One of the most important tools you have in your studio is your reference monitors. If the monitors are muddy, your mixes are muddy. If they colorize your mixes in a strange way, your productions sound strange.

When you are looking for purchasing reference monitors, try to spend as much as you could, close to hurting the budget. There’s a reason good monitors are expensive, they sound and work well. Also, you will have this set of monitors for a very, very long time. The reason is that you need to learn how the monitors work, and based on that you know how they behave. Then, while mixing and mastering, you know how the characteristics, and you could compensate when you intuitively know from past experience how it will sound in other environments, a car, iPod, TV and so on.

You should never purchase reference monitors via mail-order, unless you have already listened to them, and know how they sound. One of the best ways is to purchase them from a store where you could do A/B testing. Burn an audio CD with material you really like and know inside out, and use this one to hear how various monitors sound. Some are very accurate, but it might sound tiring, others colorize the sound so you could work for a long time without ear fatigue, but then that impacts the exactness of the sound. The nice thing with a store with a decent return policy is that you could always return them back in case they don’t sound that well in your studio environment (more about that later).

There’s a lot of advice out in the forums about what monitors are the best. My only advice is, listen yourself and do not just assume. There are so many parts in a monitor, where some might like a certain sound, others not.

I would read qualified reviews online for particular monitors I’m interested in. Any source that has a decent to good test environment and tools would be good resources. For example, Sound on Sound has very good reviews, and they could point out if a certain monitor has flaws, or if the marketing info is from — let’s say they claim the monitor could go down to 40Hz, while in a lab test it was clear that the monitor could only handle 60Hz.

I would look for the following additional features in a monitor. As I work with dance music, the low end is important. The reference monitor should be able to go down to 35-40Hz so I could check out the bottom end. That means that the main cone should be 8″. Some claim sub-woofers are the way to go, but I prefer not to add that in, as it’s hard to over or under-compensate with different setups. For hip-hop where the sub-woofer in a car environment is a must, then that’s a big exception.

Balanced inputs! In this world of more and more electronics causing all kinds of nasty electrical fields, that is becoming a must. It’s also good if the front has a volume knob and power buttons. You might want to adjust the volume on the monitors in order to avoid those sudden huge volume peaks in case your computer setup wants to suddenly have max volume (happens now and then). As for the power button, it’s good to save energy today.

Some of the new reference monitors today have built-in DSP electronics to figure out the acoustical environment and adjust the output based on that. It’s a good idea, but usually such monitors are expensive. At least the monitor should have some kind of adjustment for the environment so you could do fine tuning of the output — however, this usually requires external tools so you could see on a computer screen how settings change the output, don’t just trust your ears.

As for placement of the monitors. There’s a reason they are called near-field monitors. Unlike the old-fashioned way of placing huge, expensive monitors in the wall in front of the mixer, these should be placed as close to the ear if possible. It means that you need to go with practicality compared with how it looks like in the studio. Sometimes you could find the sweet spot by moving around with your head, or placing the monitors around until it feels you are inside this huge world of music only.

Unless the manufacturer states that the monitors should only be placed standing, you could place them standing or lying by the side. This is how I have it just now in my studio. Whatever you do, don’t place them straight to the desk, the vibration will cause all kinds of subtle odd sounds. You could purchase somewhat expensive loudspeaker isolation mats, but you could get creative by checking out what’s in your kitchen and use similar material that is very cheap.

I would neither place the monitors on anything wobbly, such as high stands, this as I live in earthquake country, or if you have small kids navigating through your studio, or dogs…

The acoustical environment in your studio plays a big role in how the monitors sound, even with near-fields that try to eliminate some of these issues. This is often why the monitors sound good in the store, but nasty back home. I give you an example of the worst possible environment: a square room, with no damping material in the walls, no book shelves, sofas or anything to dampen, and a wooden floor. The square part means that the sound waves will bounce back and forth creating all kinds of funky new sound waves.

