1. Enable secondary click in Mouse Preferences
2. Disable Natural scrolling direction in Mouse Preferences
3. Set scrolling to without inertia in Universal Access>Mouse>Mouse Options
4. Change show spotlight from CMD+Space to Option+Space in Keyboard>Keyboard Shortcuts
5. Disable Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible in Energy Saver preferences

These are just some of my own suggestions.

My friend Randy Coppinger posted on ProTools and Spotlight Indexing today, advising to disable the Indexing service because it could interrupt long recordings.
I personally use spotlight more than the dock or desktop shortcuts so I don’t think I could live without that. I’m not a Pro Tools user anymore and I have not had any issues with spotlight. If Pro Tools is your DAW, why not test your system with and without spotlight.

This reminded me of  back when I was using Pro Tools and while doing long test records it would often stop after an hour of recording. It turned out to be that Time Machine was trying to backup the files that were still recording.
Switching Time Machine to OFF and doing manual backups after recording solved the problem. This was a few years ago.

On my new iMac I use Gobbler to backup my audio projects off my external firewire drive and Time Machine to backup my important files on my system drive. Both of these require minimal thought or effort.

I highly recommend taking some time to set up your Time Machine options to keep the backup from filling up with unnecessary files. Things like Melodyne transfer files, temp files, the trash, dropbox (since it is already backed up to the cloud). Details below.

Excluded folders:

• Recording Drive (backed up separately)
• ~Trash (this is a hidden file)
• ~/Library/Audio/Apple Loops (that overused junk that comes with Garageband and iMovie)
• ~/Library/Caches (system and application temp files)
• ~/Music/Celemony (Files generated by Melodyne)
• ~/Downloads (usually this is recently downloaded installers and unsorted documents)
• ~/Dropbox (duh, this is already in the cloud)
• ~/Music/Garageband (don’t exclude if you actually use Garageband)
• ~/Music/iTunes (don’t exclude if you actually use iTunes)
• ~/Desktop/TEMP (I use this folder for REAPER’s peak files and auto backups, this is emptied monthly)

KOMPLETE 7 PLAYERS brings you four powerful audio platforms from Native Instruments for free, ready to use in your studio or on stage: REAKTOR 5 PLAYER, GUITAR RIG 4 PLAYER, KONTAKT 4 PLAYER and KORE 2 PLAYER. The included libraries provide over 450 high-quality sounds and effects ranging from futuristic synthesizers to edgy drum rhythms, stage-ready keys, versatile amp emulations, effects and much more. All Players are bundled into one installation file, making the setup as comfortable as possible.

Enjoy the sheer quality of Native Instruments products with 1 GB of sounds for free, and expand the included sounds at any time by selecting from a huge and constantly growing range of KOMPLETE Instruments and Effects, available directly in the NI Online Shop.

This is Mac and PC compatible in Standalone, VST, AU and RTAS formats. These are somewhat limited but you may get plenty of use from them. A really nice taste of what KOMPLETE contains.

I downloaded this on the weekend and played with them a little. I can see myself using some of the REAKTOR 5 PLAYERS for pads and loops. GUITAR RIG 4 PLAYER won’t get much use as a guitar amp, but should prove useful as an effects unit. KORE 2 PLAYER AND KONTAKT 4 PLAYER have been around for a while and see some use from time to time in my studio.

Get KOMPLETE 7 PLAYERS

Last week Brainworx released their second free plugin bx_cleansweep and since I actually use their other free plugin bx_solo quite often I figured I’ll talk about them both. 1 is new, 1 is not, both are helpful tools. PC: VST & RTAS; Mac: VST, RTAS & AU

bx_solo is a simple MS tool. It allows you to swap Left and Right, solo Left/Right/Mid/Side as well as a handy stereo width control. Once in a while I’ll have something in a mix that I want über wide and in the background so I’ll set the stereo width control to 400%. More info on bx_solo

bx_cleansweep is a hi-pass and low-pass filter (aka bandpass) but goes about it in an interesting way with a joystick to adjust HP and LP cutoff simultaneously. Additionally there is a knob for each filter for finer/more traditional adjustment. More info on bx_cleansweep

Get both of these on the Brainworx Free downloads page, the TT Dynamic Range Meter is also available for download on that page.

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