What they used to call “Fruity Loops” they now call FL Studio. I couldn’t tell you the last time I used it. I can’t even remember if I actually did any work in it or I just played. I do know, it was Windows-only but they later came out with a Mac version.
Anyway, I bought the boxed version of FL Studio Producer v8.x (Box) in November of 2009. I was able to sign up for LIFETIME UPDATES for a one-time fee of $39. Where they say “While our competitors typically charge between $150-250 for an update. With FL Studio you will always get the latest version free because we believe you should have the program you paid for, bug-fixed and updated for as long as we develop FL Studio.” Yet I have a company that charges me yearly for a perpetual license whether they upgrade, bug-fix, or not.
So while I may not download and install the latest FL Studio, one day, I may just play.
May 23rd, 2020: Harry, my cat, slept through the delivery I had been waiting for for what seemed like an eternity. It was a very specific WiFi card that I needed – and had made its way all the way from Shanghai, China. I ordered it April 16th from Newegg.Com because 9 days earlier, the world saw this:
Ever since the announcement at the most recent NAMM, I couldn’t wait for LUNA!
Finally, I would be rid of Avid and all the idiosyncrasies that came with running Pro Tools as my main DAW.
So, as soon as I got the announcement email, I downloaded LUNA. It required macOS Mojave or better (which at the time was only Catalina). I was running High Sierra – and if I recall, LUNA did run on that, but I can’t remember if I had some sort of issue, or if I just figured I must be at the OS LUNA wanted. I had purchased a Radeon Pulse RX 580 on June 21st, 2019 for when I decided to make the leap to Mojave (as Nvidia was no longer supported) so I figured I’d skip over Mojave and go straight to Catalina.
So somewhere between April 6th and April 16th 2020, I Carbon Copy Cloned my running High Sierra system and started on with the Catalina installation. As with most Hackintosh installs, there are things here and there that either set you back or realized you wanted differently, so this could result in several attempts at the same thing. This is usually with your Hackintosh doing whatever it’s doing while you’re on your MacBook Pro surfing TonyMac‘s site making sure you’re doing everything right and searching for answers with whatever questions you may have.
The new video card worked great the installation seemed to go okay, I just couldn’t connect to my network. Thinking back, I did NOT upgrade to High Sierra from Sierra cause my 43″ TV couldn’t be used as a 4K monitor for some reason – the option that made it work on Sierra was not available in High Sierra, so that’s why I never upgraded. When I went to the Slate Ravens, I no longer had to worry about that – well, I covered this already. SO I thought maybe there was something like this for Catalina and Mojave, so I did a Mojave install, but the same result, no network.
So searching TonyMac and Googling Hackintosh in general, revealed that my WiFi card didn’t work with the new macOSes. I needed a new one. Amazon and Newegg didn’t have them, but I was able to order this particular WiFi card through Newegg because there was stock in China. Buying something from China in April when they were just blamed in March for a global pandemic seemed sort of ludicrous, but I’m an American, and I want what I want the fastest way I can get it not caring how that is accomplished in the end as long as I get what I want.
High Sierra was okay with the new video card, so I ran with that while I waited.
So after an eternity of shipping (during a pandemic), the WiFi card arrived and I installed the new macOS and began fresh installs of all my software and putting all the registrations in place. Going to all their websites, logging in to get the latest versions, and retrieve my codes (thanks iCloud for saving all that stuff for me) with no problems, I finally fired up LUNA.
Getting around the new software was clunky, but I could see all that clunkiness going away in the coming months of using it over and over. Just understanding there are different places to look when you click on certain things, etc. I found that my subgroups solo’d sounded different than all of those instruments solo’d. Weird things. I sank a bunch of money into the add-ons that most people assumed came with LUNA from their NAMM presentation, but surprise surprise!
All done mixing, so now we BOUNCE!
