The Impact Twin caught my eye in spring 2011. I was looking for a more compact replacement to my M-Audio Profire 2626 (see review here), or a way to expand the I/O of my system, or at least a portable option so I don’t have to tear apart my studio all the time I go out to record. I trust TC Electronic to make nice clean digital gear, for about $400 it had pretty much every feature and function I wanted. I ordered one through Revolution Audio (note: I work for this company and got dealer pricing) and when it arrived I started writing my review. I don’t really have a good excuse why it took nearly a year to write, other than that l got busy being awesome in other aspects. Jump down to the end if you’d like to see what I think of it after about 8 months of owning it.

Design and construction
The case isn’t metal but thick plastic with a rubbery texture. Rugged? Hell yeah. It’s definitely not very compact though. Think backpack size rather than pocket size. If you’re looking for ultra portability it’s not the right thing.
Dimensions = 9.5″ L x 9″ W x 2″ H; Weight = 1628g (3.6lb)

There’s an edge around the front of the interface that is curved to both protect the knobs in transport and recessed to allow knob tweaking. Pretty smart.
Speaking of knobs, they turn smoothly and feel very solid, infinitely more so than a lot of high-end outboard gear. Every piece of TC gear I’ve used is always perfect in this respect.
TC designed the interface to angle up slightly to improve visibility and hand movement. After a couple trips in my backpack I lost one of the glued-on rubber feet so now mine wobbles.
Installation
There were no issues with installation on either system. Everything went as expected. I’ll list the steps for those that come across this that don’t know the correct way.

• Find TC Near software online
• Run installer, remember to select impact twin driver in the options
• Restart
• Connect and turn on the device. wait for windows to identify and assign the driver
• Open TC Near control panel
• Update firmware

There was a typo with the firmware update but that’s about all I can complain about there. I love when stuff just works.

Test systems

Preamps and inputs
Inputs 1 and 2 are Neutrik combo jacks and there’s a censor to tell the control panel which is being used and are otherwise muted. Muting unused inputs automatically keeps the monitoring clean. If you are using the line inputs on the back you’ll have to push the Line In button on the front panel. The preamps have plenty of gain and are very clean and transparent. The back panel has 2 additional line inputs as well as all the standard digital options you’d expect.

Direct guitar recording
The Hi-Z inputs have a 1M Ohm impedance. Of all the options for recording direct guitar I have in my studio, right into the TC sounds best to me. That was a bit of a surprise to see the $400 interface beat my $500 super transparent P-Solo preamp. The transient response was great, capturing the bite of my Telecaster right, and the bottom end was tight, not thin or flubby like with many DI boxes.

Outputs
The interface provides 4 analog outputs on TRS jacks, and 1 each of S/PDIF, MIDI and Lightpipe (can operate with 2 or 8 channels). The main outputs are linked to the output knob on the front.

Two headphone jacks
One thing I just can’t wrap my head around is the headphone monitoring options on this interface. The two headphone jacks receive the same signal that is assigned to output 1-2, it is also sent at the same level. One of the jacks works as anyone would expect, the other mutes the main outputs when plugged in. Why, I have no idea. A monitor mute button would have been simpler and more useful. Two jacks but no way to send a different mix to one is strange. One jack with its own volume control would have been awesome.
As with most audio interface that cram a hundred features into a box at a certain price point, there is always some corners cut and often it’s in the headphone monitoring flexibility. My M-Audio Profire 2626 has this problem as do all the Focusrite Saffire series. Its a shame as that will be one of the most often used features.
In my studio this mean that I have to use out 3-4 to my TC Level Pilot and monitors and use either jack for my headphones. Output 1-2 can’t be used in my setup. When I use the interface mobile with just my laptop and some mics, I’m unlikely to be using the main outputs at all so no problem.
If this was your only interface for a home studio, using an external headphone amp might be the best solution. MIDI ports aren’t essential, independent level of headphones and monitors is, it pains me to see they messed this up.

DSP Effects
A feature I’m seeing in a lot of audio interfaces these days is onboard DSP effects. Some have them just for monitoring, some have the effects in the input path, the Impact Twin has both.

