GaZaa

My iPhones microphone randomly stopped working months ago and the home button is really temperamental so I took it to apple for repair. They wanted £120 to do a straight swap but suggested claiming on house contents insurance. Tried doing that but because I've not knowingly dropped the phone it's my problem and up to me to pay for it. I'll be glad to get rid of the pile of shit and as most of you guys seem to be Android fanboys, and I've seen and read good things I'll hopefully be upgrading to a more reliable and useful phone soon. Insurance is there to put the owner of the insured goods 'in the same position they were in before' so not to make gains or losses. So if you broke your phone and insured it as working as Danny says it would be fraudulent. Doesn't stop people doing it though and then complaining that insurance on things is so ridiculously high! I wouldn't drive my car uninsured, crash it and then insure it to get it fixed. Morally I think the same applies with most other things too.

In the flesh it is absolutely brutal and sounds it too. It's a fair while ago but they spent a day or so launching it up and down the road before they properly took it out. About a week later the guy from RS Tuning came in to where I used to work n seemed pretty pleased with his handy work. From what I remember they have an Evo 5 that they were also trying to get full beans out of and Paul had a caged megane that was also pretty stupid...

In related new I live about 3 miles from Millers Oils and used to word about 30 seconds away from RS Tuning in Leeds depending on what car they decided to fly up the quality stretch of back road in which it is based. They seem to be pretty keen on the Clio / Megane scene from what used to come past on a Saturday afternoon. They also did some work on a mental blue Tigra that sounded like it would be ready to die every time it came past. Paul bought a fair bit of kit from us and seems to be a fairly decent guy to happy days! [media=] That's my annual contribution to the forum as I simply have nothing else to say but enjoy reading...

I've had problems with a few banks in the past. Mainly Halifax but I still use them, and I eventually came to the conclusion that no bank out there are any good for consumers, same with insurance companies in some respect because we as individuals resent having to pay for their fees. At the end of the day whether we like it or not we are contractually obliged to pay what is to pay and we can complain and claim against until our hearts are content, with or without a result. I totally agree that the fines are a bit of a grey area but there will probably be something in there that says if you breach certain terms that you have to pay a certain amount. (Nobody ever reads these things and it is only because the banks make them so elaborate that we can't be bothered to that they probably get away with it). From my experience it is probably best to make a quick phone call or go into branch, be nice and actually explain your confusion and unhappiness. Don't go all guns blazing as I once did because it will make you look a dick and people will be less inclined to actually help you.

Sounds like an awesome job! I did a degree in Music and Sound Technology and covered things like recording music, composing, synthesis and all that sort of stuff. The best bit for me though was definitely doing a 5 minute soundtrack for a clip from the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We covered everything including, Dialogue, Foley, Sound Effects and Music. That was probably one of the most interesting and fun things I've done relating directly to Music and Sound. For my final year in a group we made an "Interactive Multi-sensory have Installation", based around the four environmental seasons using a Nintendo Wii remote and various other input devices. Anyway I wont bore you with any more details other than that Take a look at the Focusrite website for most up to date driver downloads etc http://www.focusrite.com/downloads/saffire/ There's also some getting started guides and things to set the ball rolling. The Focusrite stuff really is good gear! Another thing to bare in mind with dodgy plug-ins is that if you're running OSX Lion the plug-in may require an update or not yet be compatible at all with Lion. I had this problem when upgrading from Leopard to Snow leopard in Pro Tools as it took Avid months to actually make the plug-ins within Pro Tools compatible, to the point where I got a bit fed up with it and got stuck into Logic instead. Both are great in their own right though and I love Pro Tools ease of use.

I would say Panasonic make the best sets out there with regard to both build and picture quality. Maybe a controversial choice but for the past year I worked in an independent electronics retailer and from looking and comparing sets on a daily basis they really are significantly better than most other products out there. Unfortunately they decided to shut the store I worked at. BOOOOO! Anyway we sold mainly Panasonic, Sony, Philips and LG with LG being the budget brand. If you were looking at an equivalent to a 40" Panasonic make 42" LCD/LED and Plasma. I would say (again maybe controversially to some peoples views) that Plasma still offers the best picture quality. Standard definition is processed far better to that of any LCD screen as LCD can produce a blocky messy picture as it can tear the image apart. Plasma also give a far better black level which in turn gives a far richer less processed colour spectrum as there is no lighting at the back making blacks look a milky grey. From experience motion handling is also better on a Plasma. Panasonic also have the intellectual property rights to the now defunct Pioneer Kuro, which was and still is to many people the best TV ever made. That said there are 2 models that I would recommend but it would obviously depend on your budget. Panasonic TX-L42E30 (LCD/LED set with most of the bells and whistles you'd ever need), Panasonic TX-P42ST30(3D Ready Plasma with the same bells and whistles and an incredible picture quality). I've experienced people before claiming that Plasma gives a dull picture, that is when compared to an LCD that is blazing colour. Remember that shops set their TVs up in "Shop Mode" and are therefore much brighter and not representative of the image you'd be viewing at home. Also don't be drawn in by the 100Hz or 200Hz. All manufacturers have different systems to the so called motion handling. 600Hz on a Plasma is not the same as that on an equivalent LCD. A lot of it on LCD screens is Frame Creation, whereby artificial frames are added in between "real" frames to smooth out the transition between fast moving images. Sony have a system called Motionflow and boast figures like 800 or 1200Hz. It actually looks pretty bad as there are too many fake frames taking control giving a very digitised looking picture. Mainly just my opinion but don't make your decision soley on the number of boxes it ticks on the spec sheet. You've actually got to be able to live with it too.