Remember that the total chain of audio has a weakest spot. If your monitors are excellent, but the D/A converters are not good, that’s where the quality levels will decrease. Fortunately most of the Firewire-based audio interfaces are very good today. Even the audio output from a Mac sounds really good, too. Also beware of too-long audio cables, or home-made audio cables with weak soldering. I would not go and get platinum-plated super-expensive cables, but it’s good to have something very solid cable-wise.

Some wonder if they could use studio monitors for private parties, sure, most modern reference monitors handle a lot of high volumes for a long time. However, party people tend to do odd things when they are intoxicated, so I would not risk to use expensive monitors in a party.

So what about the Yamaha NS-10 monitors? Well, long time ago the trick to get a balanced mix was to use those, as the mid-range in those sucked big time, and if you got the mix sounding good in those, they sounded good in most other places. The problem is that it’s a drag listening to production work with NS-10s day after day. You want to enjoy the music you are working with. You could set them up as an additional monitor, or use any old stereo monitors you have back home, or a set of computer loudspeakers. It’s always good to have a second set of monitors for A/B listening purposes. I still think that you need to do tests with iPod-like ear-buds, as the majority of music is listened to through such environments today.

This posting might be updated and annotated now and then, as I will start using it as my contribution on forums on postings where someone asks what monitor to purchase, and what to look for.

Fabric, the London based night club, just announced their podcast, so I was curious to listen to the first one. Not what I expected, at all, it was an interesting journey to the history of blues and forward in time, so why not, it’s good to listen to all kinds of music.

Phlow is an online blog that has articles about netlabels, and they just started a podcast series. This one actually sends out single songs most of the days, one at a time, so it’s like getting a single a day from their selection. It’s a good idea, and I suspect other podcasts that send out netlabel music might jump on this same concept.

Filter27 is another electronic music blog, and they also have a podcast, they don’t seem to send out so much music, once a month or so, but the DJ mixes are very radical and interesting.

I have my own Something/Everything podcast, the idea was to dump out music from my collection of material that I put together every month, but of course I’m running behind with it all, have two EP releases I need to get in place, and get BioWaves 005, now a one hour series. But I have not forgotten this other one, so as they say in the business: stay tuned.

One of the really easy and cool things with Ableton Live loop handling is that you could munge the loops to nearly any configuration you want. There’s absolutely no need to keep the original 4/4 loop structure in place, you could do just any kind of musical craziness with the loops.

For example, drum loops (see picture). I took an ordinary sounding 808 drum loop, and the placed fixed warp markers in very unexpected places. The end result is something that does not sound the normal kick/snare/hihat beat, rather something that has odd accentuations in the beginning, and a quick sudden burst at the end.

And that was just touching the tip of the iceberg, you could go through bass lines, pad lines, nearly anything, and make it sound very different from the original purpose. Still, there’s a need to make sure it sounds musically interesting, so it’s not yet-anther fun-with-effects-release.

I spend four years, I think, in the dot-com bubble economy here in Silicon Valley. This was the time where the business plans were  based on these three phases: 1) Build a web site, 2) ?!??!???!, 3) Profit. Those were strange times, and based on that I decided to never work in a company where the second part was not fully defined.

Anyway, I still don’t understand the business model of providing free disk space for downloads. Maybe someone is making some profit from blinking ads, but most consumers  by now should have developed a mental block to just ignore any ads on any web page.  Anyway, for us working with music it’s a bonanza to get free disk space here and there for use. Yousendit is a tool I use a lot, it’s the best to just blast demos and promos to other producers, and avoid overloading my web site’s transfer numbers.

Another place I just signed up for was Divshare. I’m still not sure if they have figured out phase 2, but hey, unlimited uploads, so why not. I just reserved an account in case I want to upload temporary mixed material, late night Ableton Live jam sessions, and other transitory material where I don’t care if the link is suddenly stale due to the owners figuring out another business model. Meanwhile, make use of this offer. If you tell your end users that this link is temporary, download now this mix or piece of music, they will get it.