Input path effects
Inputs 1 and 2 have console style channel strips with 4 band EQ (SSL-esque in layout at least), Compressor and De-esser. When you use these effects they will be applied to your recording, which means if you overdo it with the compression the file is ruined just like with a hardware compressor. What makes it different from a hardware compressor is that it is far less flexible and cannot prevent clipping the converter. The de-esser is something I’m unlikely to use ever, it doesn’t have a frequency select option and every voice and mic combination will require a different setting.
I’m just pointing out some of the downsides, these are cool features to have on an interface, I’ll have to see if it becomes something I use. [it turns out it's not a feature I used often]
The compressor amount can be controlled via the encoder on the interface. This is great. Even better is that the gain reduction is shown on the LEDs around that knob. The compressor has various style presets designed for different sources so you’ll have to experiment to see which works best for you. I wish you could change this from the front panel too but of course, there’s only so many features you can cram into that space.
Pushing the adjust knob in when in compressor mode will bypass all input fx.

From the control panel you can also activate a guitar tuner.

Monitoring reverb
The reverb built into the Impact Twin is very nice sounding, and can only be used in the monitor path. I had a lot of fun playing guitar into it and pushing it to extremes. There are 14 reverb models with decay, pre-delay and color (EQ) controls. The front panel ‘adjust’ knob can control the reverb level fader and decay.
The thing that confused me a bit with the reverb is that the Main MIX control needs to be turned to the left (direct monitoring). I’ve never really understood the whole reverb while recording but not on playback concept. I think I’ll stick with a plugin.
This feature is disable at higher sample rates.

Routing matrix
Before I got the Impact Twin I read through the manual and remember thinking the routing matrix looked very simple to use. It actually is, but I am a bit disappointed with the flexibility of it. It could be a little clearer what is going on. Outputs are left to right, Inputs are top to bottom. click where you want each signal to go. The problem is you can’t send multiple signals to one output. Because you only have 1 usable stereo output for fx or extra headphones this is pretty limiting. I will be adding this interface to my system rather than replacing it and using the digital i/o, you may not have this option. There is a possibility that features like this can be changed in firmware updates but I’ve never seen a company follow through, but perhaps if enough users demand it, something can be done. [no software/firmware updates were released in the time I've owned this]

Included plugins
One of the perks of buying a TC Electronic interface is the included plugins. The Impact Twin comes with 4 full-version plugins: Assimilator Native (a matching EQ); Integrator (simplifies hardware effect integration); M40 Reverb; and ResFilter Native (a synth filter).
M40 and ResFilter are useful plugins. Resfilter would be better with an LFO or auto-envelope option but that’s not really the point of this review. M40 is a decent, simple reverb though not really one I would likely use. Assimilator has a ton of latency and as far as I can tell, does not work in Reaper at all. The plugins don’t come with any documentation tutorials or help files and could not find much info online. Note that the interface authorizes the plugin, so if you aren’t using that interface, you can’t use those plugins. Overall I was unimpressed with the bundled plugins.

Where are the plugins?
Ok so I lied, there is one complaint with the installation. The PC installer didn’t ask where to put these so they ended up in the usual VST folder which might not be somewhere your DAW of choice will look. Take the TC Electronic folder out of Program Files/Steinberg/VST Plugins/ and move it to your preferred VST plugins folder.

Sync and ADAT
I didn’t feel this was covered clear enough in the manual so I’ll explain as best I can.
When connecting digital devices you must sync them and you need to determine which is the master and which is the slave. The clock signal is sent on the digital output jacks.

• When no external equipment is connected to the digital i/o, clock source should be set to internal.
• In the case of an external mic preamp with ADAT output (Presonus Digimax for example) connecting to an audio interface (such as the Impact Twin), the mic preamp would be the master and the interface would be the slave. In the TC Near options this would be enabled by selecting ADAT as the clock source.

• If you want a device to receive something from the ADAT out of the interface, you must have the Interface set to internal Sync and the other device set to ADAT sync.

• If you want to send and receive on the ADAT jacks then you’ll need two cables. The clock source technically can be either but may only work in one configuration without dropouts or glitches. Use this configuration for bi-directional ADAT devices such as a Profire 2626 or Firestudio in standalone mode. The Impact Twin can also run in standalone mode and I occasionally used it this way along with my Profire 2626.

If you change sample rates often, either of these options may cause some headache.

