David’s Adventures Through the World of Music Creation and Sonic Exploration

One thing struck me last night while working on a new track.

GenesisCM started to behave a bit funny (didn’t trigger any notes when playing the keyboard) so I decided to reboot.

Square 1
I saved my project to a new file, and rebooted. When opening the project again after the reboot it totally hung Cubase, and clicking “Close program” in the Vista popup shutdown my computer in a fraction of a second. I tried again and this time read through the error message. Cubase4.exe has stopped responding due to some error in GenesisCM.dll. GenesisCM is a new software synth (or VSTi, if you prefer) that came along the second last issue (CM127) of Computer Music.

I had to boot my PC, rename the GenesisCM.dll to GenesisCM.dll.bak, then fire up Cubase 4. Accept that GenesisCM.dll is missing and remove it from the instrument tracks where it was loaded. Save the project, close Cubase, rename it back to GenesisCM.dll, fire up Cubase again and load the project. When done, I had to select the track where I wanted GenesisCM and load it. Now it worked fine. Until loading a second instance of the plug. Goto Square 1.

When I’ve done it all over again, I only loaded one instance of GenesisCM and tweaked a similar sound on Discovery Pro instead so I could save and bounce the track.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really impressed by the little bugger, but it’s a waste of time trouble-shooting none working plugins when you can spend the same amount of time programming sounds and composing instead. GenesisCM sounds in fact fantastic and is a great complement to Gforce Minimonsta and FabFilter Twin.

And the thing that struck me was that this never happened when I had 11 hardware synths in the studio. Cubase never crashed just because my Clavia Nord Lead 2 (which parts of me regrets for selling - it’s a darn fine piece of hardware and I shall get one again) wasn’t powered on, or had a cable disconnected, or was totally broken. Sure there’s a lot of hassle with MIDI cords, sound cabling and syncing issues, but you could at least load your Cubase projects.

After some digging on the Interweb I found the explanation to the GenesisCM problem all the way down on this site.

It would be a nightmare turning up at a gig and having your projects crashing because some software plugin decides to break. But then again, it’s a nightmare turning up a gig with at a broken hardware synth too…

As I wrote in this post, I now have gotten a third UAD-1 card. I’ll install it tonight, and I’ll probably get a the VCA VU since I got a bunch of vouchers laying around, which will expire on the 30th of June, and it’s on sale too. Yey!

This is why you shouldn’t trust the pro’s and con’s boxes in magazines when they’re reviewing products. When CM reviewed the VCA VU from Universal Audio they wrote that the pro was that it had a great sound. The con was that it sounded different and might not appeal to all. Okay, so the compressor isn’t for everyone, but as they’re stating on the review it’s great on vocals and drums (if I recall it correctly). So that means that the VCA VU is for people who’s not recording vocals, drums, guitars (it does work great on guitars - I’ve tried it - and I shall try it on my synthesizer collection as well). In the text it also says that it’s a compressor good for people who doesn’t want the good ol’ attack and release knobs, and in the con box it says that it’s lacking those two knobs.

The lesson is: Try things out yourself, and take the pro’s and con’s boxes with a pinch of salt.

Last night I dreamt that Gforce Software did a software version of the Oberheim Matrix 12. Sadly enough, when waking up they hadn’t post anything regarding that on their website.

One thing for sure though. I’d buy it without hesitating. Seriously.

While bouncing the remix I’ve done for Pandora I encountered a strange problem. I could, without any problem at all, play back the song without hearing skips and glitches. The CPU load was around 40% and the UAD load was at 85% - so you could say that the track was nearly finished - or that I need a third UAD-1 card.

When bouncing there was a short skip at 1′57″ which really puzzled me. I tried bouncing the track several times, but the skipping was at the exact same frame everytime. I even tried moving the track in the grid and added up to 70 bars of silence, and bounced the silence, but the skipping occurred at the exact same place. Yes, the real time check box is unchecked.

So, how did I solve it? Well, the solution wasn’t really the most obvious one. I moved everything from bar 68 to the end 8 bars to the right (so I could get the reverb tails and the decay of the delays and so on) and then bounced bar 3 to 76 (my songs almost always starts at bar 3) and then bouncing bar 76 to 233. Then I created a new project and added my previously bounces to the grid, placing them at the bars as in my base remix project. Worked like a charm, but it’s not the prettiest solution. If I tried to freeze tracks as well to solve the skipping during bounce but freezing resulted in a serious crash and trying to kill the Cubase 4 executable shut down my computer very rapidly.

I’ve also installed Cubase 4.1 64 bit, but that won’t find Native Instruments Battery 3. There’s always a problem lurking around the corner - isn’t there? And Z3ta+ isn’t working in a convenient way. It can, whenever it feels like it, produce 100 dB noise which would render some of my other plugins stop functioning - UAD Precision Limiter, for example.

My Motu Midi Express 128 works very well though. The timing is great and I can only blame myself for not hitting the keys on time.

2008 has kicked off at an amazing speed. I do spend too much time at the office and haven’t had the time, inspiration nor excitement to start working with the pile of projects Fred has managed to get his hands on. My old DAW (a trusty Pentium 4 running at 2,8GHz) started to throw exceptions over and over resulting in dull blue screens so it wasn’t really that much fun working with it. And, when my studio space in the apartment is rather limited I turned to software since they only take up hard disk space (and the space on the shelf for the box, unless it’s a download version) and that didn’t really do wonders on the already tired processor.

I’ve finally invested in a new casing, new motherboard, processor, memory, hard disks, everything. It’s a Core 2 Quad at 2,4GHz with 4GB’s of RAM running a 64 bit operating system, and it’s really nice to work with. Waldoft Edition wouldn’t install though, but I’ve contacted the support and they will produce a 64 bit installer. Thank you!

I started working with a remix for the Swedish artist, Pandora, and when I needed a certain sound, I could just load a new instance of Native Instruments Massive or Gforce Minimonsta and start to program it not worrying about overloading the CPU.

When the Massive Disco Monsta Remix of “Don’t You Know” is finished, I’ll be turning to a track by Adam Tensta. As I said, 2008 has started at an amazing speed.