Strange Tales - musings of a sound monkey

genuinely, i don’t know how hardened bloggers do it - i know someone who runs about 5 or 6 blogs DAILY! and i can’t even keep one poxy music/teccy one up to date - rubbish.  i shall have myself taken out at dawn and gaffered to a tree.

but…. still here.  theatre still bonkers (though in the midst of a couple of weeks off ironically), but that’s given me a long-awaited chance to completely revamp the studio and get everything working better, faster and more efficiently.

naturally a whacking great new computer hasn’t ‘arf helped to be honest.  the studio was slaving along with an old PowerMac G5 1.8GHz which was as nippy as a Lambo Gallardo when i bought it in 2003 but after a couple of processor changes and whole new motherboard, oh and power supply it’s still working but tangibly …well, tired.  it’s like those guitarists who claim to have the same guitar they bought back in 1956 from a junk shop… “yeah, it’s had three new necks, couple of new bodies and i had all new electrics put in last year, but y’know, still plays like the day i bought it!”

well, the G5 still works like it did back then, which is probably fine if i was still doing those sorts of scales of projects and as infrequently, but daily editing work has been putting strains on all the older systems and i’ve wanted to upgrade to the new version of Digital Performer for a long while, but…. it’s quite an investment if you do as there’s all sorts of things to consider.

firstly, you’re in Leopard country, no matter what else. i’ve been on DP5 for a couple of years now and it’s been ok, bit twitchy in places but ok (where ‘ok’ is set against the standard of it still being my most preferred goto sequencer). well, DP5 just won’t run under 10.6 at all so an update was on the cards.  my chosen synth ‘Atmosphere’ from Spectrasonics also had an overhaul last year and became the astonishing Omnisphere. Atmos isn’t supported at all on DP7 so that’s having to be upgraded.

Peak 4 is a no-no on Snow Leopard so that was an upgrade.  PCI cards obviously need to be changed on the MacPro to the PCIe so that’s another £250. Jam no longer works either which leaves you a bit stuck for simple CD compilation software that burns to RedBook with all the right x-fade, ISRC etc etc  but happily Peak 6 takes care of all that with its new playlist facility which does indeed burn to RedBook.

so all in all it’s been costly and complicated - just validating the software installs and making sure everything talked to each other nicely and didn’t go and sit on the naughty step at the first sign of trouble took an age - but that’s worth doing. before installing anything, it’s worth sitting down first with a large cup of your favourite caffeine source and a decent sized packet of biccies and just mapping out what needs to be installed and …. in what order, which can make a surprising difference to speed of validation and testing - especially where it comes to checking audio paths etc.

happily, and very surprisingly, it’s all been relatively painless (aside from the monetary side, but no-one needs to be told that hurts right?) and the system is working immensely well.  it’s even given a new lease of life to some older hardware units as with buffer sizes able to be lowered and latencies almost acceptable on the MacPro, hardware side-chains and auxillaries are now a real contender against software fx and instruments again.  even my old JV1080 has come out of retirement like some old military robot in a cheap sci-fi movie “i remember when this was aaaaaaall hardware”, “i bet you do old timer, i bet you do”.

DP7 is a major step forward in audio and midi workstation workflow and power.  other sequencers may still package more with the installs, but for sheer stability, speed, compatibility, export potential and sound (yeah - i do believe it, many do, but we’re all ashamed to admit that each DAW sounds different), DP7 is, as i believe they say, dabomb.

in the words of Dr Who “i will never say that again”.

peaceful things to y’all