Background
After the operation as
described here my PC has now operated under WindowsXP for a couple of weeks and it is a very satisfying experience(you see Alfred? I CAN be nice about Windows!). No bugs, no hangups, nothing that I would norrmally expect from the older Windows-versions. How on Earth Microsoft could ever follow up this Windows-version with Vista will always be beyond me. Must have been a marketing thing or something.
Showing off for a minute
My goal for this Fall is to have a working studio in my house. The studio should be centered around my PC and will consist of many components. To name a few(and as an excuse to put up some pictures!) :
Yamaha DX7
I would not know what to write about the DX7 that has not been written thousands of times already. It's an absolute work horse, it's incredibly difficult to program, but once you do you will never look back. This machine is almost 30 years old and still performs on stage as well as in the studio every day. It's up there on the podium with the MiniMoog and the Prophet 5.
Clavia Nord Lead II
What do you do when you can't afford an old PolyMoog or an Oberheim OB-X? You buy a Nord Lead! This synthesizer was the first to get rid of the artificial sound of a analog virtual synth. Until this instrument came along all virtual analog synths could be made to distort just by turning up the values of a lot of functions(the filter usually did the trick immediately). Not so with the Nord Lead; whatever you try to do with it you can't make it clip, just like you can't make an analog synth produce digital distortion.
One other extremely important feature of this instrument is that it stores the complete sound(the patch) in every location that it is used. In the old times(well, not so long ago actually) a synth would have sounds which could be combined into combinations. What happened was that the synth would store the patch-/sound-numbers used in a combination but not the actual parameter-values of the sounds themselves! This meant that if you had a combination that consisted of sound A and sound B, and you altered sound A, the sound of the combination would be altered too. It was cumbersome and the instruments only worked that way to use less memory. Not so anymore! The Nord Lead(and many other synths to come after it) stores the actual parameters of every sound used in a combination. So once you have stored the combination you can fiddle about with the separate sounds again without destroying or altering the combination. If only for this I absolutely love this synth. It is a pure pleasure to work with.
Kawai K4
Aaaah.... the Kawai K4. The K4 is a well kept secret. Not too many of them were produced so it is very rare to see a second hand one being put up for sale. The sounds are based on pre-digitized samples so there are no real sine waves etcetera. Instead, some of the basic wave forms are piano-like, strings-like or percussion-like etcetera. This means that a lot of the 'waveforming' has already been done and the basic sounds therefore sound much more complex then the standard synthesizer. This instrument is exceptionally fit to play industrial and New Wave sounds. In this respect it is the absolute opposite of an analog synthesizer(or a Virtual Analog like the Nord Lead II).
My little beauty. This synth is so rare it is hard to find a proper picture on the Web. A JV30 is not such a big deal but I use it for one reason ; It saves me from having to play standard Roland sounds like the strings on another synth. This little preset-beastie contains all the standard sounds you need in the studio.
I do have some more synthesizers but they are so obscure that I could't even find a picture of them on the Web! So nevermind...
All of the above and more will be in a configuration with a Behringer 20 channels mixing console and lots and lots of outboard gear(delays, reverbs, flangers, multi-effects, etcetera). All of this is amplified by two 125 watts Hughes and Kettner Power Monitors. All in all you can say I'm good when it comes to the non-PC gear.
Back to the PC
So here comes the next phase : getting some kind of Audio- and especially Midi-recording working on said PC. Normally this would be no problem as I've done this many times before. My first computer for Midi-recording was an Atari 1040STF with Steinberg Pro-24. This was back in the damp and musky mid-eighties. That stuff was brilliant for its time. Pro-24 looked like this :
Pro-24 for the Atari
Since then I've had many a computer running Cubase, Cakewalk and even Logic Audio, although I must say that the latter product was way beyond my requirements and cost me way too much time to figure out. I'd rather spend that time writing and recording music, nerdiness only goes so far.
