Spectrasonics OMNISPHERE 2

Rich, what DAW package do you recommend? I was just looking over Pro Tools 12 which may be overkill for the kinds of things I do. Of course, my Mac has GARAGE BAND on it but I’ve never even opened its window. 

Precision thereminists, although they are electronic musicians, are notoriously ignorant of electronics generally and sound engineering in particular. Many people just want to “plug in and play” and know little or nothing about how to make their instruments - and themselves - sound good. Over the years, many people have told me that if they only had an RCA they’d sound great and their problems would be over. What they don’t know is that if they had an RCA their problems would just be starting, but they know best and they will not be dissuaded. 

It’s like what you said about unsuspecting people buying expensive sound engines, loading ‘em up, and STILL sounding like crap. There is so much more to it!

Peter,

At first you only need something that does the few basic things I discuss below and any of the DAWs should do that. Now Pro Tools is used by a ton of people, full featured, and its hard to go wrong with it. You never know what features of the DAW you may need over time. And really good MIDI editing functions are a must at some point, but likely not for you now. You also can't go wrong with the Logic Pro your friend uses (and it would be nice to just ask him questions he can easily answer for you if you have any road blocks).

But it really comes down to work flow. For example Cubase and Sonar have similar features, but for me Sonar is just a pain to use. Maybe because I started with Cubase. You may well just like the user feel of one versus another. Hard to say what will suit you best. But comfort is important and it would be good to try a few out somehow.

I think you can actually get a subscription to Pro Tools so you can try it out for a low cost on a monthly basis and if you like it you can either continue on the subscription or buy it. That might be a good way to go. If you don't like it you can cancel and try another one. Logic Pro looks like its only a couple hundred bucks (Logic Studio includes that I think and is the flagship product). MOTU Digital Performer is also a great MAC based tool (but more expensive and more than you may need). I don't have that much experience with Garage Band, Reaper or Fruity Loops (now FL Studio) but many use them - and people really love and rave about Ableton Live. But in the end, Garage Band is so cheap (almost free compared to the others), frankly it may be a good starting option to get your feet wet. Many say that it's easy to move from Garage Band to Logic. (I've only used Cubase, Sonar and Digital Performer and some I have not mentioned here so I don't want to steer you wrong).

So I would investigate these below and maybe for a few bucks just get Garage Band to get your feet wet. Who knows you may not need anything more for a while. Omnisphere lists it as one of the major tools they work with. (KISS is our mantra in the computer world).

Garage Band, Logic, Pro Tools and Ableton Live.

The high end tools also are now meant to do scoring to video as well having SMPTE interfaces, etc - this may be of interest to you down the road.

Some assumptions and info that may be of use to you:

Unless you are in the true digital music production business you are likely only going to use a small fraction of the features of almost any of the major DAWs. Which is good because you only want to learn the few things you need to to best apply this to your music. I would think initially what you will want to do is load up a library in the DAW and play it in Monitor mode - that is, not record it in the DAW but spew it back to your speakers & Roland recorder so basically you are treating the DAW as a means of playing the Haken or your MIDI keyboard in a way you have always done. You are just basically routing it through your DAW and computer that will function as a new instrument (or in this case 10,000 of them with Omnisphere 2). From there you can worry about actually recording on the DAW and all the things that go with that, including recording MIDI, not audio, and then manipulating MIDI in various ways playing that back through the plug-ins. But a lot of Omnisphere manipulation is going to be very easy using its configuration tabs - setting reverb, stereo width, and other parameters you control through the Omnisphere screens (that you guessed it can be accessed through your DAW).

So you really are (I think) interested initially in:

1. Connecting the MIDI instruments/controllers to the DAW/Computer through your MIDI interface

2. Bringing up the DAW, creating some instrument channels that map to MIDI channels and loading your plug-in sound library patches (possibly Omnisphere2 in this case) into those channels which it is assumed you are playing from the Korg or Haken (you can load in a mode that will set individual MIDI channels or you can load in an omni mode that will appy all MIDI channels to the instrument track you assign - so for example all the fingers you press on the Haken come out using the same sound). For example, if you assign an instrument track you create to MIDI channel 1 and you play a chord on the Haken and the Haken is sending each of the three fingers pressed on a different MIDI channel (only first note assigned to channel 1 will be played - unless you are set to Omni/Poly Midi mode). [That's an important tip you need to know for the Haken. But the piano will default that everything you play goes to a single MIDI channel - but make sure the MIDI channel the Korg is set to play on matches the MIDI channel you assign to the instrument track you create in the DAW].

3. Set the DAW so that when you play, sound comes out your sound interface to speakers or possibly routed to your recorder without having to record. This is normally setting to the "monitor" mode that all DAWs will support. This will let you play the thing like its an instrument and hopefully there will be no delay to worry about.

Hope this helps.

Rich

Peter,

Looking some more, GarageBand is what $4.99? to download to the MAC from the Apple web site. That's what's called a "no brainer". Why don't you just start with that? You should be able to do all the things I'm talking about above to start out.

This must be so cheap because they want you to upgrade to Logic Pro later. So you even have a built in upgrade path once you get used to GarageBand. Should be plenty of YouTube videos to tell you how to install things like your MIDI and audio interfaces if they are not already installed. 

Then until Omnisphere2 is out, you can grab a few free instrument plug-ins on the web to experiment with (in AU format for MAC - or possibly .component format). You will also see VST format - but that is typically for Windows. There are nice videos to show how to install plugins for GarageBand as well.

Free AU Plugins

Rich

Garage Band is already on my Mac (it came already installed in the computer) but I’ve never opened it. Cellist Erich Kory came over this afternoon and raved for an hour about Cubase. Apparently there is some sort of plugin console you can get (complete with faders, knobs, etc.) that will allow you to use your DAW as if it were hardware and not software. The whole thing is still very much of a mystery to me.

Erich did not have nice things to say about Pro Tools, or Apple Logic Pro.

Yes. Not just Cubase. They are called "control surfaces" that connect up to DAWs (Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, etc) that give you faders that let you mix like your analog console (the more expensive ones with motorized faders). They have mixer-like controls for recording functions and many have other things like pads for entering digital percussion lines, X-Y touch surfaces, knobs for tweaking MIDI parameters easily, etc. But these typically work in the MIDI domain (though they can control the analog recording features of your DAW too). So at some point you may want to actually record MIDI data from the Haken or Korg. The advantage of recording as MIDI (for plugins) is that you can tweak things, easily correct wrong notes and rhythms, etc - at the expense of being slightly quantized of course. You might not like it as its not the same as analog recording, but it has its advantages (especially for those like me who write big orchestral MIDI scores).

This is one of the best surfaces. Remember these are not analog mixers - they are DAW controllers that look like mixers. It comes with overlays for different DAWs so buttons can be labeled correctly for each DAW.  They can be more $ than your DAW.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MCUpro

But there are many others with different functions. Behringer for example has some good and much less costly alternatives.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BCF2000

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/XTouchC

This is a cheaper (but not cheap)  one meant for Cubase: but it doesn't have track mixing faders: 

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/CC121.

So don't worry about the control surface as there are lots of options for any of the major DAWs. Of course, there is nothing wrong with Cubase (and there are different versions there, so you can start out with an inexpensive package and upgrade if you need more features). Cubase has some really nice MIDI editing functions that let you draw dynamic and tempo shapes, great built in EQ on each track, easy plug-in control, etc (but others do too). But ask your Haken friend about Logic Pro. That may be the best path for Apple. Talk to him about the functions you think you will want.

I would fire up that garage band and see if you can connect your MIDI controller and sound interface to it. I need to check out that Roland recorder of yours and sound interface to see what might be the easiest way to get your computer to record.

Rich

Peter,

Here's another no brainer option. You can download Cubase for Mac it seems and run it for 30 days for free with no limitations.

You can try that to get a feel for Cubase and I can then walk you through some things if you like. If you want to do this, I would play around with Garage Band for now and wait to install Cubase at the end of the month when Omnisphere2 comes out so you can get 30 days with it (assuming you want to get Omnisphere2). I can post up some simple instructions and examples here once I get it. 

Rich

My husband and I only use Cubase... mostly because he's German and Cusabe well... is German :)

Peter, I seriously doubt that you need a high end DAW. They are overly complex beasts with a long learning curve. The reason for this is that they accommodate the idea espoused by Brian Eno of the recording studio as a musical instrument in its own right, and enable the user to construct a piece of music much as a sculptor or painter might make a work of art. My feeling is that this is not something that interests you. I would say with some confidence that you are more interested is creating an accurate record of a live performance of a piece of music and not changing it beyond recognition. Maybe you would make a subtle enhancement here and there, but not use your recordings as fodder for some 64 track extravaganza that could not exist outside of a recording studio.

My primary tool is Amadeus Pro. It is budget priced and good for cleaning up a recording - the noise removal tools work excellently and I can do 95% of what I want using 5% of the facilities it provides. Occasionally I want to get a bit more fancy and boot up GarageBand. Think of GarageBand as a DAW for beginners. If it turns out that it is not sufficient to your needs (it lacks noise reduction tools, for example, which is why I got Amadeus Pro in the first place) then learning to use it will not have been in vain as a lot of the skills you have acquired in the process are transferable to more heavyweight software.

Gordon has a point, and I'm sure you can add all kinds of noise reduction plugins to GarageBand as well if you need them. The whole point is you don't want the DAW to be an impediment to your music making. This whole exercise came out of wanting to use Omnisphere2.

I would just fire up that GarageBand since you already have it and see what it can do for you with one of the free synth plugins you can get on the web. Experiment a bit and see if you like it and get used to using the computer as musical tool.

I'm one of those "notoriously ignorant" musicians who doesn't understand sound engineering, so forgive the question -- what is the difference between the programs listed above and Audacity?

Thanks,

Beth