Power supply
It’s silly, but I was impressed by the external power supply. It feels sturdy, the IEC side of the cable is nice and thick and grounded. The thing that impressed me most was that it was actually labeled as to what it belongs to. It’s way too common for devices to ship with generic ac adapters without even a brand name on them. It costs no money for a manufacturer to put a sticker on it before shipping but it’s never done. When you’ve already got a drawer full of unmarked ac adapters you start to get impressed by little extra effort here. What’s a shame is that this interface works flawlessly bus powered so you may never use this nice external power supply. Where the power supply connects to the Twin is a little wobbly but I’ve seen much worse.

Stability and quirks
On my Windows 7 system (see specs), the stability is great. I had one quirk where I changed the buffer size from 128 to 64 in Reaper and the device wasn’t reactivated for reaper. Restarting reaper corrected the problem.
With an optimized system and using a quality firewire card you should have no problem recording with very low latency. The driver also has some “safe modes” which will improve stability at the cost of latency. On both my systems I am able to run in normal mode with a buffer of 64 without issues.
On the MacBook Pro I was recording and editing at 24/96kHz on the internal drive with WIFI, Bluetooth, Firefox, Evernote, and Gobbler running. I was also running off the battery with the interface bus powered. I think that’s a pretty good test and the interface worked exactly as expected for hours.
With 3 or more firewire devices connected to your computer, you may run into some problems, like dropouts or missing devices, which is common.
As for quirks, there are a couple things I’ve noticed related to the onboard DSP and sample rates. At 88.2kHz and above the reverb is disabled. At 176.4kHz and 192kHz the mixer is disabled completely. Not sure if it retains the previous settings before sample rate change or if everything reverts to defaults. This effects my life minimally.

Overall Impression
Overall this is a great audio interface. Stable, lots of features, great sound, good design. I recommend this for anyone that needs a portable interface with a variety of analog and digital i/o, and great sound quality. Alternatives would be the (now discontinued) M-box 2 Pro which would sound worse and have less I/O, new AVID Mbox (3) Pro, which is considerably more expensive. and still less I/O or Focusrite Saffire Pro 24, which has 8 fewer outputs.
After about 8 months, the Impact Twin did not become my main interface, thinking back, I hardly used it at all, though when I did, it worked just as it should.
The main thing that bugs me is the headphone monitoring thing, it just wasn’t thought out well enough and I would have rather them cut out the MIDI ports than a headphone volume control.

There is a basic and enhanced edition. The enhanced version has a bonus 1hr tutorial video, and audio examples for just $10 more.
Here is the sales page:
Buying through this link will support AGZ
If you prefer not to donate, click here.

Ian sent me an advance copy and I was quite impressed. I sent him a short review for his sales page.

“I already use multiband compression in my mixing and mastering, but this eBook made me realize I’d been taking some things for granted. Reading it I gained new strategies, a greater understanding of the parameters and new ideas I can implement into my mastering projects right away” Jon Tidey, Audio Geek Zine

And this is the truth. Ian’s approach is different than the way I’ve taught myself to use multiband compression over the past couple years. I haven’t been doing it completely wrong but I now know why on several occasions it hasn’t worked as well as I’d hoped. Multiband compression was never as transparent as I’d like and it was so easy to overdo it. I know this is a common complaint about multiband compression and Ian’s book has the solution. The starting point, strategy and tips will change the way you misuse multiband compression.

What’s In The Book

This eBook will get you up-to-speed with multiband compression, even if you’ve never used it before. If you’re already an experienced user, there are plenty of advanced tips and tricks to expand your tool-set. Here’s a breakdown of the topics covered:

WHAT IS MULTIBAND COMPRESSION, AND WHY USE IT?

• What is multiband compression?
• The top three reasons to use multiband compression
• My rules of thumb – and why you must keep it simple

QUICK START – MY DEFAULT SETTINGS

• My personal “starting position” preset, including
• Default values for all the parameters and the reasons why I’ve chosen them
• The most important control a multiband compressor can have

MULTIBAND COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES

• Why you should always use a limiter
• Why you should set the input level before the compressor
• How to avoid changing the mix
• Measuring Loudness
• Learn by overdoing it

PARAMETERS IN-DEPTH

• How to chose crossover frequencies, and how they affect the sound
• What ratio to use
• How to choose attack & release times

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR WITH MULTIBAND COMPRESSION

• Using band solo
• Why you must always, always, always level-match – always

ADVANCED MULTIBAND COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES

• Gentle thickening to add density
• Parallel compression
• How to get deep, punchy bass
• How to soften and smooth high frequencies
• When to go easy on the mid
• Damage limitation – EQ and heavy compression for fixing problems

TROUBLESHOOTING

What to do when:

• The compressed version has less impact
• The compressed version sounds “crunchy” or “grainy”
• The bass sounds “flabby” or un-focused

Here is the sales page:
Buying through this link will support AGZ
If you prefer not to donate, click here.