So... here I am; A nice 2.4Ghz Pentium IV with lots of memory, enough harddisk to store a thousand+ songs,
and one standard on-board AC97 soundchip... Mind you : in the future I do not plan on using said on-board chip much. After all; I do have a lot of synthesizers in the house, as well as a very nice 24-channel mixing console and two 19" flightcases full of outboard gear(delays, reverbs, compressors, multi-effects, etcetera). So the external hardware will not be the problem but I want to start using all that once I have the PC up and running satisfactorily. After all; I shall have to re-arrange my hobby room to make all the shit fit and I don't want to do it haphazardly only to find out that it's not what I want.
So...I started out by going through my software. This software was all legally purchased because I do believe that for really complex software you'd better have support. I found an old version of Cakewalk that I put back on the shelf immediately; too simple, too limited, too much 'toy-like'. Then I found my original software box of Cubase VST! Now
that would be exactly what I need. Unfortunately this version was made for Windows95 and does not run on XP. Rats... Look what I missed out on... :
Cubase VST
My third and last option was Cubase 3.0 Go, which I purchased some years ago and runs perfectly on WindowsXP. I checked the requirements and the specs and then dedided to take the chance.
CuBase SX for the PC
First I had to get the Midisport midi-interface going. This is very simple as I did not only have the drivers on a CD, but I found the latest version of said drivers online within a minute. Installation was a breeze and the midi-interface worked in one go.
The installation of Cubase 3.0 also went without a hitch and getting the sound to actually work didn't take too much time either. I was amazed once again at the amount of detail that this software can display. Of course, when you work with very expensive Audio-/Midi-recording software(like Logic Audio etcetera) this is normal, but Cubase 3.0 Go was really Steinberg's low-budget version!
I tried out Cubase 3.0 for a little while and then decided to try and record a sequence or two using my Nord Lead II. And that is where the problem started...
Latency
As you could have guessed from the title of this entry I experience way to much audio-latency when using my Clavia to play a PC-instrument. So much that it would be virtually impossible to record anything decent. If there is one thing a keyboard player expects it is immediate response from his keyboard.
So what to do now ? Two options : 1) Either I buy a better soundcard or 2) Try to reduce the latency.
For me the challenge is to use the latter option. After all; I can always buy a new soundcard but where is the fun in that? Also; in the future I will not be using any on-board instruments but use the real thing instead. It would be a waste of money to buy a soundcard with super specifications, only to abandon it in a little while.
So I am trying to reduce the latency of an AC97 on-board soundchip. I have googled around a bit and so far I found one
very promising website/piece of software. Apparently there's a guy who designed an ASIO-driver specifically to reduce the latency of an AC97. I will try out that software tonight and continue my blog-entry.
This is all great fun. Contrary to some years ago, when you had to really work hard to get this sort of audio-processing to work, it is now much easier to get it up and running.
Update : ASIO4ALL to the rescue!
I'll write more about it later but ASIO4ALL is an amazing piece of software. It comes completely free, it's easy to install, and in no-time my latency was reduced to near to nothing. Michael Tippach(the guy who wrote this stuff) should get his own statue. Unbelievable! Recording in Cubase 3.0 using a midi-keyboard and playing it all back over an onboard AC97 standard soundchip and No Latency!
Update II : Using VST instruments.
First of all; the latency reduction also works for NI Reaktor. The software synthesizers have the same mimimal latency as Cubase has. So that's good news, especially because Reaktor is one Hell of a software package. The sounds are unbelievably good(again; for an AC97 soundchip. I can only image what this stuff will sound like on a really high quality card).
Not so good news is that Cubase 3.0 Go only allows for one VST-plugin/instrument. So.... I'm going back to look at that beautiful box with CubaseVST that I have on the shelf. I've come way too far to stop now. If I can get CubaseVST up and running I would possibly not even have to connect my hardware-synths for quite a while.
It's not like I have tons of space in that room...
Update III : VST Plugins.
Ok, so I managed to install CubaseVST instead of Cubase 3.0. This especially so I can use VST-plugins(e.g. soft synths).
Next stop; getting the VST plugins to work correctly. The latency has stayed the same as under Cubase 3.0, a good sign! Now if I can just get the rest to work I'll be done for a long time to come.
Let's get this done! Onward to the rescue my friends...!!
To be continued...
