some I tracked down from TV sources, which I know are against NewGrounds rules and I never included any of these tracks on my channel. So if the usage of TV samples are not allowed, as the terms of upload states just before you click on upload to the site, why am I singled out as not being allowed to do it, even though there is a option to state that this song has 3rd party samples contained in a certain song and saying to people to take discression when downloading and/or using certain songs on the portal?

It just seems to me that some people get away with it and I most probably can't. I am pretty sure if you asked 24th Century Fox for permission for using the Simpsons samples from the TV broadcast they would probably say no! So I don't really know what is going on in this regard? I just know if I did this I would most probably be banned! Also when people make a song which they don't know if it sounds like something which has already being made, i.e: A artist named "Sam Smith" in the UK made a song called "Stay With Me" which unknown to him turned out to sound like a track which was made about three decades before by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers called "I Won't Back Down", in Sam Smiths case Tom Petty saw that he wasn't blaitantly trying to rip him off, so he actually "Backed down" Pah-Tish....

So in this case wouldn't it be helpful to the artist on NewGrounds if they got a written warning and asked to remove the offending song, rather than just being flagged and outright banned from the audio portal? I know people that flout the rules, like uploading "Bangarang by Skrillex" for use in Geometry Dash and they know its blaitantly wrong, should most probably be kicked. But I just thought if this was the first offense, shouldn't they get a written warning. I just see being banned straight of the bat is a bit harsh. But if the Mods want to do this, whatever I'm not to judge what you guys do and how about doing it, its just a sugestion?!?

On another note, a while back me and Fireball01e released a song called "Devious" which after a short time was un-uploaded and everytime we have tried to put it back up within a day or so it is taken down. After three attempts I got a PM saying it sounded to close to another song and I was in violation of NewGrounds rules? This is the first and last time this has happned to me on here, and I am at a loss to know actually what went wrong in this case, when this was ligitametly a original song, and as my Dubstep goes, it was actually the closest I ever really got to doing something which was actually Dubstep.
This is the offending track on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdhsN6f3Upg&t=135s If someone can tell me what song it sounds like, please tell me. If this is just a bug on our pages also let me know as this was actually a really good song, which I collaborated on and am just slightly stuck with what actually went on.  

Anyway, in other news...My new sound card F'in Rocks! so much extra headroom, on my last sound card I could crank the volume all the way up and it wasn't amazingly loud, with this new one (DigiDesign 002) I can have it upto 45% and its verging on too loud! Also the bass/subwoofer response is so much better. I have being trialling it today in 44.1KHz @ 24 bit opposed to 16 bit mode, and she seems to be pretty stable. Even when cranked upto 96KHz and running about twenty tracks in Cubase, unlike my iCon AIO 6, it doesn't crash or make my computer glitch out! So I am actually very happy with this new purchase! I just sold my AIO for £70 plus £5 postage on eBay, which I originally bought it back in Febuary, it cost me £55! So at least I made a little profit on the sound card! I am unfortenately having a bit of a problem at the moment and its pretty unplesant one. A few months ago I noticed that when my lips got a little too close to the microphone, I got a bit of a electric shock. I always thought it was the Presonus Sound card I had at the time. Then about three weeks ago I bought a KRK 8s2 subwoofer and when ever I reached around to crank up the bass I was getting a bit of a tingle through the painted metal back cover. I now put my microphone on my desk and I get a bit of a tingle about upto half a meter away (I have a woodern desk). Me and my partner tried having a play around with pluggin and un-plugging things and we narrowed it down to either my right studio monitor or my computer. This seems to be a bit of a intermittant problem. When measured with the multi-meter, it registering about 700ma through any painted metal surface. The overall voltage is so small it wouldn't register on the meter, but we know its most probably DC electricity. I may consult a electrical engineer, electrician or a priest, not sure who to ask really. This morning the uncomftable sensation, has turned into a more nastier painful shock, and I am now feeling it through any metal surfaces on my new soundcard. So I hope I can get the problem sorted before it desides to cook one of my studio modules, monitors or new soundcard. I'm thinking it maybe a earth short somewhere, or a dead short to earth, with a possible reference to the mains. 