Programming Rock Drums in Pro Tools is presented by Travis Brown and runs about two hours, fifteen minutes. This is shorter than many of the other Groove3 titles which run three to six hours, but it is $10 cheaper than the others. Regardless of the length, there is plenty of content in this tutorial.

Travis uses Pro Tools for the tutorial but I wouldn’t say there is anything Pro Tools specific about the lesson, you should be able to apply the info to your DAW of choice. He also uses Steven Slate Drums EX but again any modern virtual drum package can be used in the same way.

This tutorial is aimed at beginners. Travis did an outstanding job of presenting the information in a way that will get beginners up to speed, but without dumbing it down too much for the intermediate viewer. I’ve been programming drums for years and I took a way a trick or three from this video.

Travis came up with a great beat for each section of the song, starting with a basic foundation, then making each part special, then working on humanizing. This is a great strategy that I’m going to adopt as I tend to spend far too long worrying about all the details before I’ve got the big picture and the full song laid out.

Mixing and processing drums is not covered in this tutorial beyond balancing the kit, just FYI.

The only criticism I have is some of the Pro Tools specific things that the average viewer may not notice. One was that he was switching tools all the time. Pencil tool to insert notes, grabber tool to move notes and selector tool to choose where to play from, rather than using the smart tool and modifier keys as necessary. This is just a personal issue for me and for the beginner, using a specific tool for each task is probably the better way to teach, but is really inefficient. The other  is that the main ruler was on Samples instead of Bars|Beats  so when he switched to slip mode the gridlines changed to samples. He even commented on that. Again, not something terribly important, just a little nitpick.

Groove3 sets and maintains the standard for software video tutorials. This video met the high level of quality I’ve come to expect from Groove3. Worth checking out.

You can get Programming Rock Drums In Pro Tools here: Groove3 The smartest option is the All-Access pass which let’s you watch the entire Groove3 library, hundreds of hours whenever you want.

I was demoing Large diaphragm condensers vs small diaphragm condensers using both channels. I turned off phantom power, swapped the LDC for another small diaphragm and went back to recording. There was a ton of noise in channel 1 making stereo miking impossible. With the mics disconnected the noise was still there. I don’t know if this is a permanent problem but I wasn’t able to fix it within a few minutes.

This unit wasn’t brand new and I don’t know if it had been abused prior to this workshop by connecting mics while 48V is on. A bit of searching online shows a number of noise issues with the Duet mostly on the monitoring side but some had preamp issues too. Hopefully the owner doesn’t have any trouble getting it repaired or replaced.

Mini review of the Apogee Duet

Here are my first impressions after using the Apogee Duet for a few hours.

Sound – The preamps and conversion sounded very nice, very clean with lots of gain. When it was working I was impressed with the sound.

Functionality – Using the Duet was fairly simple and the features that can’t be controlled directly on the box were in the software. I could get used to the one knob design, but I definitely didn’t love the idea of it. The software control panel and mixer was far less intimidating than most others.

Design -  The large knob just looks out of place to me. A shorter dome shaped one with little nubby grips would have been better. I much prefer a separate control for the essentials. 4 flat sliding controls would have been best. The pigtail for the i/o really detracts from the appearance of the device. The wires are thin and I wouldn’t trust it to last long if you do any traveling.  I can’t think of any way to get that i/o on the interface without making it twice as large.

Other complaints – No power button means you have to completely shut down the mac or hot plug the interface, which is bad. Loud noises into your speakers when you plug in the interface to the computer and a pop when you use the mute. Mac only.

Click to watch video

• Hours of Pro Tools Training Videos
• Access to Member Community
• Text Based Articles
• Illustrated Tutorials
• 165 Page QuickStart PDF Guide
• QuickStart Tutorial Pro Tools Sessions
• Membership Bonuses
• One Year Membership

Chris gave me a chance to see the first few modules of his course and it did not disappoint! I’ve seen over a hundred hours of online Pro Tools training and this is among the very best in quality. Large, clear videos with clean audio; excellent clear narration by Chris; and a ton of content covering everything you need to know. One great aspect of this course is that the massive amount of content is not just dumped on you. Each week new articles and videos are unlocked giving you time to learn and really understand each concept before moving on.

