Sound Control Holdings Ltd have gone into administration and all Sound Control products have been removed from the QuickSound catalogue. We apologise for the loss of functionality! Dolphin Music have published some advice for customers of Sound Control.
Following up the announcement of Superior 2.0, Toontrack have released Solo, a stand-alone host for users of DFH Superior and EZDrummer drum romplers. It’s a free download for registered users and allows you to run your drum instrument without needing a 3rd-party VST host application like Cubase or Logic. Solo promises lowest-possible latency when used with an appropriate ASIO soundcard. I tried it last night and managed to get down to a solid 64 sample buffer without any problems, which to me does not incur a noticeable delay at all (AMD X2 4200 / Tascam 1082). Running within Cubase I am normally limited to 128 samples without glitching - 64 is right on the limit with the odd pop and crackle. Solo should be a great tool for anyone brave enough to go out gigging with their eDrum kit, a laptop and a decent portable firewire audio/midi interface.
The daddy of all drum romplers is getting an overhaul in early 2008. Toontrack are arguably top of the pile when it comes to serious virtual drum instruments, and their Drums From Hell Superior is easily one of the best software purchases I’ve ever made. It’s about to get better with Superior 2.0 - The New York Studio Legacy Series. This release includes a whole new sample set, but importantly retains backwards compatibility with the samples from DFHS and Custom and Vintage add-on. Improvements include extra optimizations for e-drums (it was always the best!), quicker sample-loading and a brand new interface. Particularly exciting is the new internal mixer which features specially-developed plug-ins from Sonalksis, including eq, gates and compression. Look out for Superior 2.0 in Q1 2008, and check out all Toontrack’s products available through QuickSound here.
TC Electronic have announced the latest incarnation of their successful PowerCore DSP processor. The PowerCore X8 doubles the processing power of the previous PowerCore firewire unit with the addition of an extra 4 Motorola 150Mhz DSP chips, each holding 512kWords S-RAM. Also look out for a new version of the PowerCore software coming out in November. PowerCore Version 3.0 is a free update including GUI updates, new metering and several new sidechain and routing options. Check out all PowerCore products available through QuickSound here.
Check this out, Lakland have created a custom bass guitar for Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls (aka Harry Shearer) especially for the Live Earth event. The bass features a graphic of a flaming earth as-seen from space, and no less than six pickups. More details at Lakland.com, and more pics up on MySpace.
I’ve just fixed and uploaded my eBay timer widget which helps you nab stuff on eBay by reminding you when an auction is coming to an end. It also helps you time your last-second bids if you’re into that kind of thing (known as ’sniping’). Accuracy is generally within 1 to 2 seconds depending on your internet connection speed, and uses official eBay time as a reference.
Somebody took the time to review flippin’ loads of different compression pedals and rack units on bass guitar. If you’re in the market it’s probably worth a read. Check out this one man’s opinions here.
I had the good fortune to pick up a Boss GT-6B last Friday and 24 hours later I gigged with it for the first time at a wedding in deepest Northumberland.
The GT-6B is a few years old now, but still crams a helluva lot of functionality into its solid floor-based format. One of the selling points for me was analog true-bypass, and the fact Victor Wooten is known to sometimes use one was a good sign this is a professional unit.
If you look-up reviews of the GT-6B you will probably read a few mixed opinions on its ease of use. I sat with the thing for a couple of hours on Friday night (how sad is that?!) and I had it pretty much figured-out - it’s really not that bad. It is very flexible, and although there are some helpful features to get you going quickly, the real power lies in the extensive tweakability of all the effects. It will definitely help if you have experience in sound-shaping terms such as frequency, Q, threshold, ratio etc. (newbies might be a bit lost), but if you’re comfortable with these concepts you really have a powerful tool at your disposal. One thing - don’t even bother with the presets. They are there to show you what can be done I suppose, but I can’t imagine using any one of them in a real-life situation.
For my gig on Saturday I set-up a default patch for my Musicman Bongo which used just the parametric eq to cut 8dB around 350Hz (a sweet-spot in my experience for helping impart a ‘hi-fi’ tone and eliminate ‘honk’) and a little high-end roll-off to taste as I was DI-ing from the GT-6B straight into a full-range PA. This became the basis for a small but useful range of other sounds which used at various times compression, octaver and touch-wah. The built-in tuner and expression pedal (assigned to volume by default) were invaluable - I could tune-up in silence and, having turned down my volume with the pedal, I could unplug my bass without upsetting the sound man.
I’m sure there’s more experimentation to be done, but I’m already very happy with the GT-6B and I think it’ll be going with me everywhere from now on. It really is the swiss-army knife of bass effects, and having everything in one unit with one power supply is great for someone like me who tries to keep faff to a minimum. At a fully PA-supported gig with good monitors you could easily turn up with just the GT-6B and your bass.
Focusrite have finally released the much-anticipated version 2.0 software for their excellent Liquid Mix eq/compression processor. The release includes new sidechain functionality, variable latency settings, alignment of the hardware and software interfaces and sample-rate switching (mac-only so far).