I am working on a organ piece at the moment which was inspired by the late Avicii, which I am absoutly shocked at the news of his death. The track in question is "Liar Liar" which has always being one of my favourite tracks of his. I'll see how it turns out and if I can develop it and get some decnt vocals down on it, I will hopefully see about releasing it on Monday day time. I'll see how it goes. 

I am just about to spend £250 on a pair of KRK RP6 G3 speakers for using as a rear channel in my studio setup, so I can make a few 3D style muscial projects and play around with some spartital effects like you can hear in Jean Michel Jarre's Equinox 4 and the sound track to "Life Force Tenka" for the Playstation 1. I am going through a bit of a phase at the moment and listening to some of my favourite old game sound tracks like track 1 off the Aliens: Trilogy for PS1/PSX, FF7 and Life Force Tenka (which I only played the demo for as my parents wouldn't let me buy the games as it was ESRB +17 and I was only about 8 or 9 when that came out. GTA by Da Shooters is always being a firm favourite as well. 

I am also thinking of getting some speaker stands to go on top of my desk to bring my studio monitors upto ear height and will buy a pair of stands for my rear channel speaker project. The cables for my rear channel, are going to be £19 each so, in total with new monitors its going to cost me around £340! I just hope the cables are fairly decent for said price and have a decent bit of sheilding on them, if not i am going to be slightly annoyed.

I really want to get a centre speaker as well for my project, but the only dedicated one I have found is a active Adam Near field monitor for £799! I am also thinking of setting up my Denon AVR-3802 as well as a pair of KEF Speakers on my desk for switching back and forth for mastering purposes, when I get around to doing this, I am not sure as I will need 1/4" jack to RCA adapters, and am only really focusing on my upgrade to 4.1 surround sound at this particuallar time. 

I hope everyone is well and I hope not to many people died while trying to read this book of a post! See ya all later. 

So as many people know I just upgraded to a Icon Aio 6 sound card and DAW mixer.

Now since I've been having all sorts of problems with it dropping out and generally being a pain in the bum, I am upgrading (actually i'm not sue if its a downgrade actually) to a Digidesign 002 Rack mounted sound card with about eight inputs and eight outputs, as well as a array of MIDI ins and outs, Digital ins and outs and support for me to upgrade my studio monitoring system to have 4.1 surround sound! I have been thinking for a while to upgrade my monitoring system to have left and right rear speakers. I am getting another pair of KRK RP6 G3 active speakers. To do so I needed to uprade my soundcard to have over five outputs, one for subwoofer, two for front left and right and two extra ports for rear lleft and right. My Icon Aio 6 has four outputs, so I could have possibly done it with that soundcard, but to get a full surround sound effect I needed all seperate channels. So today I looked up Digidesign 002 and 003 sound cards on the bay of "E's" and found a 002 going for £29.50 which I promptly bid on, it just went for £51.00, which was slightly more than I bargined for, but I dodn't mind paying as these were the same sound cards I trained on at college a decade ago and they were very good at what they did. I kind of wished I waited out for a 003, but I don't care. I was originally looking at buying a Behringer FCA1616 firewire rack mounted sound card, but it was £229.00, I could have purchased it, but with a pair of KRK RP6 G3 monitors with stands, would have worked out to £579.00. Doing it this way I have saved potientially £140ish, so I fairly happy. 

I am also happy that I could effectively run Pro-tools now upto version 8.01. So this is a turn up as I used Pro-tools in college and Dan (Fireball01e) and Davis use Pro-tools, and the output is very clean. So hopefully will add to the overall polish of some of my mixes. 

With the chance to get 4.1 surround sound means I can start making ACC files with upto 5.1 support, so that means I can make more complicated projects with overall 3D sound effects. I will also make some more cinematic style projects, and lots more full ochestral projects. Jean Michel Jarre used full DTS 5.1 surround support when he made Equinox, even though DTS didn't even exsist back then. He used all analgue effects to make it sound like it was in huge 3D space and he did it very well. I plan to do the same kind of thing with my newer electronica, dance and trance projects, but obviously will need to have a bit of a play around first to see what kind of soundscapes I can come up with.

I can see big things coming of this and I hope I can use this kind of sound sculpturing to my advantage. I'll see what I can do....