Now because I’ve  seen over a hundred hours of PT vids, went through a year of training including ProSchool 110 certification and 5 years of almost daily use, this particular product doesn’t give me a lot I haven’t seen before. It’s aimed at beginner to intermediate users, I’m probably closer to the Guru status at this point. Having gone through all that, I’ve got pretty high standards when it comes to PT Training, this product is in another league above the rest. I wish this was available a few years ago as a supplement to my PT training in school, this is actually much better than what I paid hundreds more for. I’m being as honest as possible here.

I recommend this course for:

• New Pro Tools users (less than 1yr frequent use or 2yr occasional use)
• Anyone that wants a solid foundation of knowledge for Pro Tools Operation
• Anyone that’s NOT interested in becoming an engineer, but needs to know Pro Tools
• Anyone thinking about going to recording school and wants a jump start on PT (I wish I had this when I was in school)

At the regular price of $129, I’d say this is a fantastic deal. At the current introductory special price of $97 (or 3x $39), well it’s a no-brainer!

If you’re thinking of signing up for this course please purchase through these links as they will help support AudioGeekZine, otherwise go to pttuts.com

Multipay Monthly $39

All Access Membership $97

If you have any questions about the course leave a comment below.

Features

• 49 keys with Fatar “Fast Touch” keys
• 8 Encoders (Infinite Rotation) with touch-sensitivity and 11 segment Led rings
• Touch sensitive Speed Dial
• 14 Buttons with integrated LEDs, 6 of which are lockable transport controls
• 8 soft feel Trigger pads
• Sprung pitch wheel
• Modulation wheel
• General Automap Operation Buttons (Learn, View, Browser Groups etc.)
• Octave up/down buttons with LED indicator
• Button to lock/unlock transport controls
• Sustain Pedal: 1 x 1/4 Jack Input
• Expression pedal: 1 x 1/4 Jack Input

Appearance, Design and Construction

The keyboard is made from a very dark grey, almost black plastic. In all the pictures (like the one above) I’ve seen of the Nocturn 49 there’s been a dark stripe at the top. In reality it’s a subtle blue-grey color. It is fairly compact and light but feels solid, I’m not afraid of anything breaking under normal use in the home studio.

Automap Standard

Inside the box is a CD to install the driver and Automap Standard software. Automap is the brains for all the knobs and buttons which automatically configures the controls for effects, instruments and even your DAW mixer using HUI. After installing the driver and Automap software, and checking for updates, the next step is to wrap some plugins using the Plug-in Manager. This is a very simple process. Find the plug-in you want and click the checkbox beside. Next time you open that instrument or effect you will have most of the controls already configured to the knobs and buttons.

Reconfiguring a mapping is simple, push the learn knob on the keyboard, move a parameter of the plug-in and then touch a control on the keyboard. Alternately select a control in the Automap HUD and choose a Parameter from the list available at the bottom.

Beyond simply assigning the knobs, buttons and pads, there are modes and minimum/maximum values. A knob or pad can be either normal or inverted, values from 0 to 127. A button can have 4 modes: Normal, Momentary, Toggle or Step. Each mode has different values to be configured. This simple function can really open things up for creative uses for interaction with your plug-ins.

Using the DAW setup guides I was able to easily configure both Pro Tools and Reaper on Mac and PC to work with the Nocturn using the HUI protocol. This lets you use the knobs and buttons to control transport functions, fader levels, pans, and other mixer functions without the mouse. Reaper’s HUI functions aren’t fully implemented yet and 3 of the transport buttons won’t work. Unfortunately HUI doesn’t get you away from looking at the computer screen as you’ll still need the Automap heads-up display (HUD) to see what each control is assigned to or which track you’re tweaking. You can call up the Automap HUD anytime by pushing the view button on the keyboard.

Automap Pro extras

Automap standard can do a lot but upgrading to Automap Pro gives you a few more cool features. The Keystroke assignment and Drag & Drop functions are what interest me the most.

