Archive for the ‘Review’ Category
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Last week Groove3 released the new tutorial video Reaper Explained. This is the first ever full length (4.5hrs) training video for the DAW software Reaper.
DON’T FEAR THE REAPER!
Reaper is fast becoming a truly powerful and efficient DAW, are you up to speed on it? The amazing Kenny Gioia breaks it all down for you in this awesome, in-depth series of video tutorials focusing on Cockos Reaper.
You’ll learn about project creation, templates, routing, editing, using plug-ins, automation, rendering and exporting, MIDI, markers and regions and so much more. After viewing this collection, you’ll be able to work and navigate Reaper like a seasoned pro. More and more people are switching to Reaper everyday, don’t get left behind, and don’t fear the Reaper!
Product Hightlights
- 26 Tutorials / Over 4 Hours Total Runtime
- For all beginner to intermediate Cockos Reaper users
- Tutorials written by multi-platinum selling producer Kenny Gioia
- Simple to use video control interface for Mac & PC
I went through the tutorial over the weekend and I was thoroughly impressed by just how much is covered in a short time. I have been using Reaper fairly heavily (almost daily) for a few months now but never had any formal training. Reaper was a hard DAW to learn. This video really helped solidify my understanding of how various functions work in Reaper as well as teaching me a ton of stuff I hadn’t even seen yet (like the routing and grouping matrix). The section on Toolbar customization alone will improve my workflow immensely.
I don’t usually give ratings to products (maybe I should?) but I can’t stress enough how great this video is.
Rating: 9/10 Groove3 sets the bar high for quality tutorial videos and this one exceeded my expectations. This video is essential training for every Reaper user.
Groove3 Reaper Explained
Posted in Reaper, Review, tutorial, video | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Novation Nocturn Keyboard
Features
- 49 keys with Fatar “Fast Touch” keys
- 8 Encoders (Infinite Rotation) with touch-sensitivity and 11 segment Led rings
- Touch sensitive Speed Dial
- 14 Buttons with integrated LEDs, 6 of which are lockable transport controls
- 8 soft feel Trigger pads
- Sprung pitch wheel
- Modulation wheel
- General Automap Operation Buttons (Learn, View, Browser Groups etc.)
- Octave up/down buttons with LED indicator
- Button to lock/unlock transport controls
- Sustain Pedal: 1 x 1/4 Jack Input
- Expression pedal: 1 x 1/4 Jack Input
read the rest of the review
Posted in Gear, MIDI, Review | 5 Comments »
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
This is the first post from contributor Connor Hayes. Connor will be writing reviews and other articles for Audio Geek Zine. He uses Cubase, but otherwise is a nice guy.
—
INTRO
You will have to forgive me. Apparently my sense of time is completely useless because I still thought Auto-Tune Evo was new – that is, until the nice man at Antares informed me that it came out years ago. 2008 to be exact. Regardless – I still felt it was worth reviewing because I don’t hear Evo being talked about too much and I feel that it is a very important plugin. A lot of people seem to have a problem with tuning vocals, they think it’s cheating, or what have you, but I couldn’t live without it. To me, it’s the best way to focus on the attitude and the vibe of a performance, and if the notes are a bit off, you can fix them right up. It’s also the ONLY way, to me, to do a lot of layering in any reasonable amount of time.
Auto-Tune can be as transparent or as obvious as you want it to be – it’s all in how you work the retune speed. Auto mode on 0 (zero) retune speed will obliterate any trace of natural vibrato, or you can manually tune each syllable with whatever retune speed you need for each one, and it can tune up your vocals without leaving a trace.
read the full review
Posted in Plugins, Review, Software | No Comments »
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
When the Magic Mouse was first released I thought it was very cool, but held off on buying it until I heard some first hand reviews. The general consensus is it’s a good mouse, but was a little underwhelming.
I got a Future Shop gift card from my boss (Thanks Jason!) for Christmas and I ordered the Magic Mouse. I’m not going to get into a rant about Future Shop, even though I really want to, that’s not the point of the article. I ordered one…stuff happened…and I have it now.
Posted in Mac, Review | 6 Comments »
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
To be honest I’ve never given much thought to USB mics, I never understood why you’d want one instead of a proper mic and interface. Then I was in the situation where I could buy a Blue Snowflake for just $20 and I opened up my mind a bit. Blue is a pretty respectable brand and strangely less than an hour earlier someone showed me the Blue Icicle which was pretty nice for what it is. The # 1 thing I liked about the Icicle was that there was zero effort required to get it working with a mac and condenser mic. The # 2 thing I liked about it was I could use the built-in headphone jack on the mac for monitoring, essentially using to interfaces at once, it worked just fine.
So a guy offered to sell me his Blue Snowflake for $20, (I think he needed booze or drug money) and that’s a pretty good deal even if I only ever need it once. So the dude that never thought much about USB mics now owns one.
http://www.bluemic.com/snowflake/
So now that I owned it, I needed to figure out if I had any actual use for it and if it sounded even marginally good. My expectations were low, but there are much worse things I could have spent the money on. Let’s look at some Pro and Cons of this particular mic.
Pros
- Very portable, small & lightweight
- Inexpensive
- Very simple to setup
- Sensitive condenser mic
Cons
- Only 16 bit/44.1kHz
- Gain is computer controlled (not that bad with ‘Sound Source’ for mac)
- Thin USB cable will eventually wear out
- Sound quality not as good as a real interface + mic
Possible Applications
- Pre-production demos
- Field recorder for ‘found sounds’ out of my studio
- Skype
- Better mic for screencasting (tutorial vids for you guys)
So how does it sound? Well for under $100 I don’t expect much from anything. This is pretty decent I suppose but I didn’t directly compare it to a proper condenser mic at the time. Below are some examples of the co-op student at work playing acoustic guitar, comparing the Snowflake with the built-in mic on the Mac Book Pro.
So what do you think?
Posted in Gear, Microphones, Review | 3 Comments »