LUNA takes over 15 minutes to bounce a 4-minute song (even directly to WAV). With each LUNA update, I would load up my LUNA session and bounce – still takes ungodly forever. I finally posted about this on their forums – I mean SURELY there are many more having this issue. Drew’s (UA employee that’s in all forums and webinars) suggestion is to use real-time bounce (which will take no longer than the 4-minute song) and leave feedback via LUNA. Uhm, the last DAW to have real-time bounce was Pro Tools, and that’s even been years – all the other DAWs would do this way before Pro Tools.
For the life of me, I can’t believe any of these guys that they have been broadcasting from their studios don’t have this issue in the box. I’ve yet to see any of them bounce a mix live and show “offline” take any less time than real-time.
I revert back to Pro Tools every time. I need to make fast tweaks to sessions from notes via email or sometimes live through a Zoom session and sending audio through AudioMovers so the client can hear and make tweaks in real-time. I need to bounce those out and move on to another session. It could be that we’re working on a few sessions at a time with the same client, or moving on to another client in another genre or in another country perhaps – regardless, LUNA’s bounce is unusable in a working studio.
I’ve been so disappointed – I wanted LUNA to put Pro Tools to shame so I could start using it as the primary DAW in my studio, but besides this MAJOR flaw, there are others that prevent me from using it. It’s locked to its own CUE system, and that’s not how I roll. Pro Tools lets me use inputs and outputs the way I want. I like to use my drum room mic between live tracking on an AUX as a way to hear people talking in the room. Well, there’s a webinar coming up that’s supposed to address my situation – let’s see what comes of that.
What prompted this post was a recent v1.1.6 update to LUNA, and bounce is still the biggest limitation for working professionals in my opinion.
Steinberg released Wavelab Pro 10 and after my purchase and download, I of course clicked to INSTALL it. Nope! I needed a minimum of macOS 10.13 – I’ve been on 10.12 for a very long time. The main reason was because High Sierra didn’t support my 4K LG TV as a monitor like plain ol’ Sierra did.
Because I no longer use the 4K TV as a monitor since going to the Slate Raven Dual Core Station setup, I no longer had the need to have the 4K supported.
So finally in October 2019, I installed macOS High Sierra which was announced June 7, 2017 and available later that fall. Not gonna lie, had some set-backs due the Hackintosh using an Nvidia card, but they were quite easily thwarted, but the time wasted waiting I’ll never get back. I practiced my guitar skills while waiting. I’m performing F Dorian this coming Tuesday at a private event at Reggie’s House.
After moving in the bare bones gear to have a working studio, I found that I wanted to get myself a console to put my display and rack my gear. I was just using a table for the monitor and road racks for the gear.
First couple sessions were basically a jazz band consisting of drums, keys, upright bass, saxophone and trumpet. This allowed me to make sure all monitoring was working and I was limited to the 18 or so channels I had coming through to the control room via the drum snake and a patch panel in the other room.
Second, we shot a video with audio to sync up afterward for a web series. Brian Bortnick was the first of these two.
Third was LauraLea Taraskus for the same web video series.
Since the table didn’t have much girth, if it were bumped substantially the display would rock and all that were around thought the worst. So, I started looking into getting a proper work station to place the display and rack the pre-amps, etc.
I was pretty dead set on an Argosy Halo. What really did bother me was how the display blocked the main view out into the live room.
At that same time, the Slate Media Technology RAVEN MTi CORE Station with 2 RAVEN MTi2s went on sale and I figured for the same price I was considering for the Argosy, I would get a workstation plus 2 Raven MTi2s as well! I did have to consider that I was also dropping from 4K back down to 2x HD.
So I went for it and also picked up the Corestation sidecars to rack the gear.
Breaking all the gear down and wiring it up again was such a joy!
I got a bigger piece of wood to mount the existing Hi-Z and speaker connection that were on the previous panel and added my 32 channel snake so now all 32 channels are coming into the control room. I also found channels that were thought to be unavailable inside the control room wall, so score there!
Now I have an unobstructed view with the artist and a really nice recording system in the control room to pilot the studio that’s nice, neat and looks really great too.