Multiple device support – Automap 3 Pro supports multiple devices, so numerous Novation controllers can be used side by side.
Keystroke Assignments – Automap 3 Pro can assign almost any computer keyboard shortcuts to hardware controls. For example arrow key functions can now be assigned to hardware controls, allowing you to flick between tracks using buttons on your SL/Nocturn. You could also zoom in and out, open windows or create and jump to markers in your DAW.
XY Pad Control – Fully Auto-mappable XY Pad control, expression pedal, control pedal and drum pad control. The Automap server can now assign parameters to all these controllers using the ultra-quick learn facility. (Pedal/pad control not supported by SL Compact)
Drag and Drop – You can now drag and drop control mappings and control map groups in the GUI, allowing you to re-assign knobs, faders and buttons by simply grabbing them with the mouse and dropping them on the new controller.
Autoview Mode – Optional Autoview mode means that the GUI only becomes visible when a controller is touched, then it disappears again allowing you to get back to your DAW.

The Good

• The keys feel pretty nice, I’m not a keyboardist by any stretch but they feel right.
• Rotary encoders are smooth and touch sensitive. The LED around them shows the value. This is exactly how I would want encoders to work.
• Compact and doesn’t take up any more space than necessary
• Control layout is symmetrical, spaced right and uncluttered
• Speed dial – I’m using this a lot for the plugins I don’t have mapped. It’s always nice to get away from using the mouse once in a while.

The Bad

• No hardware MIDI Ports – Not an issue for me but I thought it was worth pointing out. I didn’t know this until I got it out of the box.
• I don’t love the feel of the pads on it, even with the sensitivity turned way up I feel like I have to tap much harder than I want to.
• The layout of the pads, I wish it was 3×3 or spread out slightly more.
• The documentation – It’s good, once you can find it. (I’ll link below to the instructions) One pdf with all the instructions would be nice, or access to them in the help menu (currently no help links).
• Pink back-lit buttons, I was hoping they’d be more red in real life and I really wish they’d gone with green LEDs instead.

Alternatives

The M-Audio Axiom Pro 49 at $200 more is the closest competitive product that comes to mind, but Novation’s Remote MkII line is a much closer match to that one. The Nocturn is more compact than the Axiom, and has similar features, nicer knobs but not as nice pads.

Another is the Akai MPK49 at $100 more and crams a ton of features into a small keyboard including real MPC pads and arpeggiator.

Overall

It’s been about a month since I bought the Novation Nocturn 49 keyboard. I haven’t fully mastered how to use it yet, digging into the features to write the review has made me know it a lot better. Overall I’m really happy with it. It’s been a good investment, it works well, and looks cool (besides the pink lights). I haven’t had any stability issues with it. With any new piece of equipment there is a learning curve, not being able to find instructions doesn’t make it any easier. I did have some trouble with some functions at first, but it was because of glitch with the installation and reinstalling took care of that. If you’re in the market for a new MIDI controller with great feel and advanced features, definitely check this one out.

Check out the Novation Nocturn 49 USB MIDI Keyboard

If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask.

Links

As I said above the documentation was hard to track down and if anything, this was my largest complaint about the product.

Nocturn Keyboard User Guide English PDF

Automap User Guide 3.2 HTML (as of this writing the latest version of Automap is 3.4.1 and there is not an updated user guide)

Automap DAW Setup Guides (HUI setup)(also available through the button in Automap Server) These were the only easy to find instructions but again, one pdf for all DAWs would be my preference.

—

INTRO
You will have to forgive me. Apparently my sense of time is completely useless because I still thought Auto-Tune Evo was new – that is, until the nice man at Antares informed me that it came out years ago. 2008 to be exact. Regardless – I still felt it was worth reviewing because I don’t hear Evo being talked about too much and I feel that it is a very important plugin. A lot of people seem to have a problem with tuning vocals, they think it’s cheating, or what have you, but I couldn’t live without it. To me, it’s the best way to focus on the attitude and the vibe of a performance, and if the notes are a bit off, you can fix them right up. It’s also the ONLY way, to me, to do a lot of layering in any reasonable amount of time.

Auto-Tune can be as transparent or as obvious as you want it to be – it’s all in how you work the retune speed. Auto mode on 0 (zero) retune speed will obliterate any trace of natural vibrato, or you can manually tune each syllable with whatever retune speed you need for each one, and it can tune up your vocals without leaving a trace.

AUTO TUNING
Pretty straightforward here – you still pick a voice type, the key of the song, and a retune speed, and you are good to go. I do have to thank Antares for putting the choosiness/tracking knob back on the front panel for this version of Auto-Tune – It was there in 4, gone in 5, and now it’s back again. It was a real pain to have to keep going to the settings over and over again in Auto-Tune 5 to change the choosiness.

