Category Archives: Muzaq-Production

[MacOS] How To Uninstall Waves Entirely

Well, in case you just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks (like we did ;-) ) and your Waves plugins don’t behave as expected a new installation of Waves could make sense, but first things first. A proper uninstallation does not always work entirely well with Waves’ uninstaller. So in case something goes wrong, follow these steps for manual uninstallation:  Continue reading

[Bitwig] The Platform-Independent DAW Is Out NOW

bitwig-logo-screen2One of the most promising tools of the last view years – the platform independent DAW Bitwig Studio has eventually been released yesterday. It is available for MacOS, Windows and Linux. Bitwig is a Berlin based company, originally founded by former Ableton developers. The relation to Ableton is something that put the expectations of Bitwig to a comparative high level in the field of DAWs.

We’re gonna check out Bitwig in depth during the next few days and let you know what we think. In the meantime: get yourself a demo run for free. Since the save and export feature is disabled in the normal demo version, we recommend to go for a trial license, which requires registration. Head over to https://www.bitwig.com/en/account/register.html and give the next generation of platform independent DAWs a serious go.

[Ableton] Repairing Defective ALS Files Manually

abletonlogoneu2

 

What happened?

  • many avoidable (stupid) situations arise from hectic rush: we for instance accidentally deleted an ableton set (.ALS file extension) from a local NAS server
  • without going too deep into detail: since we don’t have a RAID based NAS we could recover (some parts of) the desired .als file by putting the NAS’ drive into an old PC and restored the found data with UFS/XFS-Explorer (absolute recommendation) to an external USB drive
  • after loading the recovered ALS file, we encountered the corrupt file error from Ableton

bildschirmfoto-2014-01-01-um-3-59-16-pm

The following article is written by a Mac user, but many (if not all) things should most likely be able to be applied to Windows aswell. Continue reading

[Muzaq] Universal Audio Annouces UAD-2 Octo

Universal Audio is stepping on. Producers who still thought the UAD-2 Quad’s power ain’t sufficient can soon get a UAD-2 Octo, thus effectively using 8 SHARC processors. Nuff powa foa de ppl ;-)

As a side effect of this step the prices for the rest of the UAD-2 family (PCIe and Satellite) are lowered. Entry price for the UAD-2 Octo is about 1,500€ (1,200 GBP). Distribution in Europe is expected to start between middle and end of October.

1. UAD-2 Starter Packages

Version

Amount of
SHARC DSPs

Entry Features

Current
Street Prices

1. UAD-2 Solo (PCIe) 1
Compressors: LA-2A, 1176LN, 1176SE
EQ: Pultec EQP-1A
Reverb: RealVerb Pro
Channelstrip: CS-1
~ 300€
~ 240GBP
2. UAD-2 Duo (PCIe) or
UAD-2 Duo Satellite
2
see above
~ 700€
~ 560GBP
3. UAD-2 Quad (PCIe) or
UAD-2 Quad Satellite
4
see above
~ 1,000€
~ 800GBP
4. UAD-2 Octo (PCIe) 8
see above
~ 1,500€
~ 1,200GBP
5. UAD Apollo Duo 2
see above
~ 2,000€
~ 1,600GBP
6. UAD Apollo Quad 4
see above
~ 2,500€
~ 2,000GBP
7. UAD Apollo Thunderbolt Card -,-
Thunderbold Expansion Card for
Apollo Duo or Quad. In
comparison to Firewire Thunderbolt
reduces UAD plugin latency.
~ 500€
~ 400GBP

2. UAD-2 Custom Packages

Continue reading

[Muzaq] Audacity 2.0 Released

The platform independent and Open Source driven audio editing software Audacity has been released in version 2.0. Audacity is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Many people say, Audacity is simply one of the best software audio editors with a huge amount of well designed built-in functions (fading, normalizing, vocal remover etc.).

It is compatible to LADSPA-Plugins, Nyquist-Plugins and VST-Effects.

Although the GUI should imho still be enhanced in comparison to its commercial competitors (Steinberg Wavelab, Sony Soundforge, Adobe Audition etc.), Audacity is a must-have, as it is free and from a technical point of view it is impressively powerful.

Don’t waste your time and grab your copy now.

 

[Ableton] Emulating 808 Bass Drum with MaxForLive Device

The device is named AnalogKick 1.0 and was done by Peter McCulloch.

Description:

The author says: “AnalogKick is a bass drum synth based on the design of the TR-808’s bass drum, and is capable of producing sounds quite similar to the original.”

In contrast to the original 808 the emulation adds some nice-to-have’s:

  • FM and distortion, as
  • change the tuning curve of the oscillator envelope to adjust the snappiness of the attack.
  • key-following, to use it as a percussive synth with FM.

Download:

» http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device.php?id=1081

[Ableton] Normalize Recorded Audio Samples

Situation:

You recorded a nice sample from an external source (name it a bass synthesizer or anything else). After recording you see that the sample’s gain is too low.

Solution 1:

  • copy that pattern from the pattern view to the arrangement view
  • consolidate that sample in the arrangement view (CTRL+ J on Windows or CMD + J on Apple)
  • increase the sample’s own gain to 0dB
  • the tiny downside: bass samples get often distorted. If you don’t like auto-distortion take Solution 2 ;-)

Solution 2:

  • get yourself Audacity
  • load that recorded sample from Ableton into Audacity
  • go to Effects -> Normalize
  • et voilà: gain set to 0dB and no distortion

Enjoy…

[Muzaq] Bitwig Prepping To Launch Beta of Bitwig Studio Soon

The Berlin based company Bitwig has eventually presented some details about their upcoming music software BitwigStudio. Bitwig Studio is targeting at professional and semi-professional musicians for producing and using live.

Features in Version 1.0

In addition to what people would expect like VST support, there seem to be some groundbreaking new features to be coming already in version 1.0:

  • dual heading for the use of several displays
  • Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and LINUX support (!!)
  • working on multiple documents
  • multiple automizations

Upcoming Features After  Version 1.0

Bitwig also announced features to be upcoming after version 1.0:

  • LAN multi-user jamming
  • multi-user music production via Internet
  • Native modular synthesizer/effects system

Background

The Bitwig company has been founded by former Ableton developers in 2008. They are located in Berlin/Germany.

Closed Beta Test

Although there is no reliable information at the moment about release dates, you can apply here for a beta test starting soon.

More Information

» Bitwig on the net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V_t8GfH-v4

Update [Jan 28, 2012]

Forum threads indicate there is a tiny chance that Ableton might sue Bitwig for cloning parts of Live’s GUI, in legal terms for violating the protection of registered designs.