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What about a Digital Audio forum?

pulsewidth947

pulsewidth947

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 25, 2005
1,106
2
We have Digital Video, Design and Graphics, Web Design and Dev, but what about those of us making music on a Mac?

Currently the only big resources I know of are OSXAudio and the Sound on Sound forum. I can't bring myself to use OSXAudio much because of the awful colour scheme. Yet I check MacRumors hourly, and I'd love to talk about my hobby!
 
pulsewidth947 said:
We have Digital Video, Design and Graphics, Web Design and Dev, but what about those of us making music on a Mac?

Currently the only big resources I know of are OSXAudio and the Sound on Sound forum. I can't bring myself to use OSXAudio much because of the awful colour scheme. Yet I check MacRumors hourly, and I'd love to talk about my hobby!
Click to expand...

I've mentioned it before, as it's my specialist area, I think more evidence of a need for a forum would be good, I'll raise it again with the powers that be.

In the meantime osxaudio.com is great if you work in black and white. :D
 
Its got my vote.

It would be nice to have somewhere other than osxaudio to talk about dig audio/production/composition.

Hell, it would be nice to have some people to bounce some ideas off of, and get some alternative solutions.

I've always got something cooking in Max/MSP, so ill be talking a whole bunch. :p
 
faintember said:
Its got my vote.

It would be nice to have somewhere other than osxaudio to talk about dig audio/production/composition.

Hell, it would be nice to have some people to bounce some ideas off of, and get some alternative solutions.

I've always got something cooking in Max/MSP, so ill be talking a whole bunch. :p
Click to expand...

Are you running max/MSP in Tiger?

Any more for the Audio Forum?
 
Not currently. Im running 10.2.8 now, but my copy of Tiger should be here by the 15th, so i guess we will see then.....

Upon some "logical" thinking i figure Max/MSP should run fine. When the university upgraded to 10.3 there were no problems (other than the problems associated with the first few revisions of 10.3), so i am going to give it a try.


Oh i did run across this link http://www.synthesisters.com/download/incremental/mxj050430tiger.sit
that says to replace mxj with the one from the link i just posted.

Also looks like we may need the new PACE and Interlok 5.0 extensions. Link

The link to the original post about mxj is here: Link


Jeez...it just reminds me how much i HATE searching around in pages like that.

Hope this works..
I will post back when i get Tiger up and running with Max.

<edit> BTW, it seems that the Runtime is working fine, so if you just need to perform you should be ok on Tiger as is, however this summer is programming time for me</edit>
 
Thanks CanadaRAM

I checked out that forum and it makes me wish i had the ability to speak other languages :(

Did a few quick searches, and no discussion on there of Tiger and Max/MSP though. Although people on that forum (from my quick look) seem to be a lot more skeptical and less experimental that us typical MR members are.
 
faintember said:
Not currently. Im running 10.2.8 now, but my copy of Tiger should be here by the 15th, so i guess we will see then.....

Upon some "logical" thinking i figure Max/MSP should run fine. When the university upgraded to 10.3 there were no problems (other than the problems associated with the first few revisions of 10.3), so i am going to give it a try.


Oh i did run across this link http://www.synthesisters.com/download/incremental/mxj050430tiger.sit
that says to replace mxj with the one from the link i just posted.

Also looks like we may need the new PACE and Interlok 5.0 extensions. Link

The link to the original post about mxj is here: Link


Jeez...it just reminds me how much i HATE searching around in pages like that.

Hope this works..
I will post back when i get Tiger up and running with Max.

<edit> BTW, it seems that the Runtime is working fine, so if you just need to perform you should be ok on Tiger as is, however this summer is programming time for me</edit>
Click to expand...

Good info, we have a few new PowerBooks on the staff, and they are going to be used for some Runtime performances with piano's and a quartet, I think we have a little time before the heavy programming gets underway again.

I'm not a max/MSP user myself, but some of my research-orientated colleagues use it, and part of my responsibility is facilities design and co-ordination, so I get to make all their kit requests work together....

I'm an old rock n roll engineer at heart, but I'm armed with Logic and ProTools these days, not 2" tape and EMT plates... :D
 
Cool. Sounds like runtime is going well.....Strange that max isnt running if runtime is. Runtime accesses the same files, processes, etc. as max but it just dosent allow the user to assemble things..... weird that one works and the other dosent (or is buggy)...

I hope 10.4.2 helps some of this out...

WinterMute said:
I'm an old rock n roll engineer at heart, but I'm armed with Logic and ProTools these days, not 2" tape and EMT plates... :D
Click to expand...

Funny you said that. Im a grad student in music composition. Of course in all my electronic work we use all the software goodies. Well last fall i decided to ditch the software and just do a analog synth, analog sequencer, music concrete piece....all recorded on 2'' tape. The end product sounded pretty cool, but damn, ever since that lil experiment i have switched back
to my software, and i am NOT looking back. :D

So you get to make everything work together, huh??? lol

I had some experience with this recently.

A fairly famous contemporary composer came to my university to be part of a new music festival, and sent a copy of one of her electro-acoustic pieces to be performed well in advance. We loaded the patch, it seemed to work, that is until the practices with the performer began. So we called her, she said she DIDNT write the patch, but paid some programmer to do it and she would have to contact him to find out what was wrong. 10 mins later i fixed the patch (at the time i had only been working with max for 3 months). The programmer suggested a few things, all of which didnt make sense. So i kinda take pride in that, but its not really fun making those adjustments last minute. We had another patch at that festival that refused to work for the composer, so him and i basically re-wrote it in 3 hours, 10 beers, and at least 1 pack of smokes. lol.

It was fun, but i wouldnt want it to be my job...lol...i get a lil strange when put in situations like that...hehe
 
I think that, with the rise of Apple's own consumer-audio applications like Garageband and Logic Express, it's important to have a forum that isn't hounded by pros (or amateurs masquerading as pros). Being the dog-eat-dog industry that this is, no one seems to take too kindly to the newbies who speak out of turn :rolleyes:.

Tim.
 
.:*Robot Boy*:. said:
I think that, with the rise of Apple's own consumer-audio applications like Garageband and Logic Express, it's important to have a forum that isn't hounded by pros (or amateurs masquerading as pros). Being the dog-eat-dog industry that this is, no one seems to take too kindly to the newbies who speak out of turn :rolleyes:.
Click to expand...
Yeah I can understand that, but from recent experiences on MR theres plenty of friendly people around. I cant stand the elitism you get with certain subjects.

The way I see it we all started somewhere. I had to teach myself most of what I know by trial and error, which took a long time. If I can pass on some knowledge and help someone get started with a wonderfully fulfilling hobby then I will!

Of course that said, I cant say I'd be looking forward to posts like "Should I get Logic or Pro Tools?!?!" "Which is better X software or X".

Man Max/MSP seems to be really popular with you guys :). I wanted to try it out once, but I figured I find Reaktor much quicker (as that's what I'm used to). After a horrible experience with Csound at Uni I decided how much I love mindlessly creating synths using a pleasant GUI!
 
pulsewidth947 said:
Of course that said, I cant say I'd be looking forward to posts like "Should I get Logic or Pro Tools?!?!" "Which is better X software or X".

Man Max/MSP seems to be really popular with you guys :). I wanted to try it out once, but I figured I find Reaktor much quicker (as that's what I'm used to). After a horrible experience with Csound at Uni I decided how much I love mindlessly creating synths using a pleasant GUI!
Click to expand...

There's bound to be a lot of "which is better" type threads, but they have been dealt with in many other threads before, if the new forum goes ahead, I'll track down a bunch of the common ones and shift them into the forum, so we can have a ready source of answers to link to.

We have Reaktor on a lot of out workstation Macs, max/MSP isn't used much at under-grad level, but the post-grads and research active staff use it a lot. There are a lot of physical interface things you can do with max that you cant do in Reaktor.

Where did you study?
 
pulsewidth947 said:
The way I see it we all started somewhere.
Click to expand...

That's exactly right. I started off recording with a standard cassette machine as a 12 year old, then moved up to a Fostex 280 (4-track), then Pro Tools FREE, Pro Tools LE, Pro Tools TDM - it's taken me a long time to get where I am, but there are so many things that I've had to figure out for myself simply because I find Pro Audio forums to be a little aggressive. It seems that even those who try to offer help are shot down by someone who thinks they know better! But it seems to me that MacRumors is far more friendly than the likes of any of the Pro Audio forums that I frequent and that friendliness should be taken advantage of.

I can't say I'm too perturbed about the likelihood of "Pro Tools or Logic" posts, I mean... those kind of questions are equally important to a newbie as the concept of gain structure, routing, etc.

Anyway, to cut a long, rambling post short, Macs are synonymous with audio and recording (nearly everyone has GarageBand, whether it's a suitable recording application or not is irrelevant), so it seems only logical that MacRumors should have some kind of dedicated recording forum :).

Tim.
 
This forum WILL be Newbie-friendly

You are right, we all started out somewhere.

Personally i am starting my second year of my masters, and i have really only been working with electronic music for about 3 years (that is if you include one year of Finale work...lol), and ive only been working with Max/MSP for about 6 months.

We all stand to learn many things from each other, from the "pro" the "wanna-be pro" to the novice/intermediate to the new person, etc.

My first max patch recorded a sound for 4 seconds and played it back as soon as the recording was over. Now i have several electro-acoustic patches that listen for various triggers, produce granular synthesis, "intelligent" panning, etc, and i still have a LONG way go to be where i want to be (not that i'll ever get there, but the learning/reward is in the trying!).
The only reason i developed so quickly was lots of practice, lots of tutorial practice, and lots of people to talk to/ instruction. We all do have to learn, and we are all on different levels. Ask me a question about how to emulate "x" synth, and i would be pretty useless, ask me about interfacing with the software externally, live-processing and i can prob help. We all have our specalities/intrest area. Hopefully we can grow each other, and stimulate each other as well.

Be damned to the crass elitists!!!! All hail the common user!!!
 
Csound/max/reaktor/supercollider

To the poster that mentioned Csound...

Yeah i have had MANY bad experiences with Csound. I dont do well with just lines of code/commands. I need to see what i am doing to some extent, and i like the feel of Max better than anything else. However a lot of people i know are using Csound and/or Supercollider just b/c it is free.

Reaktor is good, but i find my hands tied in the program a little bit. I think for dj's/trance/dnb/whatever other simular genre, that Reaktor feels a little more like home than Max or Csound, and i find Max to be above the heads of most undergrads, or at least they dont want to spend the time learning it.

Each of the programs have their own strong points and failings, however they are all good to at least know something about (besides the fact that mr. "x" doesnt like it, lol) :p

Me and a friend actually tried to do the same thing, me programming in max, him in reaktor, and our end products sounded quite simular, however the paths we took were drastically different. Personally, i think that is very cool, and one of the attraction points to digital audio. :)

Cheers...
faint
 
Looks like theres enough interest in a D.A. forum!

faintember said:
Yeah i have had MANY bad experiences with Csound. I dont do well with just lines of code/commands.
Click to expand...

Yeah that pretty much sums up my view. Having to code a synthesised voice for a module of my degree. I mean it was easy enough, but having to code, then render to wav, then check the wav, then change the code then render again etc. Thats just painful :) Thats why I loved Reaktor. Connect stuff together play some keys on a MIDI keyboard and you instantly know how stuff sounds.

I should really look into Max/MSP because most of my influences within Electronica seem to use it. But then again, I'm happy with my current software and I'd rather spend time making tunes rather than learning something completely new again!

As .:*Robot Boy*:. states, Macs really are synonymous with music/audio/many creative arts, and MR is an ideal place to start the revolution (i.e. chipping away at the elitism of 'pros' thinking they are better than everyone)!
 
It's been received favourably upstairs, just sorting out some details, it may well be a sub-forum of the Music forum, mainly because it'll be a minority interest forum to begin with, but we'll see how it goes from there.

Watch this space as they say... :D
 
Fantastic :)

I'm looking forward to it! Cant wait to start geeking it up about the latest vsts and mic techniques :D

Maybe we should start a "Whats your favorite frequency?" thread :rolleyes:

On a completely unrelated matter, have you looked at anything to do with Cymatics? Very pretty reading (I think I maybe addicted to the Wiki widget :eek: )
 
woo hoo.. thank's WinterMute for getting this off the ground. I've been recording professionally on and off for the last 12 years. I recently switched to the Mac (17 1.67 PB/ Logic Pro) and am having a great time learning the ins and outs of the platform. A digital audio forum in the spirit of the MacRumors should be a great resource for all. :)
 
You go WinterMute!

Sounds great that it is being taken well, and i think this would fit well as an subtopic within the music area as it is a fairly specialized area of music.

Oh, and to the fav frequency question.....33hz (not really, but there is a funny/strange/plum weird story behind it if anyone cares, lol) :p

-faint
 
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