There’s also a new “Throat Length” slider, though I personally haven’t found much use for it. It can change the character of the voice in a pretty cool way, but not in an exactly usable way – at least on the vocalist I was using it on for this review. I know him very well and hear his voice on a very regular basis. I think that if I didn’t already have a really solid idea of what a particular person was supposed to sound like, this could be used to great effect. It also might be useful when you are dealing with a voice that has a particular character you don’t like(or one that you have messed up by using too large a pitch shift), or if you are trying to create an entirely different voice, like for a cartoon.

All the other usual suspects are here still – scale detuning, create vibrato, target via midi, etc. I never use that stuff myself but it is still all there for anyone who needs it. It will also still tune up an out-of-whack bass guitar just as well as previous versions. I have even used Auto-Tune 5 to tune an out-of-tune guitar lead in the past, I’m sure Evo will do it just as well, if not better.

GRAPHICAL TUNING
The improvements to manual mode are simple but incredible – being able to change the retune speed for each note and being able to have a visual preview of what your tuning is going to look like is a GODSEND. Auto-Tune Evo actually makes tuning vocals a joy. You go in, tune a note, pick it’s retune speed, then move on to the next note and do the same. I would say that those two improvements alone speed up my workflow at least 25% – there’s no more guesswork involved anymore. I do wish that the “track pitch” button also cleared the window – that would mean one button click instead of two every time you tune a new phrase, but maybe Antares has a good reason that’s going over my head for this.

In addition, there’s “input pitch” and “output pitch” indicators, which show you in even more detail what you are doing to the voice. I love it.

There’s also a new “make notes” button which is reminiscent of Melodyne – you can drag and drop your notes/syllables, which I personally do not have much use for but it would definitely be nice for figuring out harmonies the lazy way or even trying out new melody ideas that might not come naturally.

SAMPLES & SCREENSHOTS

Raw Vocal – MP3

AutoTuned Slow- MP3 – JPG

AutoTuned Fast- MP3 – JPG

Manual Pitch Preview- MP3 – JPG

Throat Length- MP3 – JPG

South Park Voice- MP3 – JPG

OVERALL
There’s also some smaller but useful improvements such as the ability to resize the window, which is nice for tuning long passages or passages that go really low and really high – however, I found the “presets” for sizing to be pretty useless, at least at 1280×1024.

As far as CPU usage goes, and this was a surprise to me, it actually does use a bit more(at idle, at least) than Auto-Tune 5. I can only run about 140 instances of Evo before my system starts to bog down, whereas with Auto-Tune 5 I can run over 240. My machine is an Intel i5 750 with 4GB of RAM. However, this shouldn’t be an issue, because you don’t have to run the plugin in real time – I suggest manually tuning each line individually as an offline process.

All in all, I applaud Antares. This latest rendition of Auto-Tune is by far the best one yet. It’s more useful, easier, and downright more fun to use.

I got a Future Shop gift card from my boss (Thanks Jason!) for Christmas and I ordered the Magic Mouse. I’m not going to get into a rant about Future Shop, even though I really want to, that’s not the point of the article. I ordered one…stuff happened…and I have it now.

Magic Mouse

Right off the bat, you’ve got to install the software via Software update or it’s not going to work other than pointing and left and right-click. After a restart it should be ready to rock, er…point I guess I should say.

Design-wise the mouse is very nice, it has a decent weight to it and looks nice like any Apple product, I would prefer aluminum rather than white on top, but it’s still nice. Ergonomically I don’t think it’s great, it’s very low profile and doesn’t feel like my other mice. My hand feels a bit cramped and I wouldn’t say I have large hands at all.

The single finger 360* scrolling is very nice. Works pretty nicely in Pro Tools even.

The options Apple provides to customize the Magic Mouse are minimal. A lot of people I’ve talked to about it said their immediate reaction was “That’s it?” which is never a good thing.

Magic Prefs

Now there’s Magic Prefs, a free third-party app to give you uber control of your Magic Mouse. These are the preferences Apple should have provided.

I ran into some weirdness & freezing issues that I’m trying to track down. I had Quickeys and Magic prefs open at once and the system was completely unresponsive and I had to do a hard shutdown. Since then I’ve had system preferences unexpectedly quit and the error message blamed Magic Prefs. No problems in the 2 days since then.