I use Pro Tools 8 but I would imagine the principles would be the same. Does the problem occur on all of your sessions or is there one particular file that's causing the problem? What operating system are you currently running? It may be worth trying to change the buffer size of the playback engine. Do this by going to Setup > Playback Engine and having a play around with the buffer size setting. Mine is set at 512 samples as this works fine with my system and I get very little latency from that setting. It may also be a plug-in that is causing the issue or if you are running too many plug-ins that are quite taxing on resources you can get error messages. If you can, cut back on them. If it is just the one session that is having issues you can save a copy of the file with any necessary audio files by going to File > Save Copy In... This will create a new session with new audio files (make sure the All Audio Files box is checked) so if there was an issue with corrupt files in the previous session the new files shouldn't contain any problems. Hope that helps a little.

My only experience is that I used to sell it when I worked at a Timber Merchants. Engineered is probably the best way to go as it is pretty versatile, hard wearing and depending on what particular type you decide to go for can be reasonably cheap compared to some solid products out there. What are you going to be actually fitting it on top of? When I worked where I did you could get a really decent quality 3 strip lacquered oak engineered for about £19 per sq m + the old VAT. Another benefit to a lot of them too is that they come with a click system so fairly straight forward to fit in comparison to solid hard woods and they are a lot more stable with regard to movement. In our hallway at home we've had a 3 strip for about 10 years, floated on top of underlay on existing floorboards and it's held up really well considering the amount of abuse it gets. Plus it's never moved a millimetre. Have a quick look at this link anyway http://www.tuscanflooring.co.uk/how-to-select-a-floor.asp there's some pretty helpful information on there and Tuscan do some really good value and quality stuff. Hope that helps a bit.

Until about 3 weeks ago I worked for an independent have retailer specialising mainly on selling expensive/high quality stuff cheap. Well that's what they used to force down everyone who came in the stores throat anyway. From a very narrow product range they had available I would agree that the KEF range is superb, the clarity from the drivers is like nothing else (KEF call it the UniQ) and it's basically designed to give the best vocal quality without losing everything around it, if that makes any sense at all. We had a £1200 set of Q900s on permanent display which in fairness you'd have to have a huge space to make the most of them, we also had Q700 and Q500 set up. Kef Q100s are the smaller bookshelf version in this range and still come with the UniQ Driver so clarity and quality should be phenomenal. Some retailers are also offering a 5 year warranty with these. That paired with an amp like the Yamaha AS-500 should be an awesome system. All Yamaha kit comes with a 2 year warranty. That's purely going from experience of setting up and using these systems on a daily basis and there are possibly alternative, better value products out there. I've heard good things about Acoustic Energy speakers too but mainly products from about 5+ years ago. Some good deals come up on eBay quite regularly. The company stopped selling Bose products as the price didn't really meet the quality. Anyway this is only my opinion and as other people have said it's definitely worth going somewhere to get a proper demo.

Yea I had a quick look at the description and it does help a bit. Just for me (and I must admit I'm a bit anal about it) I like to also know why I'm doing and what I'm doing. It just makes things a bit clearer when clicking a button with a symbol to know what that button actually does and why you need to click it. I never got on with FL studio and as daft as it sounds I found it a bit complicated and faffy coming from Cubase a few years ago. Lots of people use it though and it's a great way to get into making music. Again hats off to you for actually making it and as a first shot it's very good Just look at it in the perspective that people watching the video don't know their way around the software like you do and I suppose it's the job of the tutorial to give them the same knowledge as you. Just out of interest how long have you been using FL Studio?

In all honesty it was a bit difficult to follow mainly because it was just watching you make a track in FL. It could really do with some annotation or voice over just to give people more insight to what it is you're actually doing. Even if it's just to tell people what instruments you're using and where to find them. I think you used some key commands in there to transpose some of the MIDI which without knowing the key command is difficult to follow and would probably lead to finding another tutorial. Good on you though for actually putting it all together. I'm a Logic and Pro Tools user and have wanted to make tutorials for about a year and just can't find the best way to go about it. It can be difficult getting the amount of information you need in a video for newbies, with a bit of annotation and highlighting a few key points in the video it may be more useful.