By the way, the business model described above is actually from a South Park episode, the Underpant Gnomes, where phase one is to collect underpants, phase two is ’silence’, and phase three is profit. You could check out that episode on youtube. I think that rule applies to any other business enterprises, even related to doing music.

Usually when you work with creating and saving your presets, there are two paths. One is to save the presets using the plug-in’s own preset system, and save them to a known location. This is the cross-platform way, as the plug-in systems are designed to work with both MaOSX and Windows, and their internal presets are saved in a specific format.

However, Logic also has an aupreset format, you save this from the plug-in window itself? When is this useful? Well, in the new Logic Pro 8, when you select specific plug-ins, you could actually see their saved aupresets in the library browser to the right, and you could select them from there! Pretty neat, or what.

But it means that you need to save your presets in this format. Usually the location where the presets go, or in case you get .aupreset files from the net, is in the ~/Library/Audio/Presets/<name of company and plugin>/ directory. where ~ means your home directory. Just select this option from the downward icon next to thee Copy button when you save your own presets. You could also build your own sub-directories in this location.

There’s even a group-effort to export as many presets as possible in .aupreset formats — see this forum entry over at LogicProHelp with a listing of which third party plug-in presets have been exported so far, and how to download them (most likely you need an account on this forum to see this thread).

This is a feature in Logic that I start to rely on more and more. Basically, when you have saved a project setup with all the synth and plug-in settings, start tweaking on the existing settings. Immediately the compare button is hi-lighted. If you feel you went too far with the tweaks, hit on compare and you get back to the originally saved settings.

If you like the new value, save the project, and you could start again tweaking, if you wish

With this there’s no need to restore a project, or mentally keep in your mind: do not save, do not save, argh I did it….

Demand that every DAW should have this feature by default.

This is another trick how to handle loop cross-overs in Ableton Live. What typically happens with pad-like loops is that when the loop starts again, you could hear the transition from the end to the beginning. And Ableton Live, still in version 7.0, does not have cross-over handling.

One technique I’ve used from time to time is to insert a ping-pong delay at the end of such pad loops. Jut when the loop ends, I will increase the wet level with automation. Thus, when the pad ends, you get this filler that feeds into the next round.

You could experiment with reverb as well to get such a fill effect to avoid hearing the obvious loop cross-over points.

Another nice thing with such a delay or reverb is that it sounds very psychedelic, like mind-expanding, here and there! Anyway, this is another reason I prefer mouse-based automation loops, instead of using a controller, you could be far more exact with such settings, not that using a controller will make the production sound somewhat more human.

I’m afraid this will sound like a grumpy old man writing entries how things were better long time ago (it was not), anyway, had to release some steam, and if you think this is the opposite, feel free to quote.

For a longer time I’ve now listened to dance tracks where a producer is using a female singer, and then a remixer goes in and does more remixing.

What then happens is that the poor female singer is sampled with a tiny snippet, let’s say 1/16 bar, and that one is used as a stuttering effect across the whole remix. Most likely the original singer is very talented, and the lyrics might be very good, but there’s no chance to hear it.

Trust me, if you have a good singer, male or female, singing for your track, let her or him be heard with their true voice. By the way, why are there so few male singers on contemporary tracks, Underworld being one exception, and look how popular Underworld is?

Secondly. A lot of contemporary minimalist tracks indeed pave the way for new, interesting music, especially on the netlabel releases. However, I’ve heard enough tracks with that vinyl emulation/distortion mode, the one where it sounds like the track is slowly dissipating into tiny bits. We don’t need any more that kind of sound, it was originally just bad to hear it, so with today’s excellent music systems, please, I rather like to hear a really good production than something that is deliberately crippled just so it’s cool and sounds like the rest of similar vinyl distortion emulation stuff.

Hmm. What else? Oh, the use of arpeggiators. I’m falling to the trap myself over and over again. Arpeggiators are nice, but the stiff 1/16 scale up-down thingie, that’s been around since the 1970:ies, nothing new, nothing exciting. If arpeggiators are used, do something totally unexpected.