Now Magic Prefs gives you a bunch of options for tapping with multiple fingers and gestures and more, but at this point I’m just getting the hang of using the mouse so I’m keeping most of the options turned off for now. In Snow Leopard you can have custom preferences for each application. I’d say Magic Prefs is worth installing just for the Middle click function.

What I am currently using is:

Middle click = Middle click
Three finger swipe down = expose all windows
Three finger swipe up = Expose Desktop

I’m not using any tapping because I didn’t find it to work like I expected (not same as glass macbook pad)

Conclusion

So is the Magic Mouse worth buying? Sure is as long as you can deal with the very low height of the mouse. Audio Geek Approved!

http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/

http://vladalexa.com/apps/osx/magicprefs/

http://www.bluemic.com/snowflake/

So now that I owned it, I needed to figure out if I had any actual use for it and if it sounded even marginally good. My expectations were low, but there are much worse things I could have spent the money on. Let’s look at some Pro and Cons of this particular mic.

Pros

• Very portable, small & lightweight
• Inexpensive
• Very simple to setup
• Sensitive condenser mic

Cons

• Only 16 bit/44.1kHz
• Gain is computer controlled (not that bad with ‘Sound Source’ for mac)
• Thin USB cable will eventually wear out
• Sound quality not as good as a real interface + mic

Possible Applications

• Pre-production demos
• Field recorder for ‘found sounds’ out of my studio
• Skype
• Better mic for screencasting (tutorial vids for you guys)

So how does it sound? Well for under $100 I don’t expect much from anything. This is pretty decent I suppose but I didn’t directly compare it to a proper condenser mic at the time.

I guess I can define excitement in a bass guitar as plenty of punch, growly mids and highs, a controlled low end and dynamically responsive. When I’m recording I want as much excitement as possible.

One of the characteristics of Mahogany and Rosewood (read all about guitar tonewood here) is a compressed midrange and reduced highs. That was really working against me in the worst way. So Mahogany was out, and possibly Rosewood fingerboards as well.

Time for a change. That bass went up on Craigslist and was quickly sold. I went down to my local independent guitar shop, The Guitar Shop and started playing everything. I was open to anything not made from Mahogany. I tried several Fender & Squire Jazz basses, a Squire Classic Vibe P-Bass, a Yamaha BB414 (Actually quite good for the price too), almost all of which would be an improvement tonally, but perhaps not in quality. Then I noticed a couple Sterling basses. Sterling is the new, more affordable line of basses and guitars from Music Man. Music Man makes some seriously badass basses, but they can be pricey. The Sterling line is assembled in Indonesia and inspected in America, this allows them to use quality parts for half the cost.

In the shop there were two very similar basses, they were both Ray 34 models (MM Stingray design), one was black with Rosewood fingerboard, and the other was a natural clear gloss finish with Maple fingerboard. Same price. The Ray 34 model has a single massive humbucker, Volume, 3 band active EQ (High, Mid, Low with center detents). Tonally they fairly were similar, but the natural finish one was a couple pounds lighter and had a touch more excitement. With Swamp Ash I think it’s better to go with lighter (lower on the tree). After going back and forth between those two and the Yamaha I made my decision, made a deal and walked away with the Ray 34 Natural.

It looks just like that, but the color is just a shade lighter, less yellow. Because this is an import model you’re probably guessing that there are some quality or quality control concerns. Well there are, but in this case there are only two very small issues with this particular bass.

As with many brand new guitars the fret edges (especially in the winter) stick out a bit and had to be filed down. They did this at the store for me free and most shops will do this for you if you ask.

The second minor issue was a couple of the screws for the tuners are not in fully and the screw heads are stripped. I don’t think this will affect anything as nothing is loose.

Very minor things IMO. You will want to try these out because the density, weight and tone of Swamp Ash can vary quite a bit.

Included with the bass is a soft gig bag, padded and faux fur lined and 3 hex keys.

Alright, to bring this long post to an end. This bass is SWEET/SICK/AWESOME/ADJECTIVE/CAPSLOCK really it is. A massive improvement.

I highly recommend this bass for recording. Most people will say Fender P bass or Jazz bass…NO, get this one. LOL

Note – This review is after just 1 day owning the bass. I’ll update if I run into any problems or change my mind about it. I’m having a ton of fun with it so far.

Check out the Sterling Ray 34

Any questions?