Looks like a chinese knockoff of the KORG logo:

Probably on purpose.

This will not be an update to Reason, which will retain its own product category, but will be a new standalone product that will have full-on audio recording capabilities.

I’m interested, but do we really need another DAW? I’m still hoping/wishing that Reason becomes a plugin suite.

• Propellerheads set to enter DAW market

The goal is this: every day post at least 20 seconds of audio. It doesn’t have to be great. It just needs to be about 20 seconds long. 20 seconds is arbitrary, but I think is long enough to come up with any hook or other part that is the basis of most projects. It’s also short enough for people to listen to it immediately and forego saving it for later – never actually listening to it.

I’ve never used Tumblr before, but it’s pretty cool for audio. Each audio post gets its own player. All you have to do is upload an MP3. Plus, an outlet like this basically requires me to spend some making music every day. I think of it as Twitter for audio; move the twitter addiction to something i claim I want to do, like make music.

Plus, the audio player seems to work with RSS readers, so if you subscribe to the feed you can get the audio right in Google Reader, NetNewsWire, or whatever else you use.

So check it out if you’d like.

Once in a while I’ll read something about mixing engineers and how they create different mixes for CDs and digital music services. The arguments are that encodes don’t recreate certain frequencies well, like anything below 100hz. So because of that they may suggest boosting the low-end on anything that will be used for an MP3 encode.

I think this is a bad idea.

I think mixing and mastering engineers should work on music for ears, not encoders. These days, bitrates for digital music stores are about 256k, which may as well be lossless for most people. And someday we all may get lossless encodes – which leaves a catalog of mixes that were poorly engineered in the hopes of making up for the weaknesses of an MP3 encoder.

Plus, there are so many variables to think about (which mp3 encoder? bitrate? AAC/WMA/OGG?) that trying to create the perfect mix for each of them means chasing your own tail, and it doesn’t account for the fact that I, and many others, will be ripping the official mix to a digital format anyway.

Besides, mixing for a certain encoder means giving those encoders a pass. Better to let the flaws of the encoder shine through so that the market can choose to not use that encoder and move on to something better.

However, I think you should arrange your album for digital formats. Please spare us hidden tracks or 5 minute stretches of silence that were a trend during the 90s. Downloading a 10meg file of 256k CBR encoded silence is obnoxious.

We’ve thrown a few elbows in the industry, made a lot of friends, bought a bunch of ads, faced some fairly intense competition, bitched and moaned about inconsequential shit, and dealt with shit that isn’t inconsequential at all. We’ve moved the corporation from one state to another and moved my actual ass to a different state entirely. We’ve put up with rampant idiocy from people that style themselves members of the creative community but are actually members of some kind of bullshit that doesn’t have a name.

Their link, not mine.

Related: I’ve been trying out Audio Damage’s Automaton. Really cool effect. You can build your own timed distortions with it.

• Five Years, what a surprise
• Yes – it does make you a bad person

Edit: The Audio Damage folks respond directly to YACHT:

know this: wrong is wrong. If you have to ask whether you’re a bad person or not, that alone should be all the answer you need. We are willing to accept piracy as a fact of life in the business we’re in. We’ve never done more than pay lip service to copy protection, and we’ve tried to put a value on the product of our creativity that makes that product easily attainable, to the point where piracy simply isn’t worth the trouble.

Waferbaby has edited the original interview. Go to Audio Damage’s post to get up to speed if you’re just seeing this.

Logic Pro 8 – Saving Your Favorite Software Instruments on Vimeo.

For other Logic tutorials, I highly recommend SFLogicNinja’s videos on Youtube. Where other videos go through basic concepts (like how to make a marker) to try to sell video sets, SFLogicNinja goes through some more advanced topics and doesn’t try to sell you anything.

Sometimes, when opening up the loops or library sidebar window thingy, Logic Pro 8 doesn’t draw the arrange area correctly.

…here’s a video that really demonstrates how the Monome turns a set of buttons into a way of arranging and performing music. Adam, aka makingthenoise, covers Tom Yorke’s “The Eraser” using a Monome 40h, Ableton Live, and the SevenUp Live software setup.

Reconstructing The Eraser with the monome from makingthenoise on Vimeo.

• Monome.org
• Making the Noise

Via 1up:

Metallica’s latest album, Death Magnetic, was finally released to the world on September 10 — including to Guitar Hero III players, as the album was also released in-full as downloadable content. But according to keen-eared fans who’ve heard both versions, it turns out the sound quality in the Guitar Hero DLC is actually better than the quality of the retail CD. And according to Ian Shepherd, a mastering engineer and DVD author at SRT, they aren’t just hearing things.

Check out the difference in the waveforms between the Guitar Hero version (top) and the CD (bottom) that SRT Mastering Engineer Ian Shepherd notes:

• 1Up: Metallica’s New Album Sounds Better In Guitar Hero Than CD
• A closer look by Mastering Engineer Ian Shepherd