I noticed that this topic was made a few days ago, pretty interesting that there has been absolutely no hype for the festival this year. If this topic was made a couple of years ago there would probably be hundreds of replies. I used to go to Leeds religiously for about 6 years and then all of a sudden it just got incredibly crap and expensive. I've just had a look at the line up and how it relates to ticket prices... No thanks

I really like the sound but struggling to hear any bass cutting through, I get the idea of what sort of sound but my studio monitors can be quite unforgiving with the bass side of things and that only gets better with experience and different monitoring systems. As someone mentioned before the snares could maybe do with some processing to give them the same sort of electronic synthetic sound as the rest of the track. Overall though some of the tracks are quite refreshing and different with some quite interesting soundscapes in there

I'll try find some videos of some of the work we did. The multi-sensory installation was the final piece of university coursework I ever did in which we received a first for. It was a group based project but the majority of putting it all together was done by me. Jitter was used to process the on screen visuals to create immersion using standard video input and processing it live to make it interactive. We made a DVD to demonstrate how it was made and so on so I'll dig out some footage but its great fun and shows what Max can do. At the end of the day its all about what you have the time and patience to do. The thing I've just mentioned took 4 months. Anyway enough of hijacking a supercollider topic with Max

I used MaxMSP for a few years, I'm not at all Supercollider savvy but if you can't be bothered learning all the complexities off programming Max is a really good tool. I've used it to create a Multi Effects Guitar Processor which has extra control through a Nintendo Wii Remote and external MIDI controller, An Interactive Multisensory Installation based around the four seasons which was tested at a school for children with learning difficulties with great results and had massive flexibility for a variety of input devices, and an interactive etch-a-sketch made using the Phidgets interface kit... It's pretty versatile and every module has its own help file so its pretty quick to get the hang of. Definitely worth trying the 30 day trial if nothing else LINK

Here's my little home studio set up... The picture is terrible as the lighting isn't great and it was taken on my phone but you get the idea. The painting behind is the front cover of the 1987 Beano Annual which my Dad painted for me about 18 years ago!

Export the track in exactly the same way you did the full mix but instead of having all the tracks enabled just solo and export each track individually. Hope that makes some sense... I like the sound of the track its pretty catchy, it might be nice in the second half to add a bit of something else as Mike said but I know exactly what you mean when you cant find anything that actually works, I get writers block about a minute in and all my music ends up either being a repetitive pile of crap or something thats overloaded with a load of unnecessary shit. Anyway keep going and enjoy it, thats what its all about!

Someone I know took the points for their partner and got a knock on the door and arrested for perverting the course of justice and had a hell of a few days in police cells. Just be careful if there's photographic evidence because there's every chance it will catch up whoever steps in to take the blame. They always say if you can't do the time don't do the crime. </Massive cliché>

Saw it just didn't think to comment, we all know the Internet's riddled with filth, I think I've become immune now

From my experience with Pro Tools its only any good if you have about 20 grand to throw at a decent rig and even then its ridiculously fussy or the hardware just dies altogether! Ive used a fully functional HD3 rig at uni and its unbelievably buggy. For the consumer market you are limited to LE or M-Powered which limit you to something daft like 32 tracks and if you want any more you have to pay an extra price to increase it to 48! Even then you're limited to using digidesign or m-audio hardware which I think personally is dog shit. I must admit that I'm actually quite comfortable with cubase and everything that you need is there as you require it. Logic to me is far too 'apple' and I'm not much of a fan. At the end of the day they all do exactly the same job and its down to personal preference. I just dont get all this Logic is better just because it is, or Pro Tools is better because it costs more. People work with what they're comfortable with and thats why they like it. Unfortunately Pro Tools has the advantage as it is the 'Industry Standard'. Anyway thats probably killed it!

I've never used Logic but in Cubase open a new project Add MIDI track and then hit F11 (alternatively you can go to devices > VST Instruments) From there click one of the available inputs for your VSTi and select FM8 Then in the go back to your MIDI track and on the left of the sequencer theres an 'In' box and an 'Out' box Your FM8 should be available under the 'Out' box along with the output from your soundcard and so on Hope that helps a bit, if you're not familiar with the software it might not make much sense so if you need any more clarity just say the word

Thanks for that, thats just what I'm looking for. I've had a quick look at the links and there seems to be plenty for me to go at. If there's anybody else wanting to offer anything please do. If you really want I can also send a copy of the critical analysis when its completed just so you know what I've said about your work. I wont bitch about it too hard. Thanks again!

Hi guys I'm looking for a bit of help, I'm currently in my final year on a Music Technology course and am looking for a variety of 'professional portfolios' so I can write a critical analysis report for them before I begin the development of my own. They don't have to be directly related to music tech, and may actually be better if they're not. They can be in the form of websites, interactive CDs, journals and so on. Basically what I'm asking is whether any of you have done this in the past and wouldn't mind me having a look and using them towards my work (obviously with your permission), or whether you know of any good artists, photographers, web designers or musicians who have online portfolios which I could make use of. Cheers

Small world... After looking on your Myspace it turns out we went to the same School and maybe even live in the same village is if I recognise you right... Are you from Wyke by any chance? Anyway its about 5 years since I left school so could be wrong!

The picture could however have been flipped...