The only complaint really is that the top of the core station is too small to sit my speakers. I had to purchase a taller set of speaker stands to support the rear of the speakers behind the console.
The first couple sessions through this setup proved incredible to me. Utilizing the new preamps etc., the raw recordings have never sounded so good!
Throughout July 2018, I’ll be moving WombatStudio.Org from Philadelphia, PA to Gibbsboro, NJ.
The NE Philadelphia Mayfair basement re-model that I started August 2017 didn’t go as planned due to many little things that amounted into nothing getting done the way I wanted.
April 21, 2018, sitting on Reggie Wu’s couch while my son Frank was completing his guitar lesson, I was skimming Facebook and I saw an ad for “musician’s dream house for sale” and the rest is history.
We settle Friday, June 29, 2018.
The house has a soundproofed studio built into the basement already. It includes a control room, a live room, a guitar iso room and a lounge. The 3 windowed control room looks out into 1. the drummer’s area, 2. the main live room and 3. where the guitar amps go. There are gobos that can shape the room differently if needed.
Parking! I find it hard to find a spot close to my own row home anymore. The new place has ample parking and I will always have a spot to park as well as those making music.
Woods, isolation from neighbors, there’s even a fireplace! I can’t wait.
But, for those that were happy with the convenience, there’s no longer a toilet in the main room.
Figured I would share one of the many things I do but don’t post on the website. The Eagle Theatre had Rock of Ages to begin their 2017 season. It sold out every night and even the added performance. I run the live sound at the theatre.
This is the Rock of Ages session that was recorded for the theatre’s archival purposes. I’m remixing it to sound WAY better than what the video guy got through the board. This consists of Drums, bass, 3 guitars, 2 keyboards and 14 vocals – also in the session is the conductor’s mic, a spare mic that lived on stage that sometimes was sung into as a prop, a MAC channel for sound effects and finally, the camera audio which is more of the room. You can click on the image for a 4k screenshot of the Pro Tools session.
Live sound is much different, and in this show’s case, the drums being in the room never made it into the PA, hence, not the board recording.
I asked for a low res video of the show so the remix can sound like it should by looking like it should. If I decide to get fancy and start panning stuff, I want to make sure I go where the performance came from.
Anyway, it’s tedious and very time consuming so you better love what you do, and who doesn’t love mixing audio?
This session is approximately 2 hours long. That’s about how long it took Andrew Scheps to explain to me how he mixed Green Day’s “Bang, Bang” which is a 3:26 song. Considering that it takes anywhere from 4-10 hours to actually mix a 3:26 song, think of the time I’m spending in this Rock of Ages session. *sigh* Also, everything has to be automated within one session to create one resulting file. Can’t break them up and mix each individually so all levels, mutes, etc have to be done on a consistent two hour audio file.
… and they always ask how long it’s going to take – why does it take so long …
So there’s been a lot of talk about web sites lately that I decided it was my turn. I developed the last site from scratch creating my own theme, but this time I decided to let other people do the work for me.
Ever/After is currently made up of guitarist Reggie Wu and drummer Jim Drnec. They’re calling it a recording project. Originally there were two more members, Mark Evans on bass and vocals along with John Dennis on guitar. Reggie and Mark are members of Heavens Edge, and Jim drummed for The Dead End Kids, Network, Cinderella and the list goes on.
When I started running sound for Octane back in September 2004, I never thought I’d ever record their music, I mean other than live. Over the years I started acquiring equipment for studio recording and along the way tracked some multi-track shows of theirs. Tin Angel shows, “Rise Up” CD Release show at Bootleggers and Brian Bortnick’s last night. I did this with a MOTU 24io straight out of the FOH console into Cubase SX3 and then remixed at home.
Who would have thought the guy that registered protoolssucks.com would be using ProTools all the time now? I think it came with the ability to use 3rd party interfaces with PT9? Just before PT9 came out I started using PT8 a lot more since a lot of the tutorials I was watching were using ProTools and more of it made sense to me.