There’s maybe more, but I better stop. I like any kind of music that dares to be different. If someone emulates an existing artist or style, their chance of being recognized just diminishes, as the sound will not pop out from various mixes, radio shows, podcasts, shows and so on. Especially if the production is using a cliche effect, then it’s usually hard for me to get any more listening time.

Another new feature in Ableton Live 7.0 is so called side-chaining of plugins, the new compressor, gate and auto-filter has side-chaining options now available. This is nothing new, Logic has had this for a while, same with other DAWs. There have been ad hoc solutions with third party compressors to get the same effect in Live, but it’s good it’s built into some of the basic plugins now.

So what is side chaining? Basically you tell the plug-in that it should use another audio source and by the audio source changes the plug-in parameters will change. The classical example is compressor side-chaining. It’s been around for a while, but bands like Daft Punk finessed it into now the classical pump effect, and producers such as Eric Prydz seems to use it nearly everywhere. John Holden is another producer who has used compressor side-chaining in delightful unexpected configurations.

As for Live, the setup is easy, all you need to do is to remember to open up another view with a tag button, and you get the settings (see image). You define the extern source, and if you want to put in the side-chaining before or after the effect. Then it’s a matter of keying in various values to get the effect, from subtle to very pumping. A typical side chain source is a kick drum track, resulting in a classical pulsating dance floor sound.

Similarly, the gate has a similar control. In this case it’s the opposite, when the other eternal source triggers, it will open up the gate for this channel, leading to classical uses such as making sure that the kick and bass lines are together.

The auto-filter chaining works so that sweeps will trigger based on the external source. So all three have specific uses.

I tried them out, loaded in a couple of loops from a remix of Genietronix Skyflower that I’ve been trying to finally push out through the door, and hey, it sounded really interesting! So I need to make yet another remix, this time using the new side-chaining effects. So I’m all for it, even if it means that there will be even more and more side-chaining material out there, leading to a state where it’s cliche.

I think moderation is in order for side-chaining. It’s a good effect, useful for the dance floor, but too much sugar and cream destroys cakes. I’ve been in club events where the DJ played five-six or so side-chain tracks, and I swear I could not hear a difference, just this pumping low sound wave pulsating through the crowd for an hour. Maybe if you are in a different state, it makes sense, but for a listener it’s boring. Moderate use, for example not across all the tracks, makes sense.

My wife also claims she gets nauseated when she hears heavily side-chained compressor productions — which is also something I find fascinating, music that makes someone feel physically ill.

Anyway, as for Live 7.0 features, this is a big plus, or a ‘finally-there’ feature, depending on how you look at it. I’m not sure if third party plug-in vendors could hook into the side-chaining channels, maybe it’s available, so we need to wait and see if third party plug-ins will also have use of side-chaining.

Episode four of the BioWaves podcast series is now ready. This podcast series showcases excellent and fresh electronic music from net labels and non-label released material from producers. Click here to get info how to subscribe to the podcast series, and there’s more general information available at that page.

Feedback is highly appreciated - place comments below, or email me. Also, please send surprise emails about references to good net labels, or emails from producers with interesting music.

BioWaves 004 Track Listing:

1. Jon Doe - Flat Out Boom Boom Babies [Pinksilver]
2. Lega - Zi Don’t [Miniscule]
3. Karri Ojanen - F2F [Stadtgruen]
4. Nicolas Ovalle - Palpita Libertador [Exponencial Audio]
5. Steve Haze - Ueber Den Wolken [Analogue Mind Control]
6. Sascha Müller - Acid eats my brain [Ear Recordings]
7. Running Women Idea - Baroque [Net-Lab]
8. Roger M - Leaving the bid D (Outro) [Antiritmo]

Download
Download by right-clicking (Mac users, control-click) on this link.

Most of you know about the announced Ableton Live 7.0 by now, and you could visit their site to get all the details. I’m just now beta testing it, and I will post now and then findings about my tests.

One feature they announced, actually on the top of their announcement page, is an enhanced audio engine. According to the blurb they have precision 64-bit summing at all mix points through their program, POW-r dithering, optimized sample rate conversions and other advances.

Live has had a bad reputation about their mixing engine, it was not that bad, but all kinds of things out-of-control made the final sound not as clear and airy as with for example Logic Pro. Some things were not that obvious, for example, using warped audio clips caused dullness and less clear transients. Another issue that many have reported, and I noticed myself, was that Live was less forgiving about running hot tracks. Usually by keeping things below -3dB fixed the quality issues (bulky sound). And having no dithering support was not good, but I’ve used dithering tools separate from Live, such as Ozone, to fix that issue.

Anyway, what I did was to render out the same track with both Ableton Live 6.0.10 and 7.0b1. This is a new track from Genitronix called Funky Music, Up and Down (Level 5 remix), released very shortly, and it’s been a notorious production on my hard disk for a long time. The reason is that it has many dense tracks, and until a couple of weeks ago I could not tame it, until I did massive eq:ing across all the tracks. So I think this is a good example of a typical massive dance track, could it sound more airy with Live 7 compared with Live 6? Another possible test would have been a track with a lot of reverb, that usually also shakes out issues about clarity.

Anyway, I took the two exported 16-bit WAV files, and opened them up in QuickTime. This is at trick of mine to do A/B testing, I start and adjust the playback in the QuickTime player, and by switching the focus between the two tracks I could easily do A/B testing.

The verdict? Well, I had a hard time to hear the differences. I think with a full blind test I could have not heard any differences. It felt like Live 7.0’s rendered output was somewhat more clear, but it was so marginal. This all requires more testing, but I didn’t hear a big, huge difference. So anyone who has published tracks with 6.0, you didn’t miss out on anything big.

Some other thoughts, even if the mixing engine in Ableton Live is now fully 64-bit, there are all kinds of external plugins (might still be 32-bit or worse) and original sounds that will not benefit from this. The weakest links is still the weakest link. So this all is always marketing talk, so you need to be a little bit skeptical about all the talk about 64-bit sound engines. I might write something about the whole idea of sound quality, bits, floating point, and similar things shortly, as it’s a fascinating world, and musicians should know about it so they don’t fall for snake oil.

I will still release this track and some other Live-based tracks using Live 7.0, as the beta is stable, and maybe there are some small transients here and there that sound better, not to speak of improvements in the plugins, especially the built-in compressor and EQ8. Oh, the purist inside me.

Livid instruments just announced the Ohm DJ Controller, and it sure looks tasty. You could check out the specs yourself at their site. It was a clever idea (and they try to patent this) to have a 36-button matrix in the middle of the controller view with two sides for both hands.

It’s also good that they focused on the aspect of lighted controls, it’s darned hard to see controls in a dark DJ booth from time to time.

Anyway, this is part two. There has been all kinds of variations concerning making the ultimate DJ controller, or live controller. They all have good ideas. But I think the hardest issue is that every DJ and laptop performer has their own ideas how the layout should look like. Sometimes you could do compromises, but if you want to pay a lot of money for a controller, you really want it to behave as close as possible to the vision you have.

For example, in my case I would like to have sliders for various channels, and on top four rotary pots, and one of these should switch the behavior of the other three. For example, in one mode the other three behave like a normal 3-band EQ. In another mode, they are used to activate and control a beat splicer. And so on.

I would not mind to have a touch pad, as it will take a while until I think Ableton Live will have non-mouse support for all the features I need, especially concerning finding clips and inserting them to tracks.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every DJ and performer has their own small things they would like to have. If any of the big companies, M-Audio et rest, would just go ahead and provide a modular approach to controllers, that would be better. There’s always the option of building your own controller, but I’m afraid that it takes time and effort, and meanwhile most of us are busy doing tracks, so a commercial solution would be better.

Even better, such a solution would most likely have customers constantly buying more parts.

Yes, I know of Mawser. They never seen to ship their product, the look is industrial, and their prices are too high. Maybe if some other company purchased Mawzer and